NATO, Hybrid Warfare and the Limits of Retaliation

NATO's Admiral Giuseppe Dragone’s recent warning in the Financial Times that NATO must become “more aggressive” in countering Russian hybrid warfare has unsettled observers across Europe. His remarks reflect a mounting frustration inside the Alliance: Russia’s campaign of cyber attacks, sabotage, assassinations, disinformation and undersea interference is persistent, well-resourced and consciously calibrated to stay just below the threshold of traditional armed conflict. NATO has responded with condemnations, sanctions and enhanced security measures, yet the tempo of Russian activity continues. Dragone’s comments therefore invite a serious examination of how much further NATO could lawfully and prudently escalate, and whether even the most robust version of “aggressive” action could ever extend to kinetic retaliation against Moscow itself.

Here we explore the legal, political and practical issues that constrain NATO’s latitude, and offer a realistic assessment of what proportionate measures actually fall within the scope of Dragone’s exhortation. While some public debate has drifted towards speculation about direct strikes on the Russian capital, a sober reading of the relevant doctrines shows why such actions remain neither lawful nor strategically sensible. The genuinely workable options lie elsewhere, primarily in the cyber and covert domains, backed by credible conventional deterrence.

Hybrid Warfare and the Legal Boundaries of Self-Defence

Dragone’s intervention and the Article 5 dilemma

Dragone’s argument for a more assertive posture arises from a structural weakness in NATO’s current position. The North Atlantic Treaty was drafted in an era when an “armed attack” meant the movement of armies and fleets. Hybrid operations, by contrast, exploit deniability and dispersal. A submarine taps an undersea cable near Ireland; a cyber intrusion disables a hospital system in Germany; arsonists strike an ammunition depot in Poland; a wave of disinformation incites political instability in Slovakia. None of these individually resembles the archetypal armed attack of 1949, yet taken together they impose heavy costs on Allied security.

NATO has spent a decade adapting its doctrine, recognising that serious cyber or hybrid operations may, in principle, trigger Article 5. But Dragone’s message exposes a deeper question: should cumulative hybrid pressure be treated as an armed attack for the purposes of collective defence, or merely as a chronic irritant to be managed with economic and diplomatic tools.

If Allies conclude that the former interpretation is required, the law of self-defence then demands necessity and proportionality. Even under Dragone’s more muscular vision, a kinetic attack on Moscow would be difficult to justify as “necessary” when a wide array of less escalatory measures remain available.

Proportionality and the urban political target problem

Moscow is not merely Russia’s political capital; it is a vast civilian metropolis. Any kinetic attack on command-and-control facilities within the city would run into acute proportionality and distinction problems. Hybrid warfare, by design, rarely causes mass civilian casualties. A missile strike in the capital, however precise, would carry significant risk of collateral harm and would be hard to defend as commensurate with cable sabotage or cyber intrusions.

Dragone’s call for greater aggressiveness does not imply that NATO intends to shred the law of self-defence. Rather it suggests that Allies must be prepared to employ the full spectrum of proportionate measures before even contemplating escalation into domains where civilian risk becomes unavoidable.

Attribution as a precondition for escalation

One of the reasons NATO has been cautious is the perennial challenge of attribution. Dragone’s remarks implicitly assume that Western intelligence can now identify Russian hybrid perpetrators more reliably—hence his insistence that NATO should not allow ambiguity to paralyse action. Yet the legal requirement remains: force may only be used when a state has a reasonable basis to attribute the harmful acts to another state’s organs or operatives.

This creates a paradox. The more “aggressive” NATO becomes, the more rigorous its evidentiary standards must be, particularly if Allies wish to maintain international legitimacy and political unity.

Political Constraints on Dragone’s Vision

Alliance unity under strain

Dragone’s intervention lays bare a tension inside NATO. Frontline states, especially the Baltic countries, Poland and the Nordics, broadly share his assessment: Russian hybrid warfare represents a real threat that must be deterred through credible counter-pressure. Others, including some Western and Southern European states, fear that a too-forward-leaning posture risks provoking escalation without providing meaningful deterrence.

The United States, whose weight is decisive, oscillates between hawkish rhetoric and geopolitical caution. Any move from Dragone’s conceptual realm to operational reality would require painstaking consensus-building inside the North Atlantic Council.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine as the outer boundary

Dragone’s call for firmer action is deliberately pointed, but he has not advocated breaching Russian nuclear red lines. Russia’s doctrine remains ambiguous, but Moscow has repeatedly emphasised that attacks on the capital or strategic command infrastructure could be treated as existential. A strike on Moscow would therefore be interpreted not as a “proportionate response” but as a potential decapitation attempt.

Thus even as NATO becomes more assertive, Dragone’s logic does not support actions that might push the Kremlin into nuclear brinkmanship.

Domestic political limitations

European and North American publics are weary of the Ukraine war yet increasingly conscious of Russian interference. Dragone’s remarks will resonate in states that already face sustained hybrid pressure. However, mass support for overt military confrontation remains limited. Public backing will be easier to secure for measures that are sharp, targeted and plausibly defensive rather than for dramatic, high-risk kinetic actions.

Practical Military Constraints

The operational reality of striking Moscow

Even if political and legal barriers were absent, striking Moscow would be militarily imprudent. Command-and-control targets inside the capital are hardened, concealed and embedded within civilian districts. Precision-guided weapons reduce but do not eliminate collateral risks. Moreover Russia would almost certainly interpret such a strike as preparation for regime decapitation.

Dragone’s vision of “more aggressive” posture must therefore be understood in the context of feasible military signalling, not fantastical attacks on the enemy’s political heartland.

Escalation ladders and intermediate steps

There are many rungs on the escalation ladder between the status quo and an attack on Moscow. Dragone’s comments appear aimed at persuading NATO to climb a few of these middle rungs—to demonstrate that hybrid aggression cannot be waged indefinitely without cost.

Such steps may include:

• More forward deployments of air defence and naval forces

• Joint cyber operations targeting Russian military intelligence

• Larger and more frequent exercises near Russian borders

• Greater integration of intelligence on Russian sabotage activities

• Proactive defensive operations to neutralise threats before they materialise

None of these entail crossing the threshold into attacks on Russian strategic centres.

Proportionate Responses Consistent with Dragone’s Approach

Strengthened non-kinetic measures

Dragone’s call for greater aggressiveness can be interpreted as a mandate to intensify the tools NATO is already using but has applied cautiously:

• Rapid, coordinated attribution of hybrid attacks using declassified intelligence

• Systematic sanctions on Russian intelligence networks, proxies and enablers

• Large-scale expulsions of undeclared Russian intelligence officers

• Tightened restrictions on Russian diplomatic and commercial activity linked to hybrid operations

• Expanded counter-intelligence and counter-sabotage cooperation with Ukraine and EU partners

These are coercive steps short of force but significant enough to raise costs for Moscow.

Offensive cyber operations as the core of a proportionate response

If one domain embodies Dragone’s conception of “aggression” without tipping into uncontrolled escalation, it is offensive cyber operations.

Proportionate cyber responses could include:

• Disrupting GRU and FSB systems believed to coordinate sabotage

• Targeting logistics and communications networks used to support hybrid attacks

• Temporarily degrading military infrastructure involved in cross-border provocations

• Penetrating Russian disinformation systems to dismantle botnets and command centres

Such actions are scalable, deniable and capable of imposing real costs while remaining below the nuclear threshold.

Covert responses and counter-pressure

Covert action sits in the grey zone where hybrid warfare itself operates. Under Dragone’s logic, NATO states could do more to:

• Disrupt Russian covert networks in third countries

• Assist independent media and civil society inside Russia

• Conduct targeted information operations that raise costs for Russian security elites

• Interfere with Russian proxy groups that execute sabotage abroad

These measures match Russia’s methods in kind, signalling that hybrid aggression will not remain cost-free.

Limited kinetic options outside the Russian capital

If NATO were forced to contemplate kinetic measures as a last resort, proportionate options could include:

• Destroying Russian unmanned systems operating illegally near NATO infrastructure

• Intercepting Russian state vessels credibly linked to undersea sabotage

• Targeting military platforms used for hybrid attacks but located far from major civilian centres

• Reinforcing NATO’s forward posture with deployments intended to deter further provocations

These still carry escalation risks but avoid the catastrophic symbolism of striking Moscow.

Why Dragone’s Aggressiveness Stops Well Short of Attacking Moscow

Admiral Dragone’s call is best understood as a strategic correction, not a proposal for strategic confrontation. He urges the Alliance to shed its habit of slow, defensive reactions and instead adopt a doctrine of timely, proactive and multi-domain counter-pressure. Yet nothing in his remarks suggests breaching fundamental principles of necessity, proportionality or escalation management.

A strike on Moscow would fail every test:

• It would not be legally necessary when cyber and covert tools are available.

• It would not be proportionate to hybrid operations designed to avoid mass civilian harm.

• It would risk fracturing NATO unity.

• It would approach Russia’s nuclear red lines.

• It would be militarily reckless in an urban environment.

Dragone’s warning is therefore not a prelude to war in the Russian capital, but a call to make the grey zone genuinely contested: to meet hybrid aggression with resolute, proportionate, legally grounded and politically sustainable countermeasures.

Conclusion

Admiral Dragone’s remarks reflect a growing recognition that NATO cannot allow hybrid warfare to become a low-risk instrument of coercion. To be “more aggressive” in this context means refusing to let Russia dictate the speed and character of confrontation. It means using all lawful tools—cyber, diplomatic, economic, covert and, if absolutely required, limited kinetic measures—to impose costs and restore deterrence.

Nevertheless the escalatory and legal barriers to any attack on Moscow remain prohibitive. The Alliance’s challenge is not to threaten the Kremlin directly but to close the grey zone space that Russia has exploited for a decade. The path forward lies in coordinated cyber operations, rigorous attribution, enhanced intelligence sharing, forward military presence and a readiness to act swiftly when hybrid aggression occurs.

Dragone’s intervention does not lower the threshold for war. Rather it raises the threshold for tolerating Russian coercion. The task now is to turn that conceptual shift into a coherent and collective NATO strategy: one that is robust enough to deter hybrid attacks yet restrained enough to avoid the abyss of direct conflict with a nuclear-armed state.