Since Finland and Sweden joined NATO in the wake of Russia’s all-out attack on Ukraine, the region’s defenses have been enormously strengthened on the alliance’s northern flank, not least because their accession unlocked new levels of regional cooperation.
Until Helsinki and Stockholm took the plunge, the original Nordic NATO members of Denmark, Iceland and Norway, had been wary of creating duplicate structures through separate Nordic cooperation.
But Finland and Sweden hit the ground running when they joined the alliance and are already hosting new NATO arrangements such as the Multi Corps Land Component Command in Eastern Finland, the Forward Land Force (FLF) in Northern Finland, and logistics headquarters in Sweden.
Building on longstanding bilateral defense cooperation between Finland and Sweden, FLF Finland is led by Sweden, with contributions from the other three Nordic countries and the European nuclear weapons powers, France and the UK. Italy and potentially Spain may also join.
The FLF differs from other multinational NATO contingents in frontline states as its focus is mainly on exercises and training, not a permanent or even rotational deployment to Finland. Even the Swedish battlegroup that leads the FLF is permanently based in Boden, Northern Sweden.
The idea is to integrate and acclimatize allied forces into the challenging Arctic conditions, where survival training is needed to ensure troops make it to combat without perishing from the cold. The FLF aims to become scalable if tensions with Russia grow as a result of Moscow’s stated intent to increase military capacity close to Finland.
The Nordic division of labor has resulted in Finland hosting land elements, playing to its natural strengths; Sweden is building NATO’s logistics for the northern flank, given its central geographical location linking the High North and the Baltic Sea; and Norway is leading in the air domain.
NATO has established a new Combined Air Operations Center in Bodø, Northern Norway. This also hosts the Norwegian Joint Air Operations Centre, where the Nordic countries have set up their own division to work on implementation of the Nordic Air Power Concept (NAPC).
This builds on four pillars of deepened integration between Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden: joint planning and command of air operations; coordinated development and use of Nordic air bases; enhanced joint situational awareness, and joint education, training and exercises.
The air forces of Norway, Sweden and Finland have been exercising together on an almost weekly basis for decades, and have hosted the biannual Arctic Challenge Exercise since 2013, long before Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
Nordic cooperation is most advanced in the air domain, and there are plans to move to integration and joint operational capacity, with Nordic command and control. Air force cooperation has come naturally and been easy to facilitate, given its mobile nature.
At sea, cooperation is closer on the bilateral level, especially between Finland and Sweden. Having been outside NATO, and sharing the geography of the Gulf of Bothnia and Baltic Sea islands, both countries have structured their navies to specialize in shallow-water and archipelago warfare, with an emphasis on amphibious forces.
They conduct bilateral exercises, as well as sea surveillance cooperation, and have established an amphibious task unit. Their navies also complement each other with different capabilities, such as Finland’s mine warfare expertise and Swedish submarines.
On land, Nordic cooperation has been less frequent but is now developing rapidly, especially as part of FLF Finland. There are cross-border hindrances, however, with persistent legal and regulatory issues for military mobility.
As the land forces of all Nordic countries rely heavily on conscripts and reservists, their deployment for exercises abroad, even to a neighboring country, is often a tricky legal question.
There are also cross-border issues in the air, though ground personnel have been trained to maintain each other’s aircraft, and there is a quick procedure for granting permission to fly through each other’s airspace at short notice. But failing to get such a permit would technically result in an airspace violation, which is still a significant limit to the seamless joint operations the air forces are striving for.
While Nordic cooperation and increased integration are a direct contribution to NATO’s defense and deterrence efforts, its relationship to the alliance is uneasy. In air force cooperation, for example, the Nordic Division in Bodø is separate from the NATO Combined Air Operations Center at the same location.
The Baltic states worry that deepening Nordic defense cooperation could be an exclusive strategy, creating alternatives for NATO’s defense arrangements in case the alliance hits internal political deadlock and is unable to act. The Nordic countries are especially concerned about a unified ability to act because of US pressure on Denmark and Greenland (even if September’s deal on the island has eased concerns, for now).
The Baltics’ worries are mitigated by Denmark and Sweden’s contributions to the FLF in Latvia, and Finland and Estonia’s close cooperation, especially in the Gulf of Finland. On a political level, the Nordic-Baltic Eight grouping has also consolidated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, becoming a strong voice with a shared commitment to Kyiv.
The bigger issue is that Nordic cooperation is much closer than any other regional format in NATO, except perhaps the Dutch-German land force integration. Other allies require constant reassurance from Nordic governments that they are not trying to establish an alliance within the alliance.
But all the countries involved are heavily investing in their national defense capability, in line with NATO’s Article 3, and at intermediate layers below Article 5 for different types of conflict. Nordic cooperation boosts the participating countries’ national defense capabilities and forms a regional first responder posture, amounting to a cluster of deterrence.
The Nordic region is probably the best prepared in Europe to respond to a range of contingencies. For the rest of NATO’s European members, this is not something to criticize, but a model to emulate.
Minna Ålander is a Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House Europe Programme, and an ECFR Council member. Her research topics are Northern European security and Nordic defense cooperation, as well as hybrid warfare.
This article was funded by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. CEPA maintains strict intellectual independence over all publications and projects. Opinions, arguments, viewpoints, and conclusions expressed in this work do not represent those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
