Will Election Hacking Split NATO?
NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, has reportedly suggested that NATO may consider Russian interference in upcoming European elections as an attack triggering collective defense measures. Such a move could put NATO and its member states at odds with the United States, which carefully avoided calling Russian interference in the U.S. election even a violation of international law. It would also leave the United States with a difficult choice of potentially changing its view of the legality of election interference or contradicting the legal views of its NATO allies.
NATO’s founding treaty states in Article 5 that NATO members “agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and that “if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence” will assist the victim state. In a 2014 summit declaration, NATO governments made clear that cyberattacks could trigger collective self-defense under Article 5 and explained that a decision to invoke NATO’s collective defense obligations would occur “on a case-by-case basis.” According to The Independent, Bradshaw suggested that election interference may be such a case, explaining that “allegations of interference in American and European elections and an international disinformation campaign could cause the definition of an ‘attack’ to be widened” for purposes of Article 5.
“Armed attack” is a high threshold under international law, and as Ryan Goodman has explained, Russia’s interference in the U.S. election did not reach that level. Maybe a future cyberattack on election infrastructure could. But Bradshaw may have meant not that future election interference was likely to constitute an armed attack, but rather that NATO states should respond collectively to hostile actions below the armed attack threshold.
The continuing fears about Russian interference in upcoming European elections lend urgency to the need for state-to-state discussions about how to characterize election interference as a matter of international law. The United States—or at least the Obama Administration—staked out its position, but other states should weigh in and work toward a consensus among allies. Academics can continue to spar, but it is state practice that will and must settle the debate.