The NATO communique issued by the June 14 NATO summit, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had previewed earlier, elevates cyber warfare to the level of an Article 5 intervention. “Cyber threats to the security of the Alliance are complex, destructive, coercive, and becoming ever more frequent,” it says. In response to this threat, “the Alliance is determined to employ the full range of capabilities at all times to actively deter, defend against, and counter the full spectrum of cyber threats...” Therefore, “We reaffirm that a decision as to when a cyber attack would lead to the invocation of Article 5 would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis. Allies recognise that the impact of significant malicious cumulative cyber activities might, in certain circumstances, be considered as amounting to an armed attack.” It specifies that NATO’s response to such a cyber attack “need not be restricted to the cyber domain.”
The West has already shown a propensity to blame cyber attacks, such as the Solarwinds hack, on Russia without presenting any evidence. The communique, therefore, raises the risk that a major cyberattack could be blamed on Russia, with the alliance deciding it required a military response, even without any evidence being provided to the public of NATO member countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin already, in the NBC interview taped on June 11, denied that Russia is waging cyberwar against NATO as the communique would claim a few days later. “No, this is not so,” he said, when asked if Russia was conducting a war in cyberspace. “NATO said that it considers cyberspace an area of combat. And it prepares and even conducts exercises. What stops us from doing that? If you do that, we will do the same thing. But we don’t want that,” Putin stated.
