The Digital Cold War Argument and the Internet Governance

디지털 냉전론과 인터넷 거버넌스

The Digital Cold War argument has become one of the heatedly discussed foreign policy agendas in the U.S. Considering the authority and power of the U.S. government and Internet companies in the cyberspace, this shift is not negligible in understanding not only the changes in the U.S. foreign and military policies but also that in the operations of the global Internet governance. Given these circumstances, I seek to explain the origins of and test the theoretical validity of the Digital Cold War argument. In particular, I analyze how the political concerns of the Chinese authorities shaped the characteristics of their control of the domestic Internet and their approach to the global Internet governance. The findings indicate that the Chinese way of the Internet governance is more concerned of their domestic political stability than overthrowing the current Internet governance regime, which many supporters of the Digital Cold War argument cited as the key evidence of such political contentions. Though the Digital Cold War argument is theoretically unwarranted, its growing popularity and the historical lessons of the Cold War have broad implications to the understanding of the impacts of the great power rivalries on the future Internet governance.