ANALYSIS - NATO Cries Wolf Over Russia's Cyberwarfare To Hide Own 'Malicious' Acts, Justify Existence

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th May, 2019) A new array of cyberwarfare allegations against Moscow, put forward by London and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday, is nothing but the alliance's geopolitical drive to prevent Europe-Russia rapprochement through a coordinated campaign of scapegoating Moscow and hiding own "malicious" activities, experts told Sputnik.

At the Cyber Defense Pledge Conference in London on Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt went on the offensive again, accusing Russian intelligence services of using cyberattacks to attempt to compromise sensitive databases of countries across the globe. He said that over the past 18 months, the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre had handed over its findings on Russia's cyberactivities to 16 NATO allies.

Hunt also referred to Russia's alleged attempts to influence elections in the United States and Ukraine, warning that the alliance "must be crystal clear that any cyber operations designed to manipulate another country's electoral system and alter the result would breach international law - and justify a proportionate response."

UK LEADING WAY IN RUSSIA 'OFFENSIVE'

In the need to boosting cyberdefense capabilities, Hunt was joined by Stoltenberg and new UK Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who announced new major investments in cyberwarfare a day before.

Stoltenberg, who was also present at the conference, delivered a speech warning that cyberattacks could "damage our economies, undermine our democracies, and have a crippling impact on military capabilities."

The NATO chief noted that the alliance would beef up its resources to employ and train cybersecurity experts in order to better protect itself against increasingly complex cyberthreats.

"Allies must be prepared to call out attacks. And when needed, we must be ready to use our cyber capabilities to fight an enemy ... For deterrence to have full effect, potential attackers must know that we are not limited to respond in cyberspace when we are attacked in cyber space. We can and we will use the full range of capabilities at our disposal," he said, citing Russia's alleged foiled attack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague last fall.

On top of this, the new UK defense secretary, Penny Mordaunt, announced 22 million Pounds in funding ($27.9 million) for the British Army's cyber operations centers to counter attacks whether they "come from Russia, China or North Korea."

The UK cybercapabilities, meanwhile, are part of the 1.9 billion pounds in investment into the National Cyber Security Strategy, focused on boosting the country's cybersecurity. Recent UK innovations have also included the creation of the National Cyber Security Centre which brings together government, intelligence agencies and the private sector into one organization, as well as the Defence Cyber school.

Russia, in turn, has repeatedly denied claims that it has carried out any activities against other states in cyberspace. Moscow has instead called for international cooperation in cybersecurity.

ALL FOR DEFENCE AGAINST THE 'BAD GUYS'

Pierre Henrot, a Belgian military expert, describes NATO's accusations against Russia as "hypocrisy at its best," recalling that the allies themselves have been "hacking" into Russian systems.

"NATO, the UK and US are not the last to play this game [of throwing cyberwarfare accusations]. NATO and the Allies are clearly hacking into Russian programmes. The Western programme is named 'ECHELON' and has been running since 1971 without shocking US / UK allies," Henrot told Sputnik.

The surveillance program in question was developed by the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, known as the Five Eyes, in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc and is now believed to have evolved into a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.

"Since the end of the cold war, ECHELON is a 'Big Brother without a cause' but it still functions! ECHELON's hacking operations involve interception of internet satellite communications and possibilities for hacking Russian signals, sending computer viruses to user IPs, capturing e-mails, stealing information, etc," Henrot argued.

In general, the expert opined that "it is normal that both potential belligerents test each other's defenses and test their own cyberwarfare capabilities.

"It is as if you said that the Soviets had spies, without admitting that the Western powers had theirs!" he added.

Henrot also noted that if to believe what Hunt said about the "nasty Russian hackers," one might conclude that NATO computer systems "are anything but safe."

PART OF WIDER GEOPOLITICAL GAME

Citing the need to bolster its cyberdefenses and "resilience," NATO, meanwhile, has called a meeting of national security advisers at NATO Headquarters next week, first of its kind for the alliance.

Eric Zemmour, a French writer and political analyst, believes that NATO's current rhetoric is aimed at keeping the alliance, which should have been dissolved following the Soviet Union's collapse, alive.

"NATO should have disappeared when the Soviet threat disappeared in the 1990s. At the fall of communism, and the dissolution of the military Warsaw pact, there was no reason to keep NATO active, since the only threat against which it had been built, the reason for NATO's very existence was the USSR and the cold war. But as is often the case, NATO was kept alive, because the military insisted on keeping their perks, but mostly because the USA saw an interest in keeping the Europeans under watch, in an alliance dominated by the US, and using mostly US military equipment," Zemmour told Sputnik.

The expert warned against believing that the United States was simply genuinely interested in European defense, arguing that, since World War I, Washington had been guided by the geopolitical objective to prevent Russia and Germany, and widely Europe, from becoming allies.

"Their joint strength would have put in question the American leadership of the Western world... President [Donald] Trump attacked [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel on her business arrangements for Russian gas, delivered by pipeline via Ukraine and now the Baltic Sea. Any warming of the relation between the Europeans and Russia is criticized and hampered," Zemmour argued.

For Europeans, meanwhile, the quarrel with Russia is "disastrous" and only means lost opportunities, he noted.

'THE WEST IS MISTAKEN ABOUT ITS ENEMY'

Alexandre del Valle, the author of "The Real Enemies of The West" book and other works, as well as a geopolitical analyst, is similarly convinced that "Europe is mistaken in perpetuating old cold-war reflexes with Russia, or even resuscitating the cold war."

"The West is mistaken about its enemy by pointing Russia and is also mistaken about its friends by believing that its Arab customers are its allies. To be more specific, NATO remains an obsolete organization, sharply divided and turned against Russia in an anachronistic way. The enemy is the totalitarianism of radical islam, and Russia is also the victim of it on its Southern flank," del Valle told Sputnik.

According to the expert, NATO "should have been abolished in 1991," while the West should have proposed a cooperation structure that would integrate Russia.

"Since the end of the Cold War, Westerners and Russians have faced the same major threats (including Islamic terrorism) and other post-Cold War geopolitical 'challenges': transnational migratory, demographic and criminal risks," he argued.

Instead of seeking cooperation, Europe follows the United States in limiting relations with Moscow, while Washington continues "fooling" its counterparts about Russia's alleged threat and dangerous "economic dependence" on its gas, according to del Valle.

"A good pretext to justify the Atlantist vassalage of Europe and the 'sale' of competing American energies by relying on the anti-Russian countries that are Poland and the Baltic countries. These same countries are buying US rather than European weapons and are trying to block gas pipeline projects carrying Russian gas such as the 'Nord Stream 2,' which passes through the Baltic Sea and goes to Europe via Germany," he went on.

Such "wanton powerlessness" and the lack of loyalty of some EU countries that prefer US gas, arms and airplanes to European or Russian equivalents, according to the expert, are, meanwhile, Europe's "strategic suicide."

The fact that the European Union remains a "soft zone" from a strategic point of view, has been lowering its defense budgets, which Washington itself denounces as too weak, and has members who pledge more allegiance to the United States than to Brussels also prove that "Europe did not recover from its terrible civil war (World Wars I, II)," del Valle concluded.