NATO’s Expansion and Russia’s Aggressiveness: An Empirical Study from the Perspective of the U.S. Public
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Kerry Liu
Abstract
Russia’s aggression on Ukraine has attracted worldwide attention. The relations between Russia’s aggression and NATO’s expansion are being debated with conflicting viewpoints. Based on weekly Google Trends data from 5 March 2017 to 13 February 2022, this study creatively creates a series of time series variables to measure the public agenda in the US. Based on time series modellings, this study finds that the U.S. public believes that there are bi-directional relations between NATO’s expansion and Russia’s aggressiveness. In particular, Russia’s aggressiveness is driven by both NATO’s expansion and Russia’s imperialism. NATO’s expansion is driven by Russia’s foreign policy, Russia’s aggressiveness, and Russia’s imperialism. These conclusions predicted the U.S. government’s policy towards this war. This study contributes to policymakers by providing solid empirical evidence on the U.S. public’s opinion on this important issue and to academia as well by presenting a (still) new quantitative method in international relations. By employing this method, we can leverage readily accessible high-frequency time series data to gain valuable insights into U.S. public opinion, potentially enabling people to predict U.S. foreign policies.
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Research funding: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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Competing interests: None.
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Availability of data and material: The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Appendix A: Google Trends Comparison Between Search Results Using Different Phrases: NATO Expansion Versus NATO Enlargement
Appendix B: Google Trends Comparison Between Search Results Using Different Phrases: Russia Aggression Versus Russia Invasion
Appendix C: Variables: Russia_IMP and Russia_FP
Russia_IMP represents the normalized volume of the narrative of Russia’s imperialism in the US, measured by the Google Trends search results using “Russia imperialism” as the key phrase. Russia_FP represents the normalized volume of the narrative of Russia’s foreign policy in the US, measured by the Google Trends search results using “putin foreign policy” as the key phrase. The time period is from 5 March 2017 to 13 February 2022. The number of weekly observations is 259.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Investigating the Economic Consequence of Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel Model
- Model-Based Small Area Estimation of Regional-Level Maternal Mortality Prevalence in Ghana
- NATO’s Expansion and Russia’s Aggressiveness: An Empirical Study from the Perspective of the U.S. Public
- Analysis of the Number of Tests, the Positivity Rate and Their Dependency Structure During COVID-19 Pandemic
- Evaluating Different Covariate Balancing Methods: A Monte Carlo Simulation
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Investigating the Economic Consequence of Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel Model
- Model-Based Small Area Estimation of Regional-Level Maternal Mortality Prevalence in Ghana
- NATO’s Expansion and Russia’s Aggressiveness: An Empirical Study from the Perspective of the U.S. Public
- Analysis of the Number of Tests, the Positivity Rate and Their Dependency Structure During COVID-19 Pandemic
- Evaluating Different Covariate Balancing Methods: A Monte Carlo Simulation
