Description
The increasing role played by offensive cyber operations (OCO) in gray zone operations as part of the ongoing strategic competition raises the question of how OCO will be conducted by coalitions and alliances, e.g. NATO, particularly below the level of armed conflict. Presently International Relations (IR) literature on cyber conflict provides little insight into allies’ motivations and decision making in this regard. We have designed a war game to increase our understanding of this academic lacuna by constructing and testing hypothesis regarding both major and minor allies considerations with regards to OCO based on Snyder’s secondary alliance dilemma stating that allies will seek to minimize the risk of being abandoned by their security guarantors while simultaneously minimizing the risk from becoming entrapped by allies’ independent initiatives. The game is intended to illuminate the dilemma from both major and minor powers’ perspective as well as identifying potential regional differences in response patterns.
