Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter states the following: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” This article, along with several judgements of the International Court of Justice such as the Nicaragua case and the case of Democratic Republic of Congo versus Uganda, sets an important principle of international law: the principle of non-intervention.
According to this principle, states must not intervene in the other states' affairs unless there is a justifiable reason behind. All states' territorial integrity and political independence must be respected and any threat or use of force that tampers it shall be refrained. For example, France cannot send its own troops to Catalonia to support its secession movement since it goes against Spain's sovereignty within its own jurisdiction.
This may seem clear enough at first glance. However, nowadays there exists an incredible level of controversy in the field of international law due to this article as our changing world created a gigantic loophole: cyberspace.
Similar controversy took place few decades ago when humanity first began to explore outer space. Imagine, you only lived in your own planet and did not even think about the possibility of exploring another one. Moon was something floating on the sky, not somewhere humanity can step onto. However, in the middle of nowhere, it turned out that every country with sufficient level of expertise and investment can go above the atmosphere and fix the national flag in an alien planet. In other words, the realm of international law grew exponentially in all of a sudden.
And now, as we human beings started to create an entirely new playing field--cyberspace--and the pace of growth and expansion is remarkably fast compared to any other arenas of human interaction, international law and its practicioners felt a need to address it. People's lives in general and most importantly, interactions between countries, are taking place in cyberspace more often than any other period in human history. Think about DDoS attacks and cyber warfare between countries. Unlike our ancestors who had to raid the villages and set fire on the food supply to devastate another state, all we have to do now is to enter some codes and click some buttons on our laptop. Just by doing so, an infrastructure of a country can be entirely destroyed and it can as a result lead to catastrophic international conflict. Therefore, something for sure has to be done in order to safeguard world order and the principle of non-intervention, the guardian of peaceful cosmopolitan environment.
Number of academic works such as the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to the Cyber Operations published as a product of a four-year project of 19 renowned international law experts are being done. However, the very essence of the issue is still debatable: can cyberspace and our physical world be considered in the same manner under the principle of non-intervention, or should we draw a clear line between them?