Jovan Kurbalija Founding Director, Diplo; Head, Geneva Internet Platform (GIP)
25 years of digital (and) diplomacy: Evolution or revolution? First published on Diplo Blog, 2 September Recently, I felt nostalgic and nervous as I was about to revisit my paper from 1996 on digital and diplomacy: nostalgic for the time when information and communications technologies (ICTs) were pushing new frontiers and carrying the utopian promise of a better world; nervous about revisiting what I wrote 25 years ago. Regarding nostalgia, the digital sphere evolved from a space of creativity and innovation to today’s realistic reflection of us and our society. In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War and the sense that humanity had gotten another chance to ‘get it right’, digital technology emerged as a strong supporter and a bearer of hope. It remains to be seen if the utopian vision of the 1990s was misguided and naive. It certainly fuelled the growth of a digital space from which entire societies benefited and still benefit from. We saw it during the COVID-19 pandemic when digital networks helped keep societies running. Some benefited much more from this utopia, such as Big Tech companies that became more powerful than some countries combined. The ‘costs’ of fast digitalisation are well-known: the disintegration of public debate, hate speech, increased cyberattacks, and other. While the cost/benefit debate of digital technologies will continue, I will remain nostalgic for the utopian, digital spirit of the 1990s. As for my nervousness, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my paper is still relevant today. Apart from the retro ICT terminology, the tripartite conceptual framing of the interplay between digital and diplomacy has remained valid after a quarter century: • New ENVIRONMENT for diplomatic activities: Diplomats have to deal with new tech elites, navigate an altered landscape of economic and political power, and manage the fast-changing concept of state sovereignty. Future generations of diplomats will have to work in a fundamentally different geopolitical, geo-economic, and an overall different environment. Diplomats have moved from having diplomatic representation in, let’s say, Detroit (the economic hub of the 1950s) to needing strong representation in the San Francisco Bay Area (the economic hub of our time). Digital technology will increasingly shape the evolution of the political and economic environment for diplomatic activities. • New diplomatic TOPICS: These include cybersecurity, data protection, internet governance, and AI governance. In addition to new, digitally-driven topics, ‘old’ topics are increasingly influenced by digitalisation. Commerce is becoming e-commerce, health is increasingly digital health, and so on. On the agenda of the UN and its specialised international organisations, there are more and more digital issues. In order to reflect the emergence of new topics, countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Australia are developing digital foreign policies. The UN and international organisations are adjusting. Many others will (have to) follow in the coming years. 22
