In December 2020, Reuters first reported that hackers suspected to be working for Russia had been monitoring emails at U.S. federal agencies. While there are still few details as to the scope, scale and impact of the hack, what is known is that multiple U.S. federal agencies and dozens of private-sector companies were compromised through malware attached to a software update received by nearly 18,000 customers of Texas-based company SolarWinds. The massive, months-long cyber operation has garnered widespread calls for retribution, with some U.S. politicians going so far as to call it an act of war. As of publication of this debate, Russia continues to deny responsibility for the breach. So how should the U.S. respond to this extensive hack? We've asked three experts to weigh in on the issue.  

In the opening entry, the Belfer Center's Paul Kolbe writes that while a natural inclination is to strike back at Russia, such responses have been tried in the past with little to show for it. A carefully calibrated shot across the bow is appropriate in response to SolarWinds, according to Kolbe, but such responses will not stop cyber espionage or assaults. Russia is but one wolf in a growing pack of cyber predators, he writes, and the U.S. is simply too fat and easy a target.

Erica D. Borghard, a senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council and a senior director on the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, argues that while Kolbe is right in saying that retaliatory measures aiming to impose costs against Russia are unlikely to shift the Russian government’s risk-benefit assessment, he’s right for the wrong reasons. The pursuit of deterrence strategies to address other types of malicious behavior in cyberspace, beyond espionage, is not a fool’s errand, Borghard writes, and deterrence is not a one-size-fits-all concept in cyberspace—or in any other domain.

Finally, Anatol Lieven, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a senior fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington D.C., writes that Kolbe and Borghard are both correct in warning of the need for distinguishing between cyber espionage and cyber sabotage or terrorism. Lieven adds, however, that to be effective in constraining behavior, limiting disputes and maintaining peace, shared international conventions are necessary. Few things have been more damaging to U.S. and European hopes of a “rules-based global order,” according to Lieven, than the perception that the U.S. both makes the rules and breaks them whenever it sees fit, including in cyberspace.

Photo by Christiaan Colen shared under a Creative Commons license. 

Has the conflict in eastern Ukraine become a training hub for violent white supremacists? Researchers generally agree that, beginning in the spring of 2014, some of Ukraine’s so-called volunteer battalions served as magnets for adherents of far-right ideologies, drawing foreign fighters from all over the world to the war in Donbas. Huseyn Aliyev, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, argues, however, that when Ukraine began disbanding paramilitary groups and integrating them into official forces, taking part in the conflict became significantly more difficult for foreigners and resulted in an outflow of foreign fighters. Two other analysts, the Soufan Center’s Mollie Saltskog and Colin P. Clarke, argue that Aliyev’s depiction downplays the ways in which behavior by parties to the conflict in eastern Ukraine facilitates the rise of a serious global threat: Foreigners, they write, “are still networking, training and fighting on both sides of the conflict … cultivating skills and connections” that strengthen transnational white-supremacy extremist networks. Policymakers, they say, must work to mitigate both “the immediate dangers posed by radicals with battlefield experience and the threat that comes from Ukraine's new significance as … a hub for far-right groups to network and exchange expertise.”

Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump have suggested that ISIS has been defeated and that their respective militaries are most responsible, writes Domitilla Sagramoso, a lecturer in security and development at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. There can be little doubt that the U.S. and its allies played a much bigger role in subduing ISIS than Russia, according to Sagramoso, but the terror group has plenty of life in it yet and any alleged victory is fragile, 

The term “‘sphere of influence’ … entered the vocabulary of diplomacy in the early 19th century,” according to Harvard’s Graham Allison, “but the concept is as old as international relations itself.” By way of illustration, Allison invokes the image of a “shadow” cast by a state that has become predominant after “the equilibrium of forces” between it and another state has shifted greatly enough. “Traditionally,” he goes on, “great powers have demanded a degree of deference from lesser powers on their borders and in adjacent seas, and they have expected other great powers to respect that fact.” While this definition does not seem to be contested by experts, the right of countries to claim spheres of influence certainly is.

In the opening argument of the debate below, Paul Saunders, a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Center for the National Interest, takes what might be called a “realist” approach: While he does not believe that the U.S. should publicly endorse Russian or other spheres of influence, he does call on U.S. policy elites to stop denying, in America’s internal policy debates, that “Russia and other states have national interests and that, while we may not agree with how those states define their interests,” they must be included “among other considerations in formulating U.S. policy.” With America’s relative power on the global stage diminishing over the past 20 years as China and, to a lesser extent, Russia have risen, Saunders concludes that “the United States will have to work much harder to have its way [in the world] and will not be able to expend such effort everywhere. Understanding this, and undertaking the tough job of setting priorities, is the best way to maximize America’s future power.” Responding to this argument is Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who believes that the U.S. should not “accept the legitimacy” of Moscow’s efforts “to establish a sphere of influence in its neighborhood.” While acknowledging that “Russia has interests and will pursue those interests,” Pifer does not always see Moscow’s interests in the same way other analysts do; he rejects the view, for example, that Russian military intervention in Ukraine, where Pifer served as U.S. ambassador in 1998-2000, had anything to do with the prospect that NATO—which Moscow views as a hostile military bloc—would be coming closer to Russian borders. More generally, Pifer wants to see a world in which small nations have the means for self-determination without being in a great power’s shadow: “[A]ccepting Moscow’s assertion of a sphere of influence means denying that countries such as Ukraine have interests of their own or a right to determine their own domestic and foreign policy courses,” he writes, adding: “Do we really want to accept a world in which the views and desires of little or smaller countries are sacrificed to the preferences, however legitimate or illegitimate, of their larger, more powerful neighbors?” In his rebuttal, Saunders argues that his original argument rejects the idea of publicly acknowledging spheres of influence, and calls instead for "a greater effort within America’s government and from its foreign policy elites to develop effective policies toward countries in regions where rival great powers—China and Russia—have greater capabilities and/or greater resolve to advance their goals than Washington does."

As competition among great powers intensifies, so, too, could debates about spheres of influence. Some U.S. policymakers—including, most recently, John Bolton (when he was national security advisor), Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Lyndsey Graham—have implied or said outright that the United States has its own sphere of influence that should be respected. Political analyst Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has gone as far as to argue that, in order to avoid “needless conflict,” Washington should seek “a sensible agreement” with Moscow, in which it “would be willing to respect a Russian sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe and, in exchange, “should insist that Russia respect the Monroe Doctrine,” which claims U.S. predominance in the western hemisphere. Even if that were to happen, however, Allison suggests that the past two decades’ shifts in global power have created “facts on the ground” that cannot be undone and for many “nations and individuals around the world who have found shelter under the American security umbrella … the consequences will be tragic.” The only option available to Washington, he argues, is to “focus above all on its alliances and partnerships.”

Photo by Amber_Avalona shared under a Pixabay license.