The Russian Federation’s sub-threshold warfare: an emerging threat for European security

Abstract

This Master’s thesis examines modern Russian sub-threshold warfare, and how concepts, terms, and vocabulary, and the possible difference in understanding them by NATO nations might have an effect on how such hostile actions get attributed and responded to. The research examines how Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the United Staes conceptualise the Russian Federations’s activity below the threshold of active kinetic warfare. The paper uses a constructivist and strategic-culture framework to study academic and policy papers, as well as high-level interviews with relevant respondents from each researched nation. The paper proposes a hypothesis that the less NATO allies have a mutual understanding of the concepts describing such activity, the bigger the risk, that cooperation, attribution and response will differ or be delayed. The research and analysis points to that although the three researched nations broadly recognise the sub-threshold threat by Russia, an also broadly agree on the concepts, they all view it through different national strategic-culture lenses. Estonia perceives it as an existential threat, the United Kingdom as an institutional and legal challenge, and the United States as a global strategic competition, and domestic institutional vulnerability. The thesis finds thats concepts and terminology alone do not prevent cooperation, but deeper differences in threat perception, geography, historical experience, attribution thresholds, legal frameworks, political will, and strategic culture may have an effect on cooperation, attribution and response to Russian sub-threshold threats.