Below Article 5: Thresholds of Response to Suspected Sabotage, Cable Damage and Drone Incursions
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Purpose. Between 2023 and 2025, damage to subsea pipelines and cables in the Baltic Sea and drone incursions into Polish and Romanian airspace caused serious harm and political alarm, yet no Ally invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and responses varied widely. The article asks how jurisdictional authority, evidentiary uncertainty, threat immediacy and response capabilities shaped national and allied responses. Methodology. Structured, focused comparison, process tracing of official documents and doctrinal analysis of the North Atlantic Treaty, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and national law are applied to 56 decision episodes in seven cases — Balticconnector, Yi Peng 3, Eagle S, Vezhen, Fitburg, Poland (9–10 September 2025) and Romania (13 September 2025) — and to one allied episode, Baltic Sentry. Findings. There was no single threshold below Article 5. Protective measures, including the shooting down of drones, turned on immediacy, means on scene and competence, and did not wait for attribution. Coercion at sea followed legal reach: ships were boarded where they were, or could be brought, within the coastal State’s territorial sea (for Fitburg the zone of the takeover is reported differently), whereas authorities stated that they lacked jurisdiction over ships remaining beyond it under flag-State control. Seizures ended once the evidence pointed to an accident or the investigation no longer required them, charges alleged recklessness or neglect rather than intent, and courts disagreed about jurisdiction. In Romania, pilots authorised to fire refrained after assessing the collateral risks. Conclusions. Responses below Article 5 were assembled from measure-specific thresholds set by different legal regimes and applied by different bodies; Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry show allied adaptation layered onto earlier plans rather than documented learning.
Source: Politics & Security
Author: Andrii Lyseiuk
Institution: Security Service of Ukraine
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225200345