Legal Operations: The Use of Law as an Instrument of Power in the Context of Hybrid Threats and Strategic Competition 1

NATO's Purpose The purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is to safeguard the freedom and security of its Alliance members by political and military means.2 In the military domain, the Alliance accomplishes this purpose by maintaining and developing its individual and collective ability to deter and resist armed attack, by consulting together whenever the security of one of the Alliance nations is threatened, and by defending Alliance territory and population from armed attack, as set out in Articles 3, 4, and 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.3 The Alliance operates in an environment of adversaries who actively attempt to influence the decision-making process and to undermine NATO legitimacy by attacking the Rules-Based International Order (RBIO) to seek regional and global instability.4 However, in contrast, the cornerstone of all NATO military operations is legal legitimacy based upon compliance with international law and adherence to the rule of law.5 Unfortunately, NATO's adversaries perceive the Alliance's focus on legal legitimacy as a critical vulnerability to exploit and a method to subvert the Alliance's political and public support. Producing propaganda that blames NATO and its commanders for deliberately targeting civilians and petitioning international organizations for redress, as the Taliban has done against NATO in Afghanistan;9 3.Attempting to shape and manipulate customary international law for their own benefit to gain territory and frustrate Allied freedom of maneuver by claiming historical rights over land and maritime territories in the Artic, the High North, and the South China Sea, as China10 and Russia11 have both done and continue to do; and 4.Utilizing their own domestic law to conduct influence operations and justify military interventions, as Russia has done prior to its invasion of Crimea- and continues to do in Ukraine-by granting passports and pension rights to Ukrainian Russian-speaking minorities and subsequently alleging that their human rights were being systematically violated.12 Within this context, the law, and by extension lawyers, must work to identify and assess NATO adversaries' misuse of the law and recommend appropriate lawful responses to adversaries' malign legal activities. "17 Strategic Competition is a challenge currently felt across all NATO's core tasks. Since 2015, NATO's response to hybrid threats has been focused on improving Alliance situational awareness through intelligence and inform