Virtually Inconceivable:The role of geopolitics in the European Union's foreign policy development in cyberspace

The prevalent narrative about geopolitical competition in cyberspace understands the struggle for sovereignty in cyberspace as chiefly occurring between two powerful states: the US and China. The realist and state-based theoretical assumptions underlying this narrative privilege states' capabilities to conduct cyberwarfare as the golden ticket to enter the geopolitical 'ring' in cyberspace. With weak military and intelligence capabilities (and not being a nation-state), the European Union (EU) is viewed as incapable of advancing its global geopolitical ambition in the cyber domain. Yet, the EU has also articulated sovereignty aspirations in cyberspace and advanced its own policy instruments and cyber norms into geopolitically contested regions. This development, which challenges dominant accounts of cyberspace in the literature, has not yet been explored.

My doctoral research therefore asks, how have geopolitical considerations shaped the EU's evolution as a distinctive type of foreign policy actor in cyberspace? And what are the implications of the EU's development as a strategic cyber actor for theories of cyber politics and international relations? To answer these questions, I propose an interpretive research design to qualitatively examine the EU's cyber foreign policy development from 2003-2020. Through consulting EU document archives, policy documents, and interviewing EU officials, I will construct a genealogy of the EU's foreign policy development to elucidate how particular notions of geopolitics and sovereignty have been understood, negotiated, and articulated by various EU foreign policymakers. Throughout this genealogical approach, I will conduct rigorous discourse analyses to trace how, and to what extent, geopolitical and sovereignty considerations have shaped policymakers' formation of the EU's cyber strategy and its global ambitions over time. This will enable me to recursively elucidate the 'meanings' of geopolitics and sovereignty as they have been applied and represented in the context of the cyber policy environment, to therefore build my theory 'from the ground up'. By foregrounding the limitations of extant scholarly approaches and seeking to build a cyber-IR theory on geopolitics 'from the ground up', my research moves beyond the conventional power-politics and state-based explanations towards geopolitics in cyberspace. At the same time, my approach considers the application of European integration theories to a new political arena (cyberspace). Its ultimate contribution, however, extends beyond scholarship: by examining how policymakers understand and negotiate key strategic concepts (geopolitics and sovereignty) in complex governance settings, this research will produce insights for future diplomatic and foreign policy efforts in the cyber environment.