Internet governance steered clear of geopolitics for quite some time. The internet’s rise to global dominance really took off after the invention of the World Wide Web which coincided with the end of the cold war in the 1990s and a period of limited global strife. Geopolitics is now centre stage again with implications for internet governance and the stability of cyberspace. The stakes are much higher – engrained as the internet is in everyday life – and international tensions are growing. In this short essay Dennis Broeders highlights three developments that are vital for the development for the international debate about internet governance and cyber diplomacy (thus also sidelining many other relevant developments): the politicisation of technical internet governance, the mismatch between the state of ‘unpeace’ in cyberspace and the legal frameworks that aim to bring stability, and, the parallel diplomatic future for ‘responsible state behaviour in cyberspace’ of the UN GGE and OEWG processes.

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Download the publication below (the essay can be found on pages 26-29).