A High North Coast Guard for NATO: The need for more Arctic maritime awareness in NATO’s Strategic Concept
By Andrew Erskine
With Russia reasserting itself as an antagonistic power that seeks to overturn the transatlantic security order and regain territories from its imperial and Soviet history, NATO is revitalizing its strategic outlook to counter, deter, and defend against its principal adversary. With staunch attention from NATO members on its Eastern flank, the Alliance cannot solely expect Russian belligerence to remain on its eastern periphery. Instead, NATO must be proactive and anticipate where Russia will strike to test the Alliance’s resilience, unity, and cohesion along its Northern flank. With the recent submissions by Finland and Sweden—two prominent Nordic and Arctic powers—to join NATO, the Alliance must use this momentum to reinforce its strategic outlook towards the Arctic and reconceptualize how it can incorporate its core tasks of deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security towards a time-sensitive regional strategy.
During the 2022 Madrid Summit, NATO highlighted that Russia is the most significant and direct threat to the Allies’ collective security.[i] Specifically, it showcased how Russia seeks to reassert a sphere of influence in Europe through direct control, coercion, subversion, aggression, and annexation. The document also identified China as a central challenger to the Alliance’s interests, security, and values.[ii] In particular, China’s extra-regional interests to boost its global footprint and control over vital technological and industrial sectors and natural resources present NATO members with a more hegemonic China, one that is willing to subvert the rules-based order and deepen its strategic partnership with a revisionist Russia.[iii] With an extensive focus on its Eastern flank and introducing China as a systemic challenger, NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept briefly pinned the Arctic as a crucial security periphery, commenting on Russian capabilities as a specific challenge to the Alliance in this region.[iv] However, despite this mention, the Strategic Concept did not go further in assessing the geostrategic significance of the Arctic on the Alliance’s security and defence, along with failing to deliver any substantive initiatives to reinforce its presence in the region.
To demonstrate the need for the Alliance to implement an Arctic strategy, this article will showcase how NATO can build off its core tasks to fast-track a strategy that will expand its presence in the Arctic by enhancing its capabilities to respond to emerging security issues that will test the Alliance’s regional resilience while fortifying its ability to deter and defend against growing Russian Arctic militarization and Chinese extra-regional engagement.
Why does the Arctic Matter?
As the world continues to be affected by climate change, the Arctic is becoming one of the most impactful regions for international stability and state prosperity. With the polar ice caps receding and more frequent ice-free summers, new opportunities are beginning to be unlocked in Arctic waters. Most notable of these opportunities are new shipping and cruise routes, natural resources, fishing reserves, and economic development.[v] Between Russia, Europe, Canada, the United States, and China, the Arctic holds 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 90 billion barrels of oil—thirty percent of the world’s undiscovered gas and thirteen percent of undiscovered oil.[vi]
An additional feature of the Arctic is the emerging sea routes that large passenger ships, fishing fleets, research vessels, and maritime adventurers will use to surpass busy and congested waterways. With these new routes emerging, there will be new safety threats associated with them that will become pivotal security issues in Arctic affairs. With more maritime traffic in the Arctic, it can be anticipated that search-and-rescue missions, oil cleaning operations, and law enforcement activities will be the driving function of power politics in the region. Due to the vastness of the Arctic, with long distances between ports and uncharted sea routes, the odds of a passenger, commercial, or fishing vessel rearing off course, striking surface ice, first-year ice, and season ice zones or colliding with other vessels, due to unvalidated and uncharted maritime routes, will push forward the need for a regional power that can monitor, respond, and manage the new security concerns in the Arctic.[vii]
Russia and the Arctic
Moscow has always considered the Arctic its backyard. After all, Russia has a 15,000-mile northern coastline, stretching almost the entirety of the Arctic circle.[viii] Russia’s northern periphery also has a 1.7 million square-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ).[ix] Due to these geographical features, the Arctic and Russia have a shared history. Moreover, the Arctic provides Russia with soft and hard power opportunities to showcase its achievements in polar expeditions and status as an Arctic military power.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought extensive military capabilities in the Arctic to protect its fleet of ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and its operations in the North Atlantic in the wake of a war in Europe. Throughout its history, the Arctic has militarily been central to Russian strategic thinking as it houses the Northern Fleet. Russia is also a founding member of the Arctic Council, an international organization of Arctic states that seeks to resolve and promote specific regional issues of sustainable development and environmental protection.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Arctic strategy has undergone extensive militarization in its political, diplomatic, and defensive posture, reflecting the Russian president’s imperialistic perspective on Moscow’s position in the European and global security and defence architectures. Since the mid-2000s, Putin has reopened multiple Soviet-era Arctic military bases with specific attention to modernizing the Kola Peninsula, which harbours the Northern Fleet and SSBNs.[x] Moreover, to showcase how far Moscow is willing to go in declaring de facto control and influence over the Arctic, a Russia expedition in 2007 planted a flag on the Arctic seabed far beyond its EEZ.[xi]
Moscow has also clearly sought to militarize its security forces, particularly its coast guard, known as the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). As an auxiliary service to Russia’s conventional naval capabilities, FSB conducts patrols alongside the Northern Fleet to protect the northern sea route, the Arctic Ocean coastline, and the Pacific Fleet to control the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea.[xii] Depending on the vessel type, FSB ships are equipped with a 30mm AK-630M close-in weapon system and Kord-12.7mm heavy machine guns and have launching stations for helicopters and UAVs.[xiii] The FSB is further distinguished from other coast guard agencies as it holds seven nuclear-powered icebreakers, with a reserve of thirty diesel-powered icebreakers. The recently commissioned icebreaker, Puga, designed under Project 23550, is nuclear-powered and equipped with an AK-176 MA 76.2mm gun at its bow, two small-caliber AK 360M 30mm anti-aircraft guns and the capability to station a Mi-8 helicopter, and UVAs.[xiv]
Coupled with the heightened militarization of its naval and security vessels and the modernization of its Arctic military bases, Putin’s pledge to “protect Arctic waters by all means” underscores the Russian president’s double-downing on Mahanian notions of maritime power and a recommitment to use realist and imperialist stances to expand and establish a Russified rules-based circumpolar order.[xv]
China’s Arctic Power Play
Taking an unconventional approach to the region, China is strengthening its extra-regional presence by building naval and coast guard icebreakers to solidify its position among Arctic countries. Beijing’s newest icebreakers, Xue Long 1 & 2, are Finnish-designed and indigenously built, showcasing China’s technological tilt toward commanding a stronger maritime presence in the Arctic.[xvi] China is also keen on becoming a reliable economic partner by investing in Russian and Norwegian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and providing the drilling rig Nan Hai VIII to Gazprom, a Russian state-owned enterprise.[xvii] Beijing also aspires to become a normative architect in Arctic affairs by collaborating with Nordic countries on climate change and marine scientific research.[xviii]
In 2018, China took the remarkable step in declaring itself a “near Arctic state,” a relatively undefined term, which provides Beijing legitimate ground to pursue diplomatic, military, scientific and economic policies—particularly through its Polar Silk Road.[xix] Beijing also uses its status as a global great power to endorse multilateral initiatives like the 2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean, which prohibits commercial fishing in the region until 2034.[xx] However, as Canadian Global Affairs Institute Fellow Adam Lajeunesse points out, Beijing’s signatory to the treaty accentuates its primary desire to be in the normative discussions for when fishing in the region is permitted.[xxi]
When the Arctic is open for commercial fishing, China will likely seek out Arctic ports. These will likely be attained through Beijing’s promising market access to Chinese state-owned companies that will invest in natural resource extraction or by developing ports through its Polar Silk Road initiative. From here, Beijing will have points of access to harbours and deploy its fishing fleet, some 16,000 vessels, which have a history of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU), the Chinese Coast Guard or the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) to project Chinese authority onto the region.[xxii] A greater presence of Chinese vessels would have grave consequential outcomes. For instance, if a fishing vessel were to be stranded or wrecked at sea or collide with a ship from an Arctic country, Chinese vessels would likely send a distress call to authorities in Beijing. In responding to this incident, Beijing would undoubtedly send its coast guard or even the PAFMM to conduct a search-and-rescue mission to retrieve its crew. Beijing could escalate this policy by indicating its commitment to help any and all vessels stranded or wrecked in the Arctic, making China’s presence in the Arctic permanent.
Although this soft power strategy may seem harmless at first glance, it positions China as a normative power. After all, China, as a non-Arctic country, is unhinged by regional rivalries, thereby impeccably positioned to forecast itself as a stabilizer and facilitator of maritime norms, rules, and values. Providing Beijing with these roles would undoubtedly lead to China reshaping the former and latter on fishing and natural resource extraction in its favour, something it has already done in the South China Sea.
NATO’s Northern Flank
With an unwavering focus on its Eastern flank in the wake of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the emerging geostrategic importance of the Indo-Pacific (Western flank) and the Alliance’s soft underbelly (Southern flank), the Arctic has been regulated to the sidelines in NATO’s geo-security priorities.[xxiii] However, with Finland and Sweden in the process of joining the Alliance, the Arctic will play a more prominent role in NATO’s strategic orientation as it will be the geopolitical periphery that will see its resilience and cohesion tested by Russia and China.
When thinking of the Arctic, NATO members must resist misinterpreting the region in order to enhance their regional domain awareness to manage, detect, and respond to Russian and Chinese capabilities and presence in the Arctic. In particular, the Alliance must not see the Arctic as a vast oceanic region surrounded by polar ice caps and icebergs. On the contrary, the Arctic is a dynamic regional periphery that houses extensive natural resources and time-saving pathways that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific through eight sub-regional maritime areas—Beaufort Sea, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, and Chukchi Sea.
For the Alliance to be competitive and competent in extending its security, stability, and prosperity into the Arctic, these sub-regional maritime areas must become integral to any future NATO regional strategy. Specifically, attention must be placed on Russian and Chinese freedom of navigation operations in these sub-regions and on the sabotage of polar subsea cables and undersea pipelines on NATO’s maritime, energy, and telecommunication security.
To attain a functional strategy for each security point, NATO should look to its core tasks as outlined in the Strategic Concept to develop short-term programs that can enhance the Alliance’s deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security pillars.
A NATO High North Coast Guard
Although NATO is seeking to enhance its military capabilities in the Arctic to contend with Russia’s growing militarization, it could take up to ten years to procure military assets and implement them into a coherent strategy for the Alliance.[xxiv] To ensure that the Alliance can operate alongside existing security threats, NATO needs to develop a short-term mandate that can contribute to its long-term hard power undertakings. Specifically, NATO should use the capabilities and assets it currently has to organize a High North Coast Guard division (HNCG).
Among NATO members, icebreakers and ice-capable patrol ships are “high-demand, low-density” assets.[xxv] NATO members like Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway—and soon Sweden and Finland—have modest fleets of Arctic-capable vessels. Russia, meanwhile, has an abundance of Arctic-capable ships, with the latter having close to 40 icebreakers alone.[xxvi] Contrast this with NATO’s superiority in conventional naval vessels—possessing 22 SSBN to Russia’s 11—a clear separation in Arctic capabilities emerges, illustrating the Alliance’s need to adopt unconventional strategies to contend with the Arctic’s growing power politics.[xxvii]
An info-graph illustrating the number of icebreakers currently in service by Arctic and Near-Arctic powers.[xxviii]
To launch this division, NATO needs to begin work on drafting legislation that would permit its members’ coast guard services to operate within the Alliance’s strategic operations. A way for ally members to use the existing structure would be to assign coast guard vessels to NATO’s Allied Maritime Command, thereby becoming the headquarters of a HNCG. It would also be strategically advantageous to plan an expansion of an HNCG by having the first phase focus squarely on incorporating the Alliance’s civilian and military icebreakers and ice-capable patrol ships into a viable division, culminating in a Standing Arctic Maritime Group; followed by an aerial unit that would incorporate NATO’s Air Policing command-and-control structure for Arctic-specific surveillance and enforcement missions; and finally a special forces unit that can perform military and law enforcement operations in sub-Arctic and Arctic environments. To ensure that this division reflects the initiative laid out in the 2022 Strategic Concept, NATO should focus on how an HNCG can fulfil the core tasks of the Alliance.
For defence and deterrence, an HNCG would seek to scrutinize undefined security threats emerging from the Arctic that can test the resilience and robustness of NATO’s command and force structures. For this initiative, NATO need only look at its members and its geopolitical surroundings to see which areas will be tested. For instance, in recent years, Norway has initiated forcible arrests of Russian fishermen for IUU’s and, in October 2022, arrested seven Russians who operated drones in “sensitive areas.”[xxix] In September 2022, the U.S. Coast Guard had to respond to a Chinese and Russian joint military exercise near Alaska before the two navies dispersed back towards international waters.[xxx] Moreover, on February 3, 2022, Russia launched a military exercise on the edge of Ireland’s waters, near a densely concentrated area of undersea communication cables that links North America to Europe.[xxxi]
To extend its defence and deterrence mechanism into uncharted security threats, an HNCG would be authorized to conduct, independently or jointly with NATO’s navies, freedom of navigation operations and rapid readiness and deployment missions that specifically reinforces and projects the Alliance’s values and norms onto the Arctic’s security architecture. Such exercises and missions would entail an HNCG to investigate and take action against IUU’s, surveillance and sabotage on subsea cables and energy infrastructure belonging to NATO members, and maritime intimidation by Russian and Chinese coast guard and naval vessels. An HNCG would also be permitted to respond to the unilateral and joint military exercises of China and Russia near or within NATO members’ EEZs.
An HNCG also provides an efficient way for Finland and Sweden to be integrated into the Alliance. For one, Finnish and Swedish designs for icebreakers and ice-capable patrol vessels could be shared with fellow NATO members that seek greater involvement in Arctic affairs, thereby enlarging the Alliance’s cooperative security network. Moreover, there would be opportunities to integrate the Nordic countries’ technological advancement in 5G, cybersecurity, ISR, anti-drone, and air and missile defence systems onboard NATO’s vessels that intend to patrol and operate in the Arctic.[xxxii] Not only would this proliferate greater intra-alliance interoperability, it would expose Finland and Sweden to the operational and tactical structures of NATO while bringing forward novel ideas of Arctic power projection. Lastly, cooperation within an HNCG between the new Nordic candidates and NATO would prevent duplication of unnecessary initiatives and programs that could hinder the Alliance’s efforts to secure and protect its Northern flank.
For the Alliance’s crisis prevention and management feature, an HNCG would provide NATO with more resilient characteristics in addressing unconventional security threats that emerge from the Arctic. From oil spills, search-and-rescue missions, and ship collisions to deliberate acts of state sabotage on critical energy infrastructure, NATO will have the assets, knowledge, and capabilities to develop a standard operational model to ensure that a democratic and rules-based protocol for emergency response is undertaken with civilian-military forces. An HNCG would also free up NATO’s navies to focus more squarely on the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and the waters between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK (GIUK Gap) that are experiencing heightened Russian militarization.[xxxiii]
Conclusion
In following the trajectory of the Alliance’s posture towards Russia and China, NATO’s Northern flank will be crucial for its collective defence while also providing an opportunity to project its norms and values onto the region’s security and diplomatic architectures. Moreover, the Arctic may serve as the linchpin to greater intra-alliance resilience and cohesion, especially with the forthcoming addition of Finland and Sweden. To ensure that it is proactive and adaptive to the changing power dynamics in the Arctic, NATO cannot solely rely on conventional military capabilities to accomplish its core tasks. By investing in an HNCG, NATO will showcase its commitment in becoming an Arctic power that is willing and ready to confront the security threats from more maritime traffic and state-centric activities arriving from the High North.
About the Author
Andrew Erskine is a research analyst for the NATO Association of Canada, Researcher for the Consortium of Indo-Pacific Researchers, and the Editor-in-Chief for the New Global Order.
Notes
[i] North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO 2022 Strategic Concept. (Madrid: NATO Summit, 2022). https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pdf/290622-strategic-concept.pdf, 4
[ii] Ibid., 5
[iii] Ibid., 5
[iv] Ibid., 4
[v] North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Opinion: NATO is stepping up in the High North to keep our people safe (Brussels: NATO Headquarters, 2022) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_206894.htm
[vi] Alan Dowd & Alexander Moens, Meeting Russia’s Arctic Aggression (Vancouver: Fraser Institute) https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/meeting-russias-arctic-aggression
[vii] James G. Foggo III & Rachael Gosnell, “U.S. Maritime Strategy in the Arctic - Past, Present, and Future,” Naval War College Review vol. 75, no.3 (Summer 2022) https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol75/iss3/, 11
[viii] Timothy Perry, “An Opening for NATO in the Arctic,” The Hill, 21, July 2022.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3567984-an-opening-for-nato-in-the-arctic/
[ix] Ibid.,
[x] Jacob Gronholt-pedersen & Gwladys Fouche, “NATO allies wake up to Russian supremacy in the Arctic,” Reuters, 16, November 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-allies-wake-up-russian-supremacy-arctic-2022-11-16/
[xi]Alan Dowd & Alexander Moens, Meeting Russia’s Arctic Aggression.
[xii] P. Whitney Lackenbauer & Alexander Sergunin, “Canada’s and Russia’s Security and Defence Strategies in the Arctic: A Comnparative Analysis,” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vol. 13, (2022) 232-257, 237
[xiii] Homeland Security, Rubin Class Patrol Boats, (Washington D.C.: Department of Homeland Security)
https://www.homelandsecurity-technology.com/projects/rubin-class-patrol-boats-russia/
[xiv] Xavier Vavasseur, “Vyborg Shipyard Lays Keels of Project 23550 Icebreaker for Russian Coast Guard,” Naval News, 2 August 2020.
[xv] North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Opinion: NATO is stepping up in the High North to keep our people safe.
[xvi] James G. Foggo III & Rachael Gosnell, “U.S. Maritime Strategy in the Arctic - Past, Present, and Future,” 19.
[xvii] Ibid., 15.
[xviii] Adam Lajeunesse, “Arctic Perils: Emerging Threats in the Arctic Maritime Environment,” Canadian Global Affairs Insititute, November 2022. https://www.cgai.ca/arctic_perils_emerging_threats_in_the_arctic_maritime_environment#Threats
[xix]James G. Foggo III & Rachael Gosnell, “U.S. Maritime Strategy in the Arctic - Past, Present, and Future,” 15.
[xx] Adam Lajeunesse, “Arctic Perils: Emerging Threats in the Arctic Maritime Environment,”
[xxi] Ibid.,
[xxii] Ibid.,
[xxiii] Kenneth R. Rosen, “A Battle for the Arctic is Underway. And the U.S. is Already Behind,” POLITICO, 17, December 2022.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/17/climate-change-arctic-00071169
[xxiv] Jacob Gronholt-pedersen & Gwladys Fouche, “NATO allies wake up to Russian supremacy in the Arctic.”
[xxv] James G. Foggo III & Rachael Gosnell, “U.S. Maritime Strategy in the Arctic - Past, Present, and Future,” 20.
[xxvi]North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Opinion: NATO is stepping up in the High North to keep our people safe.
[xxvii] Jacob Gronholt-pedersen & Gwladys Fouche, “NATO allies wake up to Russian supremacy in the Arctic.
[xxviii] United State Coast Guard, “Major Ice-Breakers of the World,” U.S. Department of Security. Accessed January 11, 2023. https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/Office%20of%20Waterways%20and%20Ocean%20Policy/20170501%20major%20icebreaker%20chart.pdf?ver=2017-06-08-091723-907
[xxix] P. Whitney Lackenbauer & Alexander Sergunin, “Canada’s and Russia’s Security and Defence Strategies in the Arctic: A Comnparative Analysis, 241, Amy Mackinnon & Christina Lu, Europe’s Seabed is its Soft Underbelly,” Foreign Policy, 1 November 2022.
[xxx]Melody Schreiber, “A U.S. Coast Guard ship unexpectedly encountered Chinese and Russian warships off Alaska,” Arctic Today, 26 September 2022. https://www.arctictoday.com/a-u-s-coast-guard-ship-unexpectedly-encountered-chinese-and-russian-warships-off-alaska/?wallit_nosession=1
[xxxi]Eoin Drea, “Ireland is Europe’s Weakest Link,” Foreign Policy, 8 November 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/08/ireland-military-neutrality-russia-ocean-communication-energy-infrastructure-sabotage/
[xxxii]Minna Ålander and William Alberque, “NATO’s Nordic Enlargement: Contingency Planning and Learning Lessons,” War On The Rocks, 8 December 2022. https://warontherocks.com/2022/12/natos-nordic-enlargement-contingency-planning-and-learning-lessons/
[xxxiii]Jacob Gronholt-pedersen & Gwladys Fouche, “NATO allies wake up to Russian supremacy in the Arctic.
Cover image: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2928402/us-needs-more-icebreakers-for-arctic/
