> On 15 Nov 2017, at 12:51, Bill Woodcock <[email protected]> wrote: > > Not exactly... a diplomatic norm is a commonly-accepted agreement as to > expected behavior. It’s essentially a step short of a treaty. > > The problem here is that the US, Russia, and China all want to preserve their > “right” to conduct offensive cyber operations against anyone they want, any > time they want, without it rising to the level of a diplomatic incident. > Pretty much everyone else (but most actively the Dutch, Singaporeans, and > French) agree that this is unacceptable behavior. But until diplomats agree > on a definition of what exactly is unacceptable, when it’s unacceptable, in > what context it’s unacceptable, by whom it’s unacceptable, and against whom > it’s unacceptable, there isn’t sufficient consensus to constitute a norm. > > Once there’s a norm that’s clear and understandable for governments to agree > to, we can start picking up momentum. When a lot of governments agree to it, > violating it will become more and more diplomatically costly for the few > governments that do.
Would you say that the current administrations of China, the US and Russia observe diplomatic norms in general? Possibly some norms are better than none, but I am not so sure. - Mark
