The Way Ahead for Northern European Defense: Shaping the Future with Sweden and Finland as NATO members
By Robbin Laird
Finland’s and Sweden’s entry into NATO changes how the defense of Northern Europe works. As Admiral (retired) Nils Wang has put it: “Now you have to think in terms of defending Northern Europe from Iceland to the Finnish and Norwegian borders.
“How do we build capabilities that can operate across this region and deliver the kind of defense and crisis management effects that can deter Russian or, for that matter, Chinese intrusions into Nordic economic, security and defense issues?”
I continued my discussion about the challenges and opportunities for re-engineering Northern European defense with my colleague Hans Tino Hansen, CEO of the Danish company Risk Intelligence. In a phone interview I did with him in early November 2022.
He opened the conversation by emphasizing that he sees the Northern European defense area as a broad coherent area stretching from North America across the North Atlantic and the Arctic with the Nordic countries and into the Baltic Sea with three clusters of dense problems, each of which is changing somewhat. the key states in that cluster.
The first is a North Atlantic challenge associated with the gap between Greenland and Iceland and Great Britain. Here, the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway, together with Iceland, are the leading states from the Nordics, but when Sweden reworks the air-maritime approach, it can also be an indirect contributor.
The other is the security and defense areas associated with the northern areas. In NATO, Norway has so far been a leader in these matters, but Finland’s and Sweden’s entry into NATO provides great opportunities for significant challenges in cooperation strategies. The first steps have already been taken between the three countries and going forward a mutual combined command at corps level could enable the development of doctrine and defense planning.
The third area is the Baltic Sea and the region. This area may see the opportunity for significant innovation. On the one hand, the Baltic Sea becomes a “NATO” area because all the states on that sea are NATO members with Russia’s access to the Baltic Sea through the Gulf of Finland and with Kaliningrad as an even more isolated “island”.
Much innovation could be generated in the security and defense of the Baltic Sea through innovations in maritime sensors, robotics and shared ISR systems.
Hans Tino Hansen underlined: “Even within this area, there are clear differences in the data with Norway, Finland, Poland and the three Baltic republics as frontline states. This leaves the other Nordic states with the important task of participating in the defense of these states alongside Germany and Poland as well as the UK and the US as well as delivering host nation support to reinforcements traveling through their territory.”
An ability to project power in its defense through joint ground capabilities and ability to project air-to-ground power through lift systems and ground maneuver force innovations will be significant in shaping an effective path forward.
The point is really quite straightforward – there is no single defense problem with the same defense solution or the same leading state for designing the solution. Each state can contribute assets to common defense concerns, but each state may well lead with an “imbalanced” force structure—air versus maritime versus land systems—as that state’s lead role within a particular “defense cluster” within the overall defense challenges facing the region.
Hans Tino Hansen argued that “the current NATO command structure has been built for a different era, which was a time of ‘peace dispensation’ with reductions in NATO structures and involvement in operations outside the area. The defense chiefs of the four Nordic nations have argued for a command structure in NATO, where the region is subordinate to one command and not two, JFC Norfolk and JFC Brunsum.”
He takes the argument a step further and claims that “the creation of a new JFC command for the northern region as AFNORTH during the Cold War will be a strong driving force in the process of integrating Finnish and Swedish defense with existing NATO member states in the region. considering the size of the combined planned forces in all areas of the region as well as potential reinforcements to the region, it can be more than challenging to manage and develop this with the existing NATO command structure.”
How to shape the most effective integrated force for the region in light of the various dense clusters and the ability of nations to emphasize their specific capabilities and contributions rather than having unnecessary duplication of capabilities?
The region also has a number of the most important security concerns of the new era. How to defend offshore facilities from drone attacks? How to monitor underwater threats to infrastructure? How to defend underwater infrastructure?
The Nordic innovations in northern defense can intersect well with the innovations that started with the formation of the Second Fleet and Allied Joint Forces Command Norfolk. This will intersect most notably with respect to common infrastructure, basing and sustainment decisions. A new era of significant innovation in North European and North Atlantic defense may be opening.
I spoke with the admiral who led the initial efforts in Norfolk to re-establish the Second Fleet and to set up Allied Forces Command Norfolk about the impact of the Nordic innovations. For Vice Admiral (Retired) Lewis: “With the changes in the Nordics, there will be an opportunity for JFC Norfolk to become a four-star command on a par with JFC Brunssum and Naples from a rank point of view. We could also have a subordinate command physically stationed in the Nordic countries, which would have the effect of pulling the continents together, while JFC Norfolk is obviously stationed in the continental US.
“This would enable significant innovation in thinking through how, in a practical sense, operations from East to West and West to East in the North Atlantic theater of conflict.”