NATO has always been an Arctic Alliance (Part I)

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US Marines participate in NATO exercise Cold Response in northern Norway, March 2024. NATO has held training exercises in Arctic Norway since the 1950s. Photo: NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) turned 75 years old in April. The organization is a military and political alliance comprised of 32 states, with Finland, and Sweden, the newest members, having joined in spring 2023 and 2024 respectively. Founded in 1949 with the purpose of promoting security and cooperation in Europe after World War II and countering growing Soviet power and influence, NATO had twelve original members, five of which are Arctic states (Canada, the United States, Iceland, Denmark, and Norway). This fact, and the organization’s general focus on the North Atlantic, naturally brings the Arctic into the fold of the Treaty’s sphere of interests.

NATO emerged from a post-war Europe that was characterized by wartime trauma and Western concerns about Soviet aggression.¹⁾Kaplan L (2019) Origins of NATO: 1948-1949. Emory International Law Review 34(11): 11-12. While the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union fought as allies in the Second World War, ideological differences and Western worries that the USSR would not honor promises of cooperation and non-aggression made during the war caused a breakdown of relations by the end of the decade. At the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, American leaders Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made agreements with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that the Soviets would not impose authoritarian rule in Eastern and Central Europe.²⁾Westad O. A. (2017) The Cold War: a world history. London: Penguin Press, 60. The Soviet-led destruction of civic and political liberties in what would become its satellite states made the situation untenable for the West.³⁾Naimark N and Gibianskii L, eds. (1997) The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949. Boulder: Westview Press. Historian Odd Arne Westad writes that the Cold War began in Poland after the imposition of Soviet control in the country: “Britain had gone to war with Germany over the fate of Poland in 1939, and it would be hard for any British government to accept Soviet occupation and dictatorship in that country.”⁴⁾Westad O. A. (2017) The Cold War: a world history. London: Penguin Press, 65.

Memories of being invaded by Germany, and postwar Soviet aggression in Europe led some states, including Norway, to renege on decades of neutrality policy to join the burgeoning bloc that would eventually become NATO. Up until 1948, plans to create an alliance between Western Europe and the United States were unsuccessful due to a lack of consensus at the diplomatic level and issues with raising support for such an alliance domestically among many would-be members. However, a series of Soviet missteps that year changed the status quo. The Soviet coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 and the Berlin Blockade starting from May 1948 underscored European worries about the threat of Soviet expansion and aggression.

“The movement toward America’s entanglement with Europe was restored less by diplomacy than by a series of repressive acts on the part of the Soviet Union,” writes historian Lawrence S. Kaplan.⁵⁾Kaplan L (2019) Origins of NATO: 1948-1949. Emory International Law Review 34(11): 20. The Brussels Pact, signed in March 1948, was a defensive alliance between Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. In the following months, diplomatic talks with US representatives considered what American military cooperation with the Brussels Pact states would look like, and the famous language of NATO’s Article 5, arguably the cornerstone of its defense policy, was drafted, which states that an attack against one of the alliance members is considered an attack against all parties. While NATO would not come into existence for another six months, the essence of the alliance had been negotiated by September 1948.⁶⁾Kaplan L (2019) Origins of NATO: 1948-1949. Emory International Law Review 34(11): 25. In the months that followed, the United States, Italy, Iceland, Canada, Portugal, Norway and Denmark joined the agreement.

Scholars argue that the quick creation of NATO reflected Western European and American military weakness. Westad writes that senior American military officials were concerned that American troops would not be able to defend western Europe against the Red Army even if they used their nuclear arsenal. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff advised President Truman that the Soviets could establish control of Europe within two months. Westad argues that military planners considered the threat of war with the Soviet Union a significant threat from mid-1948 onwards.⁷⁾Westad O. A. (2017) The Cold War: a world history. London: Penguin Press, 119. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed less than a year later, on April 4, 1949, and continues to define diplomatic and geopolitical relations in Europe three-quarters of a century later.

Following World War II, northern nations realized the military and civilian significance of the Arctic, which led states to establish scientific and military bases in the region.⁸⁾Massa I and Bolotova A (2017) Opening the Circumpolar Arctic World in Simo Laakkonen, Richard Tucker, and Timo Vuorisalo The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 275. In the decades that followed, the region became one of the most militarized spaces of the Cold War.⁹⁾Heidt D and Lackenbauer P.W. (2022) The Joint Arctic Weather Stations: Science and Sovereignty in the High Arctic, 1946-1972. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 11. Meteorological data from the north was invaluable for weather predictions in the south, a fact that the Nazis knew when they occupied Svalbard in WWII to establish weather stations there.¹⁰⁾Kington J and Selinger F (2006) Wekusta: Luftwaffe Meteorological Reconnaissance Units and Operations 1938-1945. Ottringham, UK: Flight Recorder Publications.; Lackenbauer P. W. and Dean R (2017) Conceiving and Executing Operation Gauntlet: The Allied Raid on Spitzbergen, 1941. Canadian Military History, January 1: 7. As scholars Whitney Lackenbauer and Ryan Dean point out, this information was vital for the Nazi war effort, which relied on weather information so much that Hitler postponed the invasion of France until conditions were perfect for attack and used weather data to plan bombings on London and the timing of Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.¹¹⁾Lackenbauer P. W. and Dean R (2017) Conceiving and Executing Operation Gauntlet: The Allied Raid on Spitzbergen, 1941. Canadian Military History, January 1: 22. A 1951 United States Department of State policy statement reflects the importance of the Arctic for scientific data: “Weather information from a network of stations within the area is essential for purposes of commercial and military aviation and shipping, as well as for weather forecasting in the Temperate Zone.”¹²⁾United States Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, Volume 1. Document 765. July 1 1951. “Department of State Policy Statement: Polar regions.”

The postwar modernization of military technology changed the region irrevocably as well. Western and Soviet military strategists alike learned in the 1950s and 1960s that the quickest way to bomb the enemy was to fly planes and later intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) over the Arctic.¹³⁾Townsend J and Kendall-Taylor A (2021) Back to the Future: The Origins of Great-Power Competition in the Arctic. Partners, Competitors, or a Little of Both?: Russia and China in the Arctic, March 2021. Meanwhile, centuries of state-sponsored forays into the Russian Arctic, and Soviet industrialization policies directed by leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, had made the Soviet north the most militarized, industrialized, urbanized, and populous Arctic region in the world. The Kola Peninsula, in the northwestern Soviet Arctic, housed a massive Soviet nuclear arsenal, along with hundreds of warships, icebreakers, nuclear submarines, and ballistic weapons, which NATO and the West saw as a direct and pressing threat.¹⁴⁾Bruno A and Kalemeneva E (2023) Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991 in Adrian Howkins and Peder Roberts The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. This build-up of forces effectively in NATO’s backyard, practically on the border with Norway, which was considered the keeper of NATO’s northern flank, led the High North to become a central feature of NATO’s security strategy throughout the Cold War.¹⁵⁾Dyndal, G. L (2011) How the High North Became Central in NATO Strategy: Revelations from the NATO Archives. Journal of Strategic Studies 34(4): 561, 572.

Even before the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, Western policymakers considered the Arctic as an essential territory under NATO purview. At a March 1949 United States Department of State meeting on NATO security concerns, several officials debated whether Italy should be allowed entry into NATO as it was not in the North Atlantic, noting that “much of the territory covered by the Pact was not North Atlantic but Arctic territory.”¹⁶⁾United States Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Western Europe, Volume IV. Document 74. March 1 1949. “Minutes of the fourteenth meeting of the Washington Exploratory Talks on Security, March 1 1949, 10 am.” The Alliance was concerned about potential Soviet maneuvers in the Arctic. The Organization’s archival documents show that the Alliance was aware that remote and uninhabited Arctic regions could be used for enemy surveillance. A 1950 NATO report names the Arctic Ocean around Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and the Northwest Territory of Canada as prime locations where hostile naval and submarine forces, and weather, radar, and supply stations could be concealed.¹⁷⁾NATO archives, MCM-0022-1950, November 6 1950, “Reconnaissance of uninhabited regions and maritime areas.” 3. A 1951 report by the NATO International Planning team to the Standing Group of the Military Committee, the highest military authority in NATO and the principal advisor to the North Atlantic Council, extends this argument, stating that northern areas around Norway must be patrolled frequently despite harsh Arctic weather. The report states that NATO was most concerned about the possibility of “a convoy carrying assaulting forces to Norway, Spitzbergen or Iceland,” and “large numbers of submarines westbound,” suggesting that reconnaissance forces of about 300 men based in Bodø, northern Norway, would be beneficial, and that local forces might have a better chance at navigating in difficult conditions, compared to employing foreigners.¹⁸⁾NATO archives, SG 135/2, October 26 1951, “The reconnaissance in peacetime of the Arctic approaches to Norway.”

The defense of Norway was a major concern for NATO and the country itself. According to political scientist Andreas Østhagen, “military planning since the 1940s has been dominated by concerns over Russian military activity in the North – both as an extension of Russia’s broader strategic plans and more recently in terms of other types of interference and destabilizing measures vis-à-vis Norway’s northernmost regions.”¹⁹⁾Østhagen A (2021) Norway’s Arctic Policy: Still High North, Low Tension? The Polar Journal 11(1). More than a decade after its inception, the NATO Military Committee was concerned about its ability to defend Norway in the case of a Soviet attack. A 1965 document reflected on the conditions in northern Norway, and concluded that:

“The present forces stationed in Norway cannot prevent by the use of military means the Soviet forces stationed in the Kola Peninsula from seizing Finnmark…Based on the information provided in the study, the Military Committee would like to stress that the most effective method of avoiding a surprise attack on North Norway is to continue to convince the Soviets of the fact that any such initiative by them would bring about the implementation by the Alliance of timely counter-measures.”²⁰⁾NATO archives, MCM-0142-1965, October 10 1965, “Contingency Study, Northern Norway.”

Norway has been a major player in hosting NATO exercises since the 1950s. NATO says that the exercises, which involve tens of thousands of soldiers from numerous member countries, and especially those held in the Arctic, are critical for allies to “learn how to operate together” in rough terrain and cold conditions.²¹⁾NATO (2022) Exercise Cold Response 2022 – NATO and Partner Forces Face the Freeze in Norway. NATO, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_192351.htm. Accessed 20 September 2023. Northern Norway also maintained several key NATO installations, including an airbase in Bodø and a radar station in Vardø, which proved to be a source of tension with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, as the Soviets protested against Norway’s joining NATO and later its active role in the Alliance. In the immediate postwar period, the Soviets attempted to renegotiate the Svalbard Treaty, a legal agreement from 1920 which put the Arctic archipelago under Norwegian sovereignty, to put part of the islands under Soviet control.²²⁾Holtsmark S (1993) “A Soviet Grab for the High North? USSR, Svalbard, and Northern Norway 1920-1953. Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, 14(7). Starting from 1941, Soviet leadership considered Svalbard critical to the security of their naval fleet in the Kola Peninsula and for its access into the North Atlantic. When Norway joined NATO, the Soviet Union protested vehemently, claiming that the archipelago would become militarized, despite the explicit statement in Article 9 of the Svalbard Treaty that forbids the militarization of the islands.

Soviet papers of the time echo the discontent the state must have felt at their failed plan to split Svalbard with the Norwegians immediately after the war. In 1951 an article published in Literaturnaya Gazeta claimed that the Americans stole Svalbard from the Soviets by giving it to Norway in the 1920s and had turned land that did not belong to them into a platform for aggression against the Soviet state.²³⁾Chernenko M and Agranat G (1951) Shpitsbergen I Washingtonskoye otkroveniye. Literaturnaia Gazeta, 1 December. This tone is a significant departure from articles of prior decades, which hardly mentioned the Western powers at all, focusing instead on the productive coal mines and idyllic Arctic conditions on the archipelago, or praising Western powers, including the Canadians, for freeing the islands from Nazi dictatorship and saving the Russians working there during the Second World War.²⁴⁾Author unknown (1941) Napadeniye na Shpitsbergen, chast’ plana pomoshchi Rossii. Novoe Russkoe Slovo, 10 September.

While the Soviets were paranoid about NATO claiming the islands for their own purposes, NATO and US State Department documents from the 1950s and 60s indicate that the alliance was aware of Svalbard’s strategic significance, but militarization of the archipelago was ruled out as per Svalbard Treaty guidelines and to avoid aggravating the Soviets.²⁵⁾TNA FO 371/86565, March 3 1950, “Creation of Naval Bases and Fortifications on Spitsbergen Islands – question of evading provision in the 1920 Spitzbergen Treaty”; NATO archives, MS-03/SG/IPT-131/36, March 8 1957, “Area Planning Guidance – General.”; NATO archives, MCM-0142-1966, November 29 1966, “NATO Strategy.” The Norwegians and British were likewise hesitant to build any infrastructure on Svalbard because “any airfield there would simply accrue to the other side in the event of a war,” said a note from the British delegation to NATO in 1959.²⁶⁾TNA FO 371/143178, February 17 1959. The issue came up again decades later – in 1978, the British foreign office wrote that the militarization of Svalbard would be advantageous to the alliance as it would put Western military capabilities “well into an area which the USSR would otherwise expect to dominate…it is up to the Alliance to make sure that the USSR does not exploit the present situation by covertly extending their military influence into the area.”²⁷⁾TNA FCO 33/3828, 1978. Despite these statements, the non-militarization status quo on Svalbard was maintained and remains in place until the present day.

Arctic NATO members were essential to the defense of North America and the North Atlantic. In 1958, Canada and the United States established the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to serve as an early warning and defense system for North America against Soviet bombers and ballistic missiles. NORAD functioned in conjunction with NATO and involved the placement of long and short-range radar and air defense systems across the continent, and the establishment of a joint command structure and information-sharing between Canadian and American forces, “to develop and maintain their individual and collective capacity to resist air attack on their territories in North America in mutual self-defense,” wrote the Canadian delegation to a North Atlantic Council meeting on May 14, 1958.²⁸⁾NATO archives, C-R(58)35, May 14 1958, “Record of meeting,” 14.

NATO archival documents also indicate the essential role of Iceland and Greenland in North Atlantic defense and specifically the protection of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, a concept that was articulated in the First and Second world wars to reduce German attacks on Allied shipping routes in the North Atlantic.²⁹⁾Tossini V (2023) The GIUK Gap – The Chokepoint in Britain’s Backyard. UK Defence Journal, 21 January https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-giuk-gap-the-chokepoint-in-britains-backyard/. Accessed 20 September 2023. GIUK was considered a naval chokepoint that was critical for NATO security. Keeping control of Greenland and Iceland was essential to the West, as this would help prevent the passage of Soviet submarines from bases in the Kola Peninsula into the Atlantic Ocean where they could strike targets on the American East Coast and disrupt shipping and communication lines with Europe.³⁰⁾Childs N (2022) Gauging the Gap: The Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap – A strategic assessment. International Institute for Strategic Studies, https://www.iiss.org/globalassets/media-library—content–migration/files/research-papers/2022/05/gauging-the-gap_the-greenlandicelandunited-kingdom-gap_a-strategic-assessment.pdf. Accessed 20 September 2023. The GIUK Gap was essential to the USSR as well, as monitoring the gap would alert them to potential NATO warships heading towards Soviet territory. In response, NATO states expended considerable effort to monitor the region: “Maritime patrol aircraft from the UK, Norway, and the U.S. (Navy P-3s, flying from Keflavik) covered the area from above, while nuclear and conventional submarines lurked below the surface. The choke points were also monitored by an advanced network of underwater sensors installed to detect and track Soviet submarines,” states an article from the US Naval Institute.³¹⁾CDR Salamander (2016) Once More into the GIUK Gap. US Naval Institute Blog, 20 April, https://blog.usni.org/posts/2016/04/20/once-more-unto-the-gap. Accessed 20 September 2023. British defense specialists called this initiative an effort “to mind the gap” and “contain the Soviet Union at sea.”³²⁾Tossini V (2023) The GIUK Gap – The Chokepoint in Britain’s Backyard. UK Defence Journal, 21 January https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-giuk-gap-the-chokepoint-in-britains-backyard/. Accessed 20 September 2023.

Iceland’s security was arguably the cornerstone of the GIUK defense strategy. A 1950 report from the Organization, titled “The position of Iceland with the NATO structure,” outlined the paramount importance of Iceland’s position for NATO:

“It has been demonstrated twice in the past, and is well recognized for the future, that in any general war the sea lines of communication between Western Europe and North America will be of vital import and will be overburdened with shipping. Just as certainly the air lanes will be equally vital and equally overburdened with traffic. Iceland’s geographic position is such as to draw her inescapably into the vortex of any struggle for the control of these vital lines of communication. She closely flanks the great circle route, and the guards the only approach from the Soviet arctic bases to the Atlantic…We have no reason to suppose, nor even to hope, that the Soviets have failed to appreciate either the extreme dependence of the North Atlantic Treaty Powers on their lines of communication, or the vital position of Iceland in the defense of those lines…It thus becomes apparent that, in case of war, the Soviet Union must make every practicable effort at least to deny the use of Iceland to the North Atlantic Treaty Powers, if not actually to occupy the islands and secure its use to herself.”³³⁾NATO archives: SGM-0341-50, September 15 1950, “The position of Iceland within the NATO structure,” 4-5. 

Further NATO communications from the early 1950s indicate great attention to the status of the island and the possibility of Soviet attempts to gain control of the territory, and mention the necessity to maintain a presence of 500-600 American soldiers in the territory, as well as sixty-day minimum stockpiles of food and supplies for troops. NATO pushed for even more soldiers on the island, arguing that several hundred was not nearly enough to thwart a potential Soviet coup and that a minimum of 1,000 peacetime troops were needed.³⁴⁾NATO archives, SG 047/3-FINAL, December 29 1950, “Security provisions and defence measures for Iceland,” 9. The issue was complicated by the fact that Iceland had (and still has) no military of its own and was unable to finance the defense measures proposed by NATO and the United States, which resulted in an American contingent being stationed there until 1994. Allied troops had maintained a presence in Iceland since 1940, when British forces arrived on the island to pre-empt a German attempt to takeover, similarly worried about taking control of the essential GIUK gap. Following the signing of a bilateral defense agreement between Iceland and the United States in 1951, an air base for US and NATO forces was developed at Keflavik, which included air defense, maritime surveillance and early warning systems. “The vital importance of taking security measures in peacetime to ensure the integrity of this area must, therefore, be stressed,” a Standing Group report from 1950 said, stating that all measures had to be taken to safeguard the area from a potential Soviet invasion or “local Communist saboteurs.” The document also recommended that the “Arctic Ocean approaches” to Iceland be kept under constant surveillance.³⁵⁾“Security provisions and defence measures for Iceland.” The Keflavik Air Base hosted American and NATO troops throughout the Cold War and was closed down in 2006 following a reassessment of the US-Iceland defense agreement, only to be reopened again in 2016.³⁶⁾Iceland and the US (2023) Government of Iceland,https://www.government.is/diplomatic-missions/embassy-of-iceland-in-washington-d.c/iceland-and-the-us/. Accessed 20 October 2023; Pettersen T (2016) U.S. military returns to Iceland. The Independent Barents Observer, 10 February, https://thebarentsobserver.com/ru/node/437 Accessed 20 October 2023.

Greenland was likewise vital to NATO’s strategic interests and security in the North Atlantic, especially for the defense of North America and the capability to strike targets in the USSR, as evidenced by military build-up in the 1950s and 1960s. On April 27, 1951, the United States and Denmark signed a joint defense agreement for Greenland, which allowed the US to establish bases on Greenland for NATO defense activities and gave them the green light to effectively operate without restrictions in large parts of the territory.³⁷⁾NATO archives, SGM-2518-52, November 14 1952, “The defence agreement between Denmark and the United States.” The agreement allowed for the construction of several American bases on the island, including Thule air base, which housed bomber planes and later a massive radar station. A Distant Early Warning system (DEW) was built across Greenland in the late 1950s as an extension of the Canadian infrastructure, which was meant to intercept Soviet bombers.³⁸⁾Petersen N (2008) The Iceman That Never Came: ’Project Iceworm’, the Search for a NATO Deterrent, and Denmark, 1960-1962. Scandinavian Journal of History 33(1). According to a 1953 NATO report, Greenland’s geographical position made it a critical base in the case of a war with the USSR, and this consideration led the United States to open three large bases on the island. The report also said that Danish forces on Greenland were patrolling parts of the east coast of the island regularly to make sure that Soviet enemy intruders were not establishing secret weather stations there, as the Germans had repeatedly done during WWII. “The reason why the island is so important to the NATO is that the Russians when carrying out air-attacks on America will have to pass Greenland. Opposite the Americans could use their air bases in Greenland as starting points for air-attacks on Russian territory,” the report said.³⁹⁾NATO archives, SGM-1666-53, July 31 1953, “Meeting of the chairman of the Standing Group with the Danish chief of defence.”

While NATO was initially focused on Western European and North American security before expanding its membership to encompass a broad swath of Europe, it is clear that the Arctic has figured heavily into NATO security considerations from the earliest days of the Organization’s existence, as evidenced by NATO and US Department of State historical documents. The Arctic was a central part of the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the West, and NATO was a major participant in this standoff. Today, Arctic tensions are rising once again due to resource competition and Russian belligerence. Important changes are underway in the sphere of Arctic geopolitics, and NATO is once again taking an active role. The newest Alliance members, Finland and Sweden, are both Arctic states, which has arguably affected the balance of power in the north, but NATO leadership has made mixed statements about its commitment to Arctic security over the last decade.

Part II of this article looks at NATO’s Arctic policy and engagement in the present day.