From the earliest years of the Internet's creation, cyberspace has been distinguished from other types of political space because of three unique qualities: (i) its ability to mobilize users, particularly ''outsiders'' including those who have not been easily included in political systems using conventional means; (ii) its ability to quickly provide large quantities of information of uncertain or unregulated quality; and (iii) its ability to shrink distances between users, in some sense rendering conventional physical geography irrelevant. This paper presents three lenses for interpreting the significance of these developments: utopian, liberal, and realist. Evolving doctrines of cyberwarfare as put forth by China, Russia, and the United States in particular stress the ways in which cyberspace presents a unique security threat which may present greater advantages to nonstate actors engaged in unconventional warfare. Differing economic, political, and security policies derive from each lens.

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Failed-states discourse rests on an illness narrative. As the failing state battles against invasion by the terrorism “virus,” the United States serves as physician, diagnosing, treating, and sometimes “curing” the patient. The well state exists in a dominant power relationship vis-à-vis the sick state and the sick state has no voice in decision making regarding its future. Just as sick people have less autonomy than those who are well, sick states have less sovereignty than healthy ones. An uncooperative patient may be deemed incompetent and treated without his consent. Constructivist and feminist analyses of the medical process can shed light on and help in our creation of a revisionist/feminist analysis of the failed-state paradigm.

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