ABSTRACT
The North Atlantic is a target-rich environment for events: congested shipping routes and harbours, oil rigs, underwater telecommunications cables and a host of vital infrastructure in the North Atlantic are crucial to the economies of Europe. The North Atlantic has sea lines of communication (SLOC) and strategic economic routes on which the United States and the rest of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) depend. While many NATO countries are potential targets of Russian maritime hybrid warfare, other states, such as Sweden and Finland, may also become the objects of such attacks. The US-NATO-EU coalition counter-piracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean offers an example of a successful counter-maritime hybrid warfare effort. The United States and its NATO Allies and partners must start to consider their responses to hybrid warfare at sea. Hybrid warfare has significant general advantages likely to be particularly attractive to the Kremlin.
