The Institutionalisation of Security Norms in the Context of Cyber Alignments: The Transatlantic Alignment in the Cyber Domain

Abstract

Realists argue that security alliances are established to confront military threats posed by one state to others. In contrast, this study argues that nonmilitary cyberthreats have become a factor in establishing new security arrangements that do not necessarily take the form of an alliance, but rather emerge in the form of alignments. Cyberthreats lie in the political, economic, societal and military repercussions caused by the employment of cyber technologies, not these technologies themselves. Therefore, alignments are not automatic reflections of cyber capabilities, but depend on common perceptions and meanings that identify a certain behaviour as a security threat. The transatlantic alignment in the cyber domain, having been produced by common EU and US cyber norms, represents this type of security alignment. These norms have constructed common meanings and perceptions of cyberthreat patterns, which are primarily embodied in Chinese and Russian policies and behaviour in the cyber domain, involving a set of alternative and competing norms to those adopted by the former two, and through which China and Russia seek to alter the structure of the prevailing international order.