Nick Childs
Senior Fellow for Naval Forces and
Maritime Security
The International Institute for Strategic
Studies
United Kingdom
On Monday 11 March Sweden’s flag was raised for the first time at NATO headquarters in Brussels following the country’s accession four days earlier as the Alliance’s 32nd member state. Coming on the heels of Finland’s accession in April 2023, the development makes it even more tempting to describe the Baltic Sea now as a ‘NATO lake’. But the character of the Baltic as a maritime domain and the potential threats to maritime security in the region mean it remains more complicated than that. In fact, the latest developments may help clear the way to greater co-operation between NATO and the European Union on security challenges in these waters.
Nobody’s lake
With the new accessions, all the Baltic rim and Nordic states (except Russia) are now NATO members, while all but Norway belong to the EU. What is more, most are engaged in programmes to enhance their naval capabilities. Sweden aims to grow its navy with a new generation of larger and more capable surface warships and new submarines. So too, to a lesser extent, does Finland. Poland has an ambitious naval development programme including sophisticated new frigates. And Germany’s navy should also see its capabilities boosted under its 2035+ fleet plan, while the Baltic states are taking steps to bolster their coastal anti-ship missile batteries.
All this increases the strategic headaches for Russia and the pressure on its positions in the Kaliningrad exclave and around St Petersburg. Its Baltic Sea Fleet, which for a long time has been less than imposing in a conventional sense, looks even more exposed now.
However, Moscow still has formidable offensive capabilities invested in Kaliningrad, as well as the ability to pose severe unconventional threats in the murky waters of the Baltic Sea with its criss-cross of shipping routes and undersea cables and pipelines. In addition, the incidents with the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 shone a glaring spotlight on the West’s deficits in being able to counter threats to such infrastructure. Exactly who was behind these incidents remains shrouded in uncertainty. But Moscow’s investments in the capabilities of seabed warfare are well known.
A NATO/EU opportunity
Hence the hesitation of many still in using the term ‘NATO lake’. Moreover, while the NATO position may have been reinforced, the different security priorities and perspectives of both the new and established NATO members in the region – which include not just the Baltic but also the Arctic and the High North and the North-East Atlantic – will mean the Alliance will have its hands full satisfying everybody. So, paradoxically, the fact that NATO’s primacy as the main hard-power defence provider has been reinforced may help overcome the scepticism of some – not least the Baltic states – that others such as the EU can play a role in filling some of the security gaps that will remain below the threshold of armed conflict and Article 5. Indeed, the same impulse of Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine which drove Finland and Sweden into the arms of NATO also was the spur behind Denmark ending its opt-out of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy.
The EU has itself been evolving its CSDP to account both for the more urgent security agenda and a broadening view of what constitutes security, although not in the view of some critics far or fast enough. And, while there is an increased emphasis placed in its updated maritime security strategy on the challenges in many areas, it was perhaps a missed opportunity not focusing more specifically on key maritime arenas, not least the Baltic. It barely gets a mention in the EU’s Strategic Compass.
Nevertheless, it would surely count as an obvious area of priority. In fact, there may be room for a tapestry of different frameworks to cover what is now acknowledged as a more complex set of security threats ranging from below the threshold of armed conflict. As well as the EU potentially playing an enhanced security role now in the region, there may be more life in an enhanced framework of co-operation between the Nordic states, and the same for the Baltic states. Also, the Joint Expeditionary Force grouping led by the United Kingdom seems to be carving itself out a ‘grey zone’ role in the region, including seeing it activated in January 2024 to carry out a security operation focused on critical undersea infrastructure.
It is in this area where there is perhaps the greatest opportunity for the EU to fashion a complementary role with NATO. Indeed, the Alliance and the EU established a joint task force on the resilience of critical infrastructure which made a number of recommendations for enhanced co-operation, including through more information exchanges; work to identify alternate transport routes for civilian and military mobility; and closer ties in security research.
Specifically in the maritime domain, NATO has set up a Critical Undersea Infrastructure Cell at its headquarters and has also announced the creation of a centre focused on this issue at Allied Maritime Command at Northwood in London. These are spawning multiple other activities within the NATO framework. But governments and international organisations are still only just getting to grips with the international and inter-agency complexities of the challenges in this area, the critical capabilities required, and the need to involve industry. It seems a ripe area for NATO/EU co-operation as the EU too explores its potential, including in the broader but related context of general maritime situational awareness under the Common Information Sharing Environment initiative. In all of this, the Baltic Sea would seem to offer a highly suitable arena in which to test the waters of collaboration and division of labour.