After the start of Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine in 2022, NATO linked shields with Sweden and Finland to strengthen the Atlantic alliance against further Russian aggression within Europe and the Baltic Sea. Despite the new membership of the two Nordic states, the bulk of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s attention focused on the defense of Ukraine. It still does.
This nearly exclusive focus, however, detracts from other US strategic, scientific, and economic priorities in Europe’s high north, the Arctic Circle, and even Alaska. The growing significance of the region prompts avaricious glances from competing powers. NATO’s northern tier states of Denmark and Norway, as well as Sweden and Finland, provide capable militaries for their defense along with high-level technical competencies for commerce and security. NATO member Iceland, notwithstanding its tiny population of four hundred thousand, participates in maritime operations in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
NATO’s northern flank
The world’s northern latitudes are of extreme significance to NATO. All Nordic NATO members share political, economic, and military interests in the Arctic. Their concerns about outside interference from Russia or China align with Washington’s apprehensions. Therefore, the allied Nordic members offer a powerful rationale for America’s own NATO membership and its furthering of the alliance’s strength and defense well beyond Central European lands. In short, the United States needs NATO not just for Western Europe’s security but also for its Arctic front.
Critics of Washington’s backing of the transatlantic alliance too often neglect NATO’s Arctic domain in their skepticism. For them, strategic realism means gutting international obligations, such as NATO, rather than clearly seeing what assets they bring to American strategy and interests.
Moreover, the polar region holds intrinsic value in its own right. The Arctic Circle possesses major reserves of oil and natural gas, together with large quantities of such minerals as copper, nickel, and iron ore, plus rare earths. Its seas also hold abundant fisheries. America’s adversaries eye the Arctic’s mineral wealth and the new northern waterways being opened by climate change.
Two adversaries: Russia and China
Russia is the foremost Western adversary in the Arctic. It seeks to exclude other states from the frozen, resource-laden arena and the opening sea routes that promise shorter passages and fuel savings for trade to Europe and Asia.
China’s assertive policy in the high north is accompanied by extravagant claims to territory and scientific and commercial influence in the region. Additionally, the People’s Republic of China attempted to gain a foothold in Greenland, a semi-colony of Denmark, although those efforts appear to have stalled. NATO and the European Union have kept China at bay. Beijing has issued preposterous claims that China is a near-Arctic state, and such boldness has paid off as the People’s Republic of China has been an observer on the Arctic Council since 2013. China also prowls the Arctic seas with up-to-date icebreakers to establish a presence in the polar area.
China’s expansionist designs overlap with Russian truculence in the Arctic. Now the two countries’ cooperation is widening. In July 2024, for the first time, Russian and Chinese bombers took off from the same airbase in northeastern Russia to fly within Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone, which extends two hundred nautical miles from the US shoreline. The Pentagon scrambled jet fighters, together with Canadian warplanes, which tracked the intruders. A month later, a Russian ship also penetrated the Alaskan zone as a US Coast Guard cutter monitored its passage near the Amukta Pass in the Aleutian Islands.
The Sino-Russian probes point to an intensification of hostile actions in American waters and the need for partners in the forbidding seas. Days before the Sino-Russian saber-rattling, the two powers held live-fire naval drills in the tense South China Sea. These, in turn, followed earlier sea and air maneuvers off Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan by both revanchist superpowers.
Their growing political closeness is reflected in Russian oil sales to China, their joint military exercises, and their alignment over the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, where Russia’s dependency on Chinese dual-use technology is evident. Moscow sells its bountiful oil to a thirsty China market. Their deepening collaboration in the Arctic is the latest expression of the budding relationship between the two coercive states, which have few real allies.
Nordic NATO assets
Beyond their proximity to the polar region, the new Nordic members bring other assets to their NATO membership. Sweden, for example, possesses the European mainland’s first orbital spaceport. Located in Sweden’s northern reaches, the Esrange Space Center launches suborbital sounding rockets for scientific research at lower costs than orbital craft. The center is well along on launch preparations for orbital rockets and military missions to detect and hit adversarial targets. The Swedish air force cooperates with the US Space Command and participated in the US-led Global Sentinel space exercises earlier in the year. Stockholm looks to establish itself as a key player in the international space realm because of its rapid strides in research and launch capabilities.
All of the other Nordic nations also possess space programs for research and commercial endeavors that enhance the transatlantic alliance. For instance, Norway’s space company made it possible for the country to develop its own satellites for research. Recently, Space Norway, a government holding company, launched dual-use satellites for communications over the Arctic, while carrying a US military payload. This first-of-its-kind arrangement of a military mission with a commercial satellite operated by allied partners sets up a model for the Pentagon’s future international partnerships.
Denmark’s department of space and technology conducts testing and development of remote sensing for space projects. Finland, for its part, houses its decentralized space and satellite ministries under the administration of SpaceFinland.
The Swedish and Finish air forces also train to confront a contested aerial environment by landing warplanes on highways to reload weapons and refuel tanks for further combat.
Finland is the Western world’s leader in icebreaker production. This past summer, Washington entered into a trilateral agreement called the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, with Finland and Canada to strengthen America’s presence in Arctic waters in its race with Russia and China. Washington looks to Finnish shipbuilding capabilities to serve as a force multiplier for technological expertise and building capacity for America’s future icebreaker fleets.
Together, the Nordic nations contribute to NATO’s military and commercial enterprises in ways underappreciated by NATO skeptics. They wrongly see NATO only in terms of extending commitments by Washington, and not of benefits to the United States. As the Arctic transitions into a new version of the “great game” of geopolitical rivalries, with its prominent flashpoints in the Middle East and Taiwan, the northern NATO nations assume crucial importance.
