Gabriella Gricius & Nicholas Glesby

NATO’s role in the Arctic has become increasingly salient in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Alliance. While debates continue over whether NATO should take on a more serious role in the European Arctic or risk heightened militarization, our briefing note highlights that NATO has always been active in Arctic security. We instead ask how NATO operates across “different Arctics” (Greaves, 2019). The North American and European Arctics present vastly different operating environments, constraints, and opportunities. We outline NATO’s presence in these sub-regions, showing that while NATO is playing an increasingly central role in European Arctic security, it remains limited in the North American Arctic due to NORAD’s presence. Our briefing note argues that this approach has served NATO well, enabling the Alliance to respond strategically to security threats while avoiding escalation. We conclude by assessing whether such an approach can hold in the more tense geopolitical environment of the 2020s, marked by intensified great power competition.

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now includes 7 of the 8 Arctic states. The collective defence alliance has gradually taken on a larger role in the defence and deterrence posture in the European Arctic following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO in 2023 and 2024. In the North American Arctic, generational investments in the defence of North America through the binational Canada-United States North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) reflect the threat environment and necessity to modernize early-warning systems.

These developments are underpinned by Russian actions and behaviour, which analysts understand as Moscow’s desire to challenge the post-Second World War international order and American hegemony, and to elevate Russia as a revanchist Great Power. The Arctic is critical to Russia’s maritime economy and transportation, representing 20% of Moscow’s GDP. Importantly, the Kola Peninsula is viewed as vital to Russian state security and is therefore home to a large concentration of military capabilities and assets – three major air bases, the Northern Fleet which includes nuclear-capable submarines, and the Arctic brigade land forces (which have been deployed to and suffered heavy losses in Ukraine). Perceptions of Russia’s military facilities have taken on a more concerning role since Russia has made its intent clear to change the status quo of the security landscape in Europe (Regehr and Gallagher, 2024). Russia’s illegal and unjustified fullscale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, development of advanced weapons technology, and increasing use of below-the-threshold, disruptive grey zone activity has made the European and North American Arctics potential theatres of tension and disruption within broader, global great power competition (DND, 2024a). The European Arctic sees routine jamming of GPS systems and Russian fighters have conducted provocative and unprofessional buzzes of the Alaska Air Defence Identification Zone (AADIZ) (Staalesen, 2025; Reuters, 2024).

The re-emergence of global competition across domains and sectors, along with war in Ukraine, has created a tense and fragile European continental security reality (The Norwegian Ministries, 2025). North American strategists have declared “the homeland is no longer a sanctuary” (O’Shaughnessy, 2020, p. 2). Alongside great power competition, climate change “is reshaping our interactions with the natural environment, presenting both immediate and long-term risks to defence, safety and security” (Rivière, 2024, p. i). NATO Allies “have collectively recognised the increasing interaction between climate change and traditional security risks, and the scale and pace at which climate-related challenges affect NATO’s operating environment” (NATO 2024b, p. 2).

Maintaining “it is vital that NATO maintains a strong Allied presence in a strategically important region,” (NATO, 2023), few references have been made in official NATO literature to the European and North American Arctics as centres of geopolitical gravity. For example, the 2022 Strategic Concept cogently highlighted the critical linkage between the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic as a strategic vulnerability for Russia to disrupt reinforcements and freedom of navigation, but did not expand further on the connections between the Arctic and Euro-Atlantic (NATO, 2022, p. 3-4).

Instead, former Chair of the NATO Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer has repeatedly stated at Arctic Circle Assemblies from 2022-2024 that “the High North is important for the whole Alliance” and that “Arctic Allies are crucial to ensure the Alliance has the situational awareness and the capabilities to defend the High North and deter any potential aggressors.” (Bauer, 2024). Other mentions of the Arctic as a NATO focus include coordinated deterrence in the maritime domain in the 2023 Vilnius communique (NATO, 2023b), and Finland and Sweden’s accession in the 2024 Washington communique which “makes them safer and our Alliance stronger, including in the High North and the Baltic Sea” (NATO, 2024).

In 2022, then-Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, while on a visit to the Canadian Arctic, offered that the North America Arctic is strategically important for Euro-Atlantic security, stating that “the shortest path to North America for Russian missiles or bombers would be over the North Pole. This makes NORAD’s role vital for North America and for NATO.” Stoltenberg also declared “the Arctic is the gateway to the North Atlantic, hosting vital trade, transport and communication links between North America and Europe” (Stoltenberg, 2022). By making these links explicit, Stoltenberg built on a pre-Ukraine invasion NATO Parliamentary Assembly Report which warned of increased activity which created demand for greater awareness in the Arctic (NATO Parliamentary Assembly, 2021).

High-level statements on NATO’s role in the North American and European Arctics, and their linkages, are slowly becoming more prevalent, reflective of the degradation of the broader international security environment due to Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine. These statements continue to strike cautious undertones, emphasizing NATO presence and vigilance alongside investments in new capabilities and readiness. Some commentators have advocated for a singular
NATO strategy for the Arctic; however, this fails to account for the risk of fragmenting the alliance into regional blocs with unique national interests overtaking whole-of-alliance deterrence efforts. Additionally, a singular Arctic strategy would not recognize the unique threat perceptions, distinct histories, and strategic conditions of the different Arctics within NATO’s area of responsibility (Østhagen, Sharp, and Hilde, 2018). Instead, the alliance continues to act as a conduit for deeper operational cooperation and coordination bilaterally and multilaterally, with the classified regional plan from the 2023 Vilnius Summit covering forward defences for the North Atlantic and High North overseen by Joint Forces Command (JFC) Norfolk (Bauer, 2023). The inherent flexibility this approach provides allows NATO states to respond timely and efficiently to evolving security dynamics, reflecting the inherently different security needs amongst the seven Arctic member states (Østhagen, Sharp, and Hilde, 2018).

Debate on NATO's role in the Arctic

An expanded presence for NATO in the European and North American Arctic has long been under debate (Connolly, 2017). While some allies have called for increased NATO presence in their Arctic, some analysts have raised concerns that this might be perceived as an escalation of NATO-Russia tensions (Charron, 2020; Foxall, 2021; Gricius, 2024). For example, and attributable to geography and capabilities, Canada and the United States have historically been against a NATO role in their Arctic, while others such as Norway have long called for increased Allied engagement (Haftendorn, 2011; Charron and Fergusson, 2023). These debates have only become more relevant since the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Alliance in 2023, making all Arctic states except for Russia NATO members (Elgin & Lanoszka, 2023). Yet much of the debate as outlined below in academic literature is largely pre-2022 in nature and its contours have been radically changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. NATO’s current practice and presence in both the European and North American Arctics illustrates the changed security reality.

In a world before February 2022, debates traditionally centered upon whether NATO was the best actor suited to respond to differing types of threats in the Arctic, the most central of these being climate change (NATO, 2024a), and how some stressors could trigger a stronger role for NATO (Charron, 2020a). In other words, how would NATO’s role in the Arctic enhance its core fundamental purpose of collective defense if it took a stronger role regarding the environment? Further, what would be a role for NATO in the region at all (Conley, 2013)? The Arctic Council, “the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination, and interaction among the Arctic states” explicitly does not discuss military or security matters (Arctic Council, 2025). Others argued that increasing NATO involvement could provoke Russia and that a role for NATO in the Arctic could lead to militarization (Auerswald, 2020). However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shows the Kremlin’s willingness to use NATO expansion as a source of tension to justify their illegal actions as a rhetorical narrative (Lackenbauer, Bouffard, and Lajeunesse, 2022). Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 quickly led to changes in NATO’s role in the Arctic, with a returned focus on European continental security. Some analysts suggested it was time for a reconceptualization of NATO’s role in the Arctic (Depledge, 2020; Danoy & Maddox, 2020). On the flip side, others said that an increased NATO presence would deter Russian militarization and that engagement would lead to a stronger collective defence against regional threats (Kaushal et al., 2022). As above, much of these debates have become irrelevant in the wake of February 2022.

Some scholarship acknowledges that the historical continuity of NATO’s presence in the Arctic has been overlooked (Tammes & Holtsmark, 2014; Bykova, 2024). Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union placed central importance on its Arctic as it was the shortest route of attack from the USSR to North America. To provide a credible deterrence in the European Arctic, NATO stood up the Northern Command of Allied Command Europe, with responsibilities over Norway, Denmark, and northern Germany until 1994 (Dean and Lackenbauer, 2024). In the North Atlantic, NATO conducted intelligence operations for anti-submarine warfare and monitored the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap as an essential part of its maritime strategy (Pincus, 2020).

In the unipolar world after 1991, NATO’s presence in Europe was marginalized to bilateral/multilateral cooperation within the broader collective defence framework, with the organization bringing in newly independent Warsaw Pact states. The restoration of NATO-Russia relations occurred through Moscow’s participation in fora such as the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable (ASFR), the Arctic Chiefs of Defence (ACHODs), the Arctic Coast Guard Forum (ACGF), and the Russia-NATO Council. In the wake of the Ukraine War, these forums continue to meet without Russian participation or not at all (Edvardsen, 2025). The few Arctic links that do remain include technocratic cooperation in the Arctic Council working groups and limited discussions with the US Coast Guard 17th District in Alaska (Rosen, 2022).

Below, we turn to a brief overview of NATO’s current presence in the European Arctic and North American Arctic.

NATO's Presence in the European Arctic

As one of NATO’s founding members, Norway hosts the majority of NATO’s military footprint on the Northern Flank, including the newly permanent Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Bodo and exercises such as Trident Juncture and Nordic (formerly Cold) Response (Bye, 2025). During peacetime, the CAOC will primarily observe the airspace of the region for unknown threats, conduct intercept missions, and take part in exercises. Moreover, there is a significant amount of Norwegian infrastructure that is often used for NATO exercises such as the Orland Air Base and Evenes Air Station, hosts rotational NATO aircraft, and radar sites that are part of the Integrated NATO Air Defense System (NATINAMDS). So too are there NATO-readiness bases in Finland, Sweden, and other NATO allies given Finland and Sweden’s long history with NATO as close partners (Graeger, 2025).

Within Norway and across other northern European states, NATO holds regular military exercises, member nations conduct rotational deployments, and there are several Centers of Excellence (CoE) across the region. For example, the Norwegian-sponsored NATO Cold Weather Operations CoE has been hosted in Elverum since 2007. NATO also established a Maritime Centre for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure and a Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell in 2024. While the new cell is not exclusively Arctic, it is certainly Arctic adjacent as they deal with intelligence sharing and incident response in the Baltic Sea and concern threats shared by northern European allies (Maciata, 2025). NATO has also conducted its Icelandic Air Policing mission since 2008 to patrol Iceland’s airspace (NATO, 2025a).

Outside of specific initiatives, NATO has also had presence in the European Arctic that has been increasing in frequency and scale. In July 2025, the ‘Standing NATO Maritime Group 1’ (SNMG1) was reportedly operating in waters within the Arctic to conduct routine and resilient maritime presence operations (Public Affairs Office at MARCOM, 2025). NATO also hosts multilateral exercises across the region. To list just a few: the biennial Nordic (previously Cold) Response exercise hosted by Norway, Trident Juncture – hosted in 2015 and 2018 – that exercised an Article 5 scenario in Norway; Northern Viking, an annual exercise held in Iceland; Joint Viking, a winter biennial exercise held in northern Norway; Arctic Forge, a US-led biennial exercise in Finland and Norway; and, Formidable Shield, a UK-led exercise in Northern Norway. The 2018 Trident Juncture is often cited as the largest exercise held in Norway since the Cold War, with over 50,000 participants from 31 member nations. Recently, Danish-led Arctic Light exercised high-intensity training in and around Greenland (NATO, 2025b).

This physical presence and the regular pace of exercising is due, in part, to the operating challenges that include harsh weather, limited infrastructure, and dependence on the infrastructure of its member nations. However, so too does the strategic importance of much of the European Arctic play an important role in NATO’s growing presence as the European Arctic. This includes a presence in the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap and the Kola Peninsula, both key spaces for early-warning and deterrence. That said, there are also constraints to a heightened presence for NATO in the European Arctic including Norway’s long-standing basing and rotational presence policy, and escalation concerns with Russia. However, with the recent Swedish and Finnish accessions to the Alliance, there may be changes to how NATO conducts itself in the European Arctic and in how Nordic security and defense cooperation operates inside the Alliance (Graeger, 2025)

NATO's Presence in the North American Arctic

The defence of North America is the responsibility of the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), tasked with the aerospace warning, aerospace control, and maritime warning of Canada and the continental US. Since 1957, NORAD has been situated to look north for threats to continental North America through the northern avenue of approach as the fastest route of attack to vital targets in Southern Canada and the US. NORAD is twinned with the US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), the US combatant command with a North America area of responsibility and the Arctic capabilities advocate within the Pentagon (Van Herck, 2022). Canada and the United States share a long history of cooperation and shared interests in the defence of North America and Arctic security (Lackenbauer and Huebert, 2014).

Recent NORAD commanders have raised the alarm of the changing North American threat environment. Since 2006, Russia has increased the frequency of long-range aviation patrols in the Alaska (ANR) and Canadian NORAD Regions (CANR), with recent occurrences alongside Chinese PLA bombers and with unprofessional and provocative maneuverers (Charron and Fergusson, 2022; Reuters, 2024). In 2010, the development of long-range air (ALCMs) and sealaunched cruise missiles (SLCMs) made NORAD’s early-warning radar system, the North Warning System (NWS), obsolete. The NWS, based on 1970s technology and built between 1986-1992, does not have in-flight tracking capabilities and, therefore, provides suboptimal situational awareness for the northern approaches. Additionally, in 2017, Russia began testing of hypersonic missiles and glide vehicles (HGVs) in sub-orbital space, which meant both the NWS and US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Network (BMEWS) could not track these new delivery systems (Fergusson, 2023). North America’s vulnerability to new aerospace threats was further highlighted by successive NORAD Commanders.

Commander O’Shaughnessy (2018-2020) notably described the perilous nature of these weapons platforms to the defence of the continent as “the homeland is no longer a sanctuary” and “our adversaries’ capability to directly attack the homeland has leapt forward […]” (O’Shaughnessy, 2020). To address these domain-awareness gaps and protect most critical assets, O’Shaughnessy suggested an integrated ecosystem of sensor data from traditional and non-traditional sources into a Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) system so that “decision-makers will have more sophisticated insight into complex problems and make decisions with much clearer understanding of the ramifications on future operations” (O’Shaughnessy and Fessler, 2020). Commander Van Herck (2020-2023) further built on this thinking. His mandate of All-Domain Awareness, Information Dominance, and Decision Superiority sought to provide Commanders with targeted information and flexible responses at the speed of relevance. This provides more decision-space and non-kinetic options to decision-makers (also referred to as “left of bang”), to deter, de-escalate, and defeat threats to North America (Van Herck, 2021).

Responding to these challenges, Canada announced $38.6 billion of upgrades over 20 years to modernize NORAD in July 2022, the largest investment in such capabilities since 1985. Projects, of which many are currently in the definition stage, include: Arctic and Polar Over-the-Horizon Radars, the former to be built in Southern Ontario and based on the Australia Jindalee Network; up to 88 F-35 5^th generation fighters; new air-to-air refueling tankers; development of a joint Canada-US layered sensor network across Northern Canada named Crossbow; upgrades to Forward Operating Locations throughout the territories; a cloud-based Command and Control software for informed, rapid decision-making; enhanced satellite communications in the Arctic; and, advanced multirange air-to-air missiles; amongst others (DND, 2024b). In July 2025, Canada announced it “would explore air and missile defence capabilities” which opens the pathway for Canada-US discussions on Integrated Air and Missile Defence and reverses a longstanding “no” policy of Canadian participation in continental missile defence (DND, 2025; Charron, 2025).

While NORAD is an exclusively binational arrangement, NATO allies play an important role in the defence of North America, emphasized by Stoltenberg in his 2022 visit to Canada. For example, the US Space Base at Pituffik in Greenland provides space sensor data to NORAD, houses a US BMEWS radar site, provides in-air refueling to for NORAD’s Operation NOBLE DEFENDER, and resupplies Canadian Forces Station Alert through Operation BOXTOP (Pickenpaugh and Peplinski, 2025; DND, 2018). NATO allies regularly participate in the Canadian Armed Forces’ annual Operation NANOOK exercises throughout the Canadian North (DND, 2025b). Additionally, US Naval Air Station Keflavik in Iceland provides critical anti-submarine warfare monitoring and defence of the sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) for shipping and resupply through the deployment of sub-hunting Poseidon P-8 aircraft. NATO has emphasized the importance of this geographic link from the North Atlantic to North America through the GIUK Gap, strategically invaluable during the Cold War, as “it’s what ties the transatlantic bonds together” (NATO, 2023). Indeed, the establishment of JFC Norfolk in 2018 alongside the US 2^nd Fleet and re-establishment of NATO Atlantic Command enables NATO to better project force into the increasingly contested region where Russia has the technological ability to hold North America at risk (NATO, 2020; Dean, 2023).

Discussion

NATO’s lack of a comprehensive Arctic policy is purposeful. It offers member nations flexibility to have individual Arctic policies and create defence orientations that better suit different Arctics, such as NORAD in the North American Arctic and Nordic security and defence cooperation through bilateral and trilateral arrangements in the European Arctic. Further, NATO’s presence in the Arctic is not a new phenomenon, but rather a long-standing reality of the region. Its presence is clearly different across the Arctic, with most of its history and activity being in the European Arctic. This is in no small part due to the heightened threat perceptions of Russia as a proximate threat in the region. The enduring commitment of NORAD to the defence of North America, as well as domestic political considerations, explains why both Canada and the US limit NATO allies’ presence in their Arctic. That said, these differences across the Arctic have served the Alliance well since 2014. Rather than one comprehensive Arctic strategy, flexibility allows NATO to respond and act timely in the European Arctic (where it has the most exercises and presence), while NORAD is the primary security arrangement in the North American Arctic. Although many NATO members cooperate bilaterally on security, the lack of a singular NATO Arctic strategy is status quo for the alliance (Østhagen, 2024) as there are no regional policies for any hotspots, which only risks fragmentation of internal alliance politics.

The geopolitical environment has drastically evolved in the recent three years since Russia’s 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine. Heightened threat perceptions of what US strategists describe as the persistent and proximate threat have caused many to ask whether NATO should play a more serious role in the region (DoD, 2022). The increased pace of military exercises, particularly the 2018 Trident Juncture exercise with 51,000 personnel, 2022 Cold Response with 35,000 personnel, and 2024 Steadfast Defender with 90,000 troops, shows an increased tempo to NATO’s battle rhythm. The re-establishment of JFC Norfolk. twinned with the U.S. 2nd Fleet, emphatically highlights the maritime connection of the Atlantic to the European Arctic (Matthiasson, 2023) to protect the sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) and reinforcement from North America to resupply the European theatre. NATO’s Standing Maritime Group One has also been patrolling the Norwegian and Barents Seas to protect critical sea lines of communication, all together showing that NATO’s presence is on the rise (Nilsen, 2025).

A sub-regional approach that links, but does not combine the European and North American Arctics as one, is what NATO is likely to continue pursuing in an increasingly tense geopolitical environment. The flexibility in doing so allows for NATO to discursively call for a strong Allied presence but not be spread too thin across the vast spectrum of the entire NATO Arctic. Persistent presence “will ensure a more credible deterrence posture” (Conley and Arts, 2023). A changing geostrategic environment, in other words, does not change that “for NATO and its Allies, maintaining a strong presence [in the Arctic] is vital to protect trade, transport, and communication links between North America and Europe” (NATO, 2023).

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