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Prof Reason McDuff
As the world business and politics continue to evolve around Information Communication Technology (ICT), it is critical for the United Nations to be the basic legal centre of control and monitoring of the international cyber space security, to avert abuse by especially the United States of America and its Western allies.
US and its allies are fighting day and night to dominate the global international cyber security space at the expense of world peace and security and the UN should play a critical role in moderating this.
Outside UN, the dog eat dog on the cyber space, fanned by the US’s hunger to dominate the world is very dangerous.
Day in day out, Washington and its western allies are trying to come up with initiatives that are aimed at maintaining their technological dominance in ICT.
Their target is especially in the development nations, even when they are offering some support and aid in this sphere, they are, in fact, trying to use it to gain access to sensitive information and to manipulate internal processes and public opinion in many countries.
They use this information ultimately to effect regime change in countries, they have designated as unfriendly to their foreign policy.
Suffice to say, taking into consideration their IT-giants Google, Apple, Microsoft and etc, the US can effectively use them to put under control international cyberspace.
This is why the issue of national sovereignty on its own cyber space is very important for countries like Zimbabwe. Without its own cyber security and space control, Zimbabwe will be doomed. Many developing nations will be doomed too.
To protect national cyber space, we should use United Nations as basic and the only mechanism to work out legal instrument taking into consideration common rules for all countries how to use and behave in cyber space.
Now that Zimbabwe is already under pressure from western countries, especially before 2023 harmonised elections, Zimbabwe should care about its own cyber security to avert an avalanche of fake news, cyber attacks etc, meant to tamper with the election results in favour of US’s favoured political formations.
The US’s influence in the field of ICT should be balanced by cooperation with other also technologically developed countries, with China as a variant. That way the world will be safe.
There is also a very strong threat that US can unilaterally declare some of the states to be involved in illegal activity in cyber and take it as a “aggression”, as they usually do, using that as a reason to impose sanctions and etc.
The issue of the Chinese weather balloon, comes into play. The issue of Zimbabwe’s cyber security law also comes into place.
That is precisely the reason why these ICT rules should not be in one hands of UN, not an individual country.
The US is worried by the growing competition in the world and is using its ICT superiority to deal with its perceived enemies.
But nations have a right to development and even use ICT solutions from other countries, as long as the UN becomes legal basis for control and fairness.
Developing nations, therefore, deserve the right to work with countries of their choice in terms of everything including ICT.
At the moment the US has used its predatory instincts to effect regime change in countries like Zimbabwe and we all saw how it used ICT to destabilise Mali and even effect regime change.
But when Zimbabwe moved to craft its cyber security law, there was an outcry from the US because it wants to control the cyber space itself.
The US does not want developing countries to rely on or adopt, cyber solutions from other countries like China because it wants to supply the technology itself and them abuse its proximity.
It is fact not fiction that particular whenever and wherever the US has supplied IT technology, it has subsequently used it to spy on that country and effect regime change.
So the developing world and all other progressive thinking countries should use UN’s ITC solutions as a way of achieving at least some protection form the US predatory instructs.
It has become very difficult to trust the US outside UN systems and solutions. It US is a known bully and does now want to be challenged by any other country, socially, politically and technologically.
As fair world in ICT can only be based by UN as a basic legal guarantor of a safe world.
The end game is that US would want to effect regime change and gain access to natural resources on those countries to bolster its own economy at the expense of local people.
It is critical, therefore, for developing countries to use UN as a centre and basis for their cyber security solutions because there are existing strategies under the UN statues that can make the world better.
US dominance is never good for the world. The cyber security is a very sensitive space and cannot be dominated by one country is the world is to be safe.
Prof Reason McDuff is a political scientist based in Brussels, Belgium. He writes in his personal capacity.
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