Arctic dimension for Nordic security

With a frontpage design displaying a map of the great waters of the North Atlantic and the Arctic, there is hardly any doubt that the report on Nordic defence cooperation includes a high focus on marine issues, as well as a view towards Arctic challenges.

Although touching on a range of issues and 13 fields of potential cooperation, the report does have the Arctic as a key focus.

“It is widely believed that the Nordic area will have an increasing geopolitical and strategic importance, following the Nordic waters’ role as production and transit area for oil and gas to the European markets and the development of the Arctic”, the report reads. “With climate change and ice melting, these [Arctic] waters are opened for considerably activities, including new shipping routes […] This makes it interesting with Nordic cooperation in the sea areas and the Arctic”, it continues.

The report is edited by former Norwegian foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg, who in June 2008 was commissioned by the five countries’ governments to elaborate on the issue. A group of ten experts from all the countries have since assisted Mr. Stoltenberg with the report.

Thorvald Stoltenberg (BarentsPhoto.com)

Joint action

Among Mr. Stoltenberg’s proposals is the establishment of joint maritime rapid action group based on the countries’ coast guards and rescue services. He also wants joint Nordic icebreaker capacities and the development of a joint amphibious unit adjusted to Arctic conditions. In addition, he recommends the development of a joint two-pillar surveillance system with focus respectively on the Barents Sea and the Baltic Sea, as well as the development of a joint Nordic satellite monitoring system. Also a joint catastrophe unit is included as priority.

The report also recommends enhanced coordination of defence training and education and the establishment of a joint military medical unit and transport capacities.

Russia

A resurgent Russia with an enhanced economic and military focus on the Arctic is believed to be of growing concern to government officials in all the Nordic countries. Still, the report does not describe Russia as a challenge. On the contrary, it opens up for Nordic cooperation with the Russians on practical issues like icebreakers and the amphibious unit.

Although not written, the Russian question still lures in the back of the report writers’ heads. All the Nordic countries will inevitably have to handle cooperation with Russia when looking towards the Arctic.

Cutting costs

The fact that Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland decided to join efforts about the report can itself be seen as a milestone in Nordic cooperation. The background for the report is the three small countries’ increasing problems to keep pace with the mounting costs with having modern armed forces. With the report, the countries seek ways to efficiently cut costs and meet new regional challenges.

“None of the Nordic countries will over the next 15-20 years be able to uphold the quality of their armed forces without engaging in a closer Nordic cooperation”, Stoltenberg writes.

Diverging interests

The five Nordic countries still have a long way to go before Mr. Stoltenberg’s proposals are materialized. Although close neighbors and partners, the five countries have over the last decades failed to bring the Nordic Cooperation to new key sectors. And with regard to security focus and geopolitics the countries each have different interests.

That latter point was also highlighted by Senior Researcher Paal Sigurd Hilde from the Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies, who in a recent seminar organized by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat underpinned that the Nordic countries actually have rather diverging geographic security challenges.

In a comment to BarentsObserver he says that

- Cooperation among the Nordic states on meeting common challenges in the Arctic is an important aspect of the Stoltenberg report. Some of the proposals it forwards, such as cooperation in the field of search and rescue, are relatively straightforward and unproblematic. The broader and more far reaching proposals do, however, quickly beg the question of whether or not the Nordic states really have common interests in the Arctic in general, and the European Arctic, our High North, in particular. […] Not only do the Nordic countries have what you might call different depths to their High North interests, but even the interests of the Nordic countries that have more direct, "physical" interests in the region, are not necessarily compatible.

The report might be historic in its form and contents. What it will lead to of actual Nordic interaction still remains to be seen. The proposals from Thorvald Stoltenberg, the man who is seen as the main architect of the Barents Euro-Arctic Cooperation, might however be a first step towards a new joint Nordic security focus.