NATO and Instrumentalized Migration
This series—featuring scholars from the Futures Lab, the International Security Program, and across CSIS—explores emerging challenges and opportunities that NATO is likely to confront after its 75th anniversary.
In the future, NATO will be increasingly drawn into assisting member states facing hybrid attacks from adversaries that manipulate or generate irregular migration flows.
Since 2021, Russia and its ally Belarus have learned to instrumentalize (or, as some describe it, weaponize) migrants against NATO member states. NATO will increasingly be called upon to help European countries facing such hybrid attacks, although it is likely that the attacks will be less straightforward in terms of origin, purpose, and attribution than the Russia and Belarus-European Union border crisis.
People are migrating more and more, driven by conflict and war, poverty and hunger, and increasingly the complex impacts of climate change, as well as hopes for a better life and future elsewhere. Today there are an estimated 281 million migrants globally, and that number is on the rise. Irregular migration—the “movement of persons that takes place outside the laws, regulations, or international agreements governing the entry into or exit from the State of origin, transit or destination”—constitutes a significant fraction of overall migration; one estimate suggests 20 percent of all migratory flows. And irregular migration is particularly vulnerable to exploitation and instrumentalization. In instrumentalized migration, human movement is guided strategically to achieve geopolitical goals, whether by adversarial states acting directly against their enemies in the gray zone or non-state actors serving as adversaries’ proxies, which makes attribution, and therefore response, less clear cut.
Russia has been accused of channeling or creating irregular migration flows in many places, from Syria to Ukraine. Anne Applebaum sees Russia’s bombing campaigns against civilian population centers and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine as intended to generate waves of migrants headed toward neighboring NATO countries. Russia’s engagement in sub-Saharan countries, especially in the so-called coup belt, could serve to prepare the ground for major migrant flows toward Europe through the Mediterranean and Eastern European routes.
The primary responsibility for border management lies with individual countries, while the European Union, including through its border management institution FRONTEX, is a key framework for European states requiring support along the external borders of the European Union. However, as NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has stated, “NATO has a role to play” in addressing instrumentalized migration as a hybrid threat. Its contribution has to be understood in the context of “a combination of collective actions and individual actions by individual Allies and a combination of military and non-military actions.”
NATO’s value added in addressing instrumentalized migration includes its experience dealing with complex and hybrid security threats, its mechanisms for early warning and intelligence sharing among allies, and its ability to provide surveillance and monitoring support. NATO’s well-established cooperation with the European Union, its ability to integrate civilian and military elements, its work on countering disinformation campaigns, and its ability to assist member states in developing and implementing legal and strategic frameworks to address instrumentalized migration are also valuable. NATO has experience in relevant operational aspects as well as a number of documents and frameworks that address hybrid threats, including instrumentalized migration. The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a joint organization founded in 2017 and headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, supports both NATO and the European Union in the realm of hybrid threats, including instrumentalized migration. Finally, by publicly attributing incidents and calling out the actions of adversaries, NATO can help member states manage the political and diplomatic aspects of instrumentalized migration. NATO’s emphasis on national resilience as a critical element of collective defense should help ensure that member states are positioned to handle the influx of instrumentalized migrants. NATO’s structures are well prepared to allow for a combination of collective actions by the alliance and individual actions by member states.
But responding to instrumentalized migration is nonetheless difficult, not least because it involves flesh-and-blood human beings—men, women and children, the old, the sick, and the vulnerable—whose human rights and security matter and are protected under international and national laws. A symmetrical response is thus not an option. There are further complications. The debate on instrumentalized migration can get entangled in the wider debate about migration, irregular migration, and human smuggling and trafficking. Differences in approach to (irregular) migration already exist among European states and between Europe and the United States, a situation that could be exacerbated following the U.S. elections in November 2024. Meanwhile, nations of the Global South, including countries of origin for migrant flows that can be instrumentalized, have their own perspectives, interests, and expectations regarding migration.
Thus, NATO responses to instrumentalized migration must be nuanced. NATO should focus its understanding of instrumentalized migration in order to distinguish it from the broader reality of (irregular) migration. NATO should also recognize the risks that the securitization of instrumentalized migration carries for the human security of migrants. NATO should insist on strict abidance by the letter and spirit of international law.
In the future, NATO may want to develop early warning, intelligence exchange, and surveillance support (including with new technologies), not only along NATO’s European borders but also in migration hotspots or vulnerable locations, such as the so-called coup belt in sub-Saharan Africa. The alliance may need to conduct comprehensive risk assessments to identify potential sources and routes of instrumentalized migration and to examine related factors, such as regional conflicts and the actions of adversaries that tend toward instrumentalized migration. Through these measures, NATO may become more proactive in migration matters.
And NATO responses will require a balancing act. The alliance will need to weigh requirements to respond resolutely and to strengthen border management while adhering to international law and human rights standards. It must navigate its way through policies that prevent adversaries from sowing divisions among and within NATO countries, even as they retain relations with the partner nations and mitigate rising support for Russia in the Global South. Throughout, the alliance will have to calibrate its investments based on the objectives and levels of effort made by adversaries.
In practical terms, NATO could enhance its existing focus on national resilience by creating a Centre of Excellence on the theme, one that could include resilience in the context of instrumentalized migration within its remit. The alliance might also enlist support from partner nations in the joint advocacy for a legal prohibition against the instrumentalization of migration and offer support through information campaigns that help protect instrumentalized migrants from harm. This approach would allow NATO to engage partner nations in ways that emphasize NATO’s concern for the treatment of their nationals. It would help communicate the following central and critical message: in instrumentalized migration, the victims are the migrants themselves, as well as the countries of origin, transit, and destination, whereas the perpetrators are those who cruelly instrumentalize migration for their own geopolitical goals.
Monika Wohlfeld is a professor of strategic security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, where she focuses on strategic competition, hybrid threats, and European security. Benjamin Nickels is a professor of international security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, where he leads regional programming on European and U.S. relations with North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. Benjamin Jensen is a senior fellow for Futures Lab in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and the Petersen Chair of Emerging Technology and professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfighting.