While NATO thinks highly of Ukraine, it is increasingly facing hybrid attacks against its 32 member states, which come from Russia and China, but also Iran and North Korea.
At a meeting last week of foreign ministers in Brussels, a senior NATO official spoke of "continuous and daily attacks against NATO countries," which he said include cyber attacks, political interference, attacks in critical infrastructure such as submarine cables, as well as sabotage.
A recent example is the damage to the fiber optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea, which, according to some, was sabotage.
Since 2016, NATO has stated that hybrid attacks against any of its member countries could trigger action under Article 5 of the alliance treaty.
According to this article, such an attack on a member country can be considered an act of aggression against the entire alliance and prompt the response of all allies.
To invoke this article, the threshold is too high. It has been implemented only once in NATO's 75-year history, namely after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which then triggered the war in Afghanistan.
NATO officials admit that hybrid attacks are complicated because they are not like conventional warfare.
NATO is traditionally concerned with protecting external borders, while hybrid attacks tend to occur within allied countries, and often on a regular basis.
But it is those ambiguities that complicate everything.
Many of the attacks, whether physical or online, are carried out by private individuals. Although they can be traced to Russia, it is very difficult to present absolutely conclusive evidence that would attribute guilt. And blaming whoever is responsible isn't always helpful.
A senior NATO official said: “What we don't want is for everything to be attributed to Russia. This makes the Russians look bigger and creates anxiety. Always assigning [blame] is not necessarily a smart thing to do."
Many of these hybrid attacks also target private companies - for example, telecom operators that own submarine cables.
NATO officials say these concerns are increasingly being addressed by the alliance for assistance, as private operators lack the capacity to secure their own infrastructure and respond.
So what can NATO do? After the debate between foreign ministers on December 4, there was agreement on sharing more intelligence, more naval exercises and increasing the alliance's presence in the Baltic Sea.
But NATO officials are also aware of the weight of this task.
There are more than 1 million kilometers of submarine cables in NATO waters and around 50,000 ships in European waters at any one time. It is simply impossible to protect everything, even the most critical nodes of the infrastructure.
Undersea cables between Germany and Finland were laid in 2015.
However, NATO can get better at preventing things. It is increasingly using artificial intelligence to spot unusual trends and track suspicious vessels.
Alliance members are trying a variety of measures to protect the cables, including using sensors to monitor data and placing them under concrete.
Much of this was not done earlier, as the infrastructure was designed for peacetime.
NATO is now busy working on a new strategy against hybrid threats, ahead of the Hague summit in June 2025.
The last strategy, from 2015, is outdated.
"She did not anticipate this level of threat. Cyber operations are at a different level now, the number of threat actors is higher and the overall threat level is much higher," said a NATO official./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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