NATO’s Expansion and Russia’s Aggressiveness: An Empirical Study from the Perspective of the U.S. Public

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.