UN Charter Art.33 points to means such as negotiation, mediation and arbitration to settle disputes and to avoid the risk of use of force. Judgments of the International Court of Justice are of great value also to further develop international law. However, courts are hardly ever employed to save peace by the judicial settlement of big disputes. Following the precedent of the Nuremberg tribunal, special tribunals have been set up to try war crimes. Even more important, an international criminal court has been established. Fact-finding (termed ‘enquiry’) has achieved a prominent role both to solve and to prevent conflicts. Thus, the safeguards system of the IAEA using inspectors, cameras and satellites and environmental sampling continuously verifies that no fissionable material is diverted away from peaceful uses. With much fake news around, impartial professional inspection, monitoring and reporting – for instance, about the use or possession of chemical weapons – has become more important. Diplomacy seeks to secure or create peaceful relations by agreement, precluding or removing the threat or use of force. Examples are given of successes of diplomacy to preserve peace as well as of failures and of talks going forever without result.

This chapter gives brief descriptions of Post-WWII interstate conflicts linked to the main phases in great power tensions: the bipolar Cold War, with Korean war 1950, the Viet Nam war 1965, Interventions, Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, the Détente and unipolar conflict resolving world that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union and the multipolar world that is emerging thereafter with terrorism, Russian intervention in Georgia and war in Ukraine and sharp tensions between the Koreas and in the East and South China Seas.

Introduction

This chapter examines how geography has shaped China’s pursuit of great power status and what it means to other countries, especially the US. It argues that geography serves as a social construct for Chinese national identity as well as a security concept for its interest. China’s geographical positioning is undergoing a transformation from imagining the country as a land-based yellow middle kingdom to a maritime blue superpower.

This chapter stresses a spectrum view of tianxia (All under Heaven), a foundational Chinese worldview as well as a spatial-positioning concept. Various political actors offer competing interpretations of tianxia ranging from accommodation to domination. Political geography has shaped this debate—the more China’s physical positioning is highlighted, the more assertive one’s interpretation of China’s global aspiration would become. The Chinese government has been leaning toward an increasingly aggressive execution, interpreting the country’s rapid maritime expansion as a modern shift of tianxia from land to sea. This has caused anxiety among neighbors and confrontation with the US.

This chapter’s analysis proceeds as follows: it starts by introducing tianxia (All under Heaven)—a Chinese philosophical view that imagines an ideal world where a benevolent and powerful leader sitting between Heaven and Earth, ruling his subjects by heeding the mandate of Heaven. Tianxia is both spatial and moral, as it portrays harmonious positionings of all living creatures on the land—people, fauna, and flora.

The chapter then examines how China’s rapid ascendancy has challenged this historical concept. Echoing Salvador Regilme’s chapter on the militarization of the South China Sea (SCS), this chapter points out that China has been aggressively pursuing the goal of becoming a deep blue power. As Beijing seeks to project its influence to the sea, it needs to expand tianxia, a traditionally land-based concept, to justify its vast maritime claim as well. Regilme argues that Xi Jinping’s domestic agenda of boosting nationalism is partly responsible for Beijing’s militant activities in the vast waters of the SCS. Following this proposition but looking through a more long-term and normative lens, this chapter suggests that the conceptual expansion of tianxia serves the Chinese leader’s domestic agenda of rejuvenating Chinese greatness, also known as the “Chinese Dream.” But Xi’s dream has stirred up fear and anxiety among China’s neighbors. It also brings the country on a collision course with America, the region’s hegemon by default.

A farewell is given to something that is leaving. After thousands of years of freedom for nations to go to war, new proximity, interdependence, risks of nuclear war have led them to exercise restraints and to commit themselves to the UN Charter and the requirement to abandon interstate uses of force. This book concludes that while states will continue as always to compete, the great powers are saying farewell to direct interstate wars. For over 75 years there have been no wars between them and no nuclear weapon has been used. The Charter as rule-based international order has often been violated and the veto has often stood in the way of action. Yet, the General Assembly has asserted the order and declared that it does not recognize illegal annexations. The nuclear arsenals remain and pose existential risks to humanity. At the same time, the fear that they would be used in second strikes makes it implausible that any nuclear-armed states would initiate hostilities that could risk leading to nuclear war. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is seen as out of tune with the twenty-first century – an aberration. The growing interdependence of states is creating restraints against causing ruptures and, at the same time, enables states to use crippling economic measures as substitutes for the use of force. In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis shocked the parties and prompted them to use diplomacy to avert the acute risk of nuclear war. Today, one may speculate if the war in Ukraine and threats to the human environment might shock nations to turn to diplomacy and disarmament and switch to the defence of the threatened human environment a major part of the some 2 trillion dollars that they now spend annually to defend themselves against each other. For this to become reality, an engaged public mind would be as important as it was against slavery and nuclear weapons.

UN Charter Art. 2:4 aims to protect states from forcible encroachments by other states, but it does not stand in the way of the Security Council taking or authorizing states to take enforcement actions under Art. 42 and did so in the case of Korea 1950 and Iraq in 1991.It may take or authorize enforcement actions – even inside states – under Art.2:7 and 42. It may also under Art. 53 authorize the use of force by regional organizations – and has done so. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine envisages the use of force to remedy extreme internal situations, such as genocide or massacres, but only within the rules cited requiring approval by the Security Council. The veto is often criticized as hindering action by the Council. It may, indeed, be excessively used but may sometimes be only a signal from one of the permanent members that it may be ready to use its power to resist an action proposed. Post WWII, force has been used by states – but only rarely – to acquire territory while ignoring the Security Council, notably by North Korea in 1950, Iraq against Iran in 1980 and against Kuwait in 1990, Russia against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Introduction

Great power rivalry is back once again (Layne 2012; Buzan and Cox 2013; Mearsheimer 2014; Graaff and Van Apeldoorn 2018; Ikenberry 2018a, 2018b; Lake 2018). In the 21st century, post-COVID-19 pandemic world order, China and the US have emerged as the two most powerful state actors, if several quintessential economic, military, and sociocultural indicators are considered. The economic front is indeed an area of great power contestation. According to the World Bank (2022a), while the US in 2021 had the world’s largest gross domestic product (GDP; constant 2015 US dollars [USD]) with 20.3 trillion USD, China recorded 15.8 trillion USD. China’s enormous economic wealth that it has accumulated over the last few decades, however, has to be shared by the country’s 1.4 billion people. China’s 2021 GDP per capita (constant USD for 2015) remains remarkably low at 11,188 USD, compared to the US that has 61,280 USD. Notwithstanding, China has overtaken the US as the world’s largest manufacturer of products that are then exported to all countries. Consequently, China has the largest percentage share of the world’s exports of goods, with 14.7 percent in 2020, while the US only has 8.1 percent (Razo 2021). Nearly 124 countries recorded China as their top trading partner, while the US was recorded as the top exporter in only 56 countries (Arte 2022).

In global financial governance, China challenges US dominance as the former established the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the vast rail, land, and sea global network that connects China to a large number of countries in almost all world-regions (Kuo and Kommenda 2018; Nordin and Weissmann 2018; Jones and Zeng 2019). In a bid to stimulate development outcomes elsewhere, China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is a multilateral financial institution that invests in various economic, social, and sustainable development projects in at least 105 member countries (Kubalkova 2015; Babones et al 2020; Lai 2022). China’s BRI and AIIB constitute attempts to upstage the Washington DC-based World Bank and the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, both of which predominantly reflect US interests.

The chapter explores the question of how different domestic and international law approaches to regulating the international transfer of personal data deal with cybersecurity threats. It examines the 2016 EU General Data Protection Regulation, the 2021 UK National Security and Investment Act, and the 2018 United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement, as representing distinct approaches for regulating international data transfers, namely data protection legislation, investment screening legislation, and digital trade agreements. The analysis demonstrates that a lack of uniformity in terms of what constitutes an adequate level and design of data protection mechanisms has left the issue of how to distinguish between acceptable and non-acceptable data-transfer restrictions largely unresolved.

The chapter provides a comparative account of cybersecurity public–private partnerships (PPPs). It argues that PPPs bring together the law-making powers of the states with the know-how of the private sector, that both are necessary to effectively deal with cybersecurity threats, and that the benefits of PPPs outweigh their limitations. It then empirically analyses the laws and regulations surrounding cybersecurity PPPs in eighteen different domestic jurisdictions to find a common denominator that could be transposed into international cybersecurity PPPs. Finally, it discusses the modalities that international cybersecurity PPPs could take and proposes a new international treaty incorporating PPPs, under which states undertake to establish domestic mechanisms for collaborating with the private sector in cybersecurity.

Disarmament – in the sense of eliminating weapons – has not been a success as a means of restraining the use of force between states. Significant discarding of conventional weapons took place in Europe after the Cold War under an agreement (CFE) between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Large scrapping of whole categories of tactical nuclear weapons also occurred through parallel commitments under the so-called Presidential Initiative by Presidents Bush and Gorbachev. However, the subject of ‘general and complete disarmament’ that has long been on the international agenda, has hardly even been taken seriously. And while the non-nuclear weapon states allowed the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 to be prolonged indefinitely, the five nuclear weapons states parties have failed to live up to their obligation to agree on disarmament. A significant failure is also that the US and some other nuclear weapon states have failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty concluded in 1996. The US and the Soviet Union/Russia have sought – not disarmament but – important strategic stability through ‘arms control’ in bilateral agreements. In 2021, they prolonged the START agreement setting limits on the number of American and Russian strategic nuclear weapons and carriers and providing for important mutual verification.

The high ambition of the UN Charter Art. 2:4 to prevent interstate use of force is confirmed by the narrow right to individual or collective self-defence given to states under Art.51 ‘if an armed attack occurs’. States have many times invoked ‘self-defence’ as default justification of interventions and sometimes sought room for interpretations giving them more elbow room to use force in response to hostile acts of gravity. The general right of reprisal has been rejected, but in cases of grave or repeated terrorist attacks responses by armed force have not been criticized even though taken much after the attacks. A right has also been recognized to use force in self-defence where armed attacks are ‘imminent’ (pre-emption), but no such right has been acknowledged where the threat of attack is not imminent (‘anticipatory self-defence’ or ‘preventive’ use of force).

The chapter examines the distinction between public and private cyberattacks and responses to them in domestic law (e.g. application of criminal law) and international law (e.g. self-defence and countermeasures). After describing the different purposes, nature, and effects of cyberattacks committed by public and private actors, it argues that the determination of whether a particular cyberattack is of a public or private nature should define how states respond to cybersecurity risks. It then argues that the existing domestic and international law frameworks regulating cyberattacks suffer from serious limitations and proposes a holistic approach for responding to cyberattacks, taking into account the difference between public and private cyberattacks.

While the focus of the book is on the interstate use of force post-WWII, this chapter holds a rear mirror and offers a perspective of evolution of restraints that started long before states came into being. It recounts how human societies over the centuries became states free from widespread internal use of armed force and how great powers sought to avoid major armed conflicts through policies of balance of power and multilateral conferences. It describes how they developed common rules by concluding conventions and built institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations to create a rule-based order and mechanisms and methods to prevent the interstate use of force.

The chapter discusses cybersecurity from the perspective of human rights protection. It first identifies adopting border measures as one approach to fulfilling a state’s duty to protect its citizens against human rights violations caused by cybercrimes. It then examines the tension between these FDI restrictive border measures and states’ investment protection and promotion obligations under IIAs. The analysis demonstrates a limitation in the current international law framework in which invoking the concept of national security remains the only means for states to address cyberthreats, which involves the risk of an accelerating shift to protectionism.

Most states are of the view that military forces are needed and effective as means to reduce the risk of foreign attacks. They must note that some of today’s political and military realities are very different from those that existed up to the end of WWII. Border lines and land have lost some importance. The United Nations is a new factor but one that has not reduced the importance of national defence. Underestimating the need may be fatal, but exaggerating it means taking resources from more deserving needs. A table is offered of the military expenses of several states. Military budgets are currently (2023) sharply rising in many countries. The NATO alliance has set a minimum target of 2 % of GDP for national military budgets of their members. The US has long declared a policy of ‘all sector dominance’ and has by far the largest military budget. To deter the threat of nuclear and other non-conventional weapons raises intractable new issues. The three major nuclear weapon states seek to make sure that they will not ever lose the capacity to deter nuclear attacks by a second strike that would bring pain calculated to be unacceptable.

The chapter gives a detailed account of Chinese cybersecurity policy as an example of a state-oriented model of internet governance. After describing China’s early attitudes towards cyberspace, it analyses in detail its cybersecurity policy under the Xi Jinping administration, and how its concept of ‘cyber sovereignty’ differs from Western countries’ approaches to cyberspace. It also examines China’s efforts to export the Chinese model of cyber laws and regulations based on the concept of cyber sovereignty to non-liberal countries. It also analyses how the country is actively involved in the formation of international rules for cybersecurity in order to spread this concept.

The chapter begins by giving an overview of the background against which efforts to agree on international norms regulating cybersecurity take place. It highlights intensifying cyberthreats, increasing geopolitical tensions, and the rise of China, as well as a backlash against economic globalisation, which call for a reassessment of cybersecurity governance. It then summarises the main aims of the book, which examines cybersecurity challenges, governance responses to them, and their limitations, engaging an interdisciplinary approach combining legal and international relations disciplines. It builds on the fundamental premise that cybersecurity challenges require a widely agreed-upon set of international norms. it examines the current political and legal contexts of cybersecurity governance and highlights the divide between two contrasting models of cybergovernance: state-oriented and market-oriented. The chapter then offers a brief overview of all chapters of the book.