New Questions for an Old Alliance: NATO in Cyberspace and American Public Opinion

Abstract

Cybersecurity poses new questions for old alliances. These questions emerge with special force in the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russian Federation wields substantial cyber capabilities, but NATO members have been ambivalent about stating what sorts of attacks would trigger the North Atlantic Treaty's Article 5 collective self-defense provisions. Nevertheless, NATO officials state that there are some attacks that would trigger Article 5. This leads to a puzzle: why would an explicit alliance guarantee designed to ensure collective defense against certain forms of attack be informally extended to include others? Because the policy of the United States toward such questions will likely be of great significance in determining NATO policy, we use a series of survey experiments to test American public opinion regarding support for defending allies and friendly countries against cyber operations. Respondents are likelier to support a response to an attack that causes fatalities and when the victim has a treaty alliance with the United States. In contrast, support falls if US participation is likely to provoke further retaliation or the target attacked is civilian rather than military.