http://www.pircenter.org/en/blog/view/id/208
By Oleg Demidov
PIR Center
09.05.2015
The bilateral intergovernmental Russian-Chinese agreement on cooperation
in the field of international information security which was signed on May
8, 2015 during the visit to Moscow of Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the
CPC and the President of China, could potentially become an important
milestone in Russia’s strategy of pivoting to the East. Though in its
current state the agreement rather provides a general cooperation
framework, it also provides a broad range of directions for further
practical cooperation steps and efforts between the two countries. It
primarily focuses on systemic information exchange between special
services of the two states, joint monitoring and prevention of escalation
of serious incidents and especially conflicts in cyberspace, ensuring and
strengthening cybersecurity of critical infrastructures, countering
ICT-enabled forms and methods of terrorism, exchange of expertise and
academic knowledge on cybersecurity, etc. A strong focus in made on
joining efforts in countering the unlawful use of ICTs targeted at
“undermining of social order, political and social stability, provoking
extremism, hate and social unrest”, and even (and this is something quite
new even for Russian doctrines, let alone intergovernmental agreements)
“threatening to the spiritual sphere” of the two nations.
Noteworthy, the agreement for the first time for a Russian official
international document operates with the notion of strategic stability
with regard to cyberspace and information security. Previously, a more
broad and vague notion of ICT-enabled threats to international peace and
security was used. Something distinct from a mere terminological
equilibristic, this conceptual update serves as an indicator of the fact
that Moscow now truly regards China as a strategic partner in the dialogue
on political and military dimension of cybersecurity. The discourse of
strategic stability was always linked to the issues of WMD strategic
balance and (in Russian view) strategic antimissile defense. Now
cybersecurity has a strong presence in this “elite club” of ultimate
global security factors in the Russian strategic thinking, and first
intergovernmental manifestation of this paradigm is addressed to and
agreed with China. Accidentally or not, this aspect reveals interesting
intersections with the recently published updated DoD’s Strategy for
Cyberspace, which has replaced the previous document from 2011, even
having in mind that an intergovernmental agreement and a national strategy
are very different documents in terms of their scope and purposes.
[...]
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