Kazakhstan can play a really important role - Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović on Eurasian digital security and evolving diplomacy

In an exclusive interview with Kazinform, former Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović highlighted Kazakhstan’s pivotal role in promoting peace, security, and digital innovation across Eurasia, emphasizing its unique position between Europe and Asia and its potential to drive regional cooperation.

First of all, how do you assess Kazakhstan's potential in strengthening the Eurasian security architecture, given its geopolitical position between Europe and Asia?

– Kazakhstan's geopolitical position is really one of its biggest assets. It literally connects Europe and Asia, and it stands as a bridge connecting together trade, politics, economy, etc. I very much value Kazakhstan's universal role in protecting peace and security.

Kazakhstan renounced nuclear weapons upon its independence and is very active today in many multilateral fora, including the OSCE, for instance, which also connects the European and the Asian space, and it makes a very strong contribution to international peace and security as well as regional peace and security. Kazakhstan and Croatia, in that sense, connect our two regions, and I see many areas for our future cooperation.

Kazakhstan right now places a significant emphasis on digitalization of its economy and public services. In your view, how can regional cooperation, including between Kazakhstan and Croatia, enhance resilience to cyber threats and foster innovation in the digital sphere?

– Yes, of course, regional cooperation and global cooperation are very important in preventing cyberattacks and in increasing resilience in the digital sphere. Because if your neighbors are under attack and their firewalls are breached, then your firewalls won't be working either. And technology today moves at a very fast pace. In that sense, we need to cooperate and work together in many areas. We need to have joint exercises.

We need to exchange information and best practices. We need to work on common agreements, for instance, to institutionalize that cooperation. We, of course, have to start with confidence-building measures in order to create trust, responsibility, and predictability, and start with the least common denominators by choosing topics such as protecting children against sexual abuse online or protecting schools and hospitals, protecting critical infrastructure, etc.

Then there are many other areas where Croatia can learn from Kazakhstan or Kazakhstan can learn from Croatia, for instance, in e-government and e-identity, e-documents for our citizens, how to protect their e-identity, and how to incorporate that into all levels of service in order to provide for a transparent and a functional government.

Building more on the topic of digital development in the context of the growing importance of the digital economy and cybersecurity, what steps could Eurasian countries take to deepen integration and respond jointly to cross-border challenges?

– Well, access to digital today, to me, equals access to electricity in the older times, so digital infrastructure is incredibly important. It's also incredibly important to provide for all the citizens to be part of that process, to have the opportunities to learn online, to grow online, to work online, and to connect to each other, since those connections and networking can also serve towards resolving other issues that are pertinent to our bilateral relations or maybe regional policies.

Because what we're doing online and protecting from cyber attacks, protecting the infrastructure, is basically what we're doing offline as well. We're protecting our societies, we're protecting our people, we're protecting our economies, and we're protecting freedom and peace.

In that sense, stronger cooperation and heading towards not just practical ways of cooperation, but really institutional cooperation through mutual agreements between states in the region that would incorporate this positive cooperation, I think would work towards building mutual trust and towards building consensus on dealing with other sensitive regional issues. In that sense, Kazakhstan can play a really important role.

Last but not least, in an era of rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and digital technologies, diplomacy itself is evolving. What joint initiatives in digital diplomacy and innovation could become new areas of growth for cooperation between our two nations?

– Yes, certainly diplomacy is evolving, but I'm sorry to say that technology is evolving much faster than we're changing diplomacy, and diplomacy will have to adapt to that process.

We need to very carefully monitor the developments in the sector of the development of new technologies, including AI, quantum computers, and big data.

I welcome the initiative of the United Nations, for instance, to establish this expert panel on artificial intelligence, which will not have any powers to implement policies but will have a very important monitoring power to see what the developments are in the AI. Because in order to create policies, in order to create solutions, first, we have to recognize and detect the issues and the trends and be able to work them into the proper mechanisms for defense.

Looking into our systems, certainly again, it should be focused on our people. It should be a human-centered process that looks at whatever we do, not focusing the agreements and our solutions on the gadgets themselves, but on the principles and the processes.

If you take, for instance, the Geneva Conventions, they never mention drones, for instance, but they apply equally today in protecting people from drone warfare. They're not protecting technology; they're protecting people. Cyber agreements and cyber cooperation should be the same, not just protecting infrastructure, but protecting what is the most valuable in that, and that is the human dimension, our citizens, and our population.

Sharing information, sharing data, addressing our vulnerabilities, warning each other, and helping each other build proper capacities is the way to go forward.

Thank you so much for joining us and for your answers. We look forward to having you here in person and continuing to deepen our cooperation between our countries.

– Thank you. It was a pleasure to be with you today, and I hope that Croatia and Kazakhstan will continue to cooperate and to link the two continents, just as the Silk Road once connected the area with trade. I hope that the new virtual Silk Road that we will be creating will connect us through digitalization. I'm looking forward to my future visits to Kazakhstan.

Last month, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, held a meeting of the Kazakh Security Council on cybersecurity and protection of people’s digital environment.