Baltic and Northern Defence – Towards an Integrated Maritime Strategy

Europe faces growing maritime challenges. Russia poses a direct threat across the Baltic Sea region, the High North, the Arctic and the North Atlantic as well as in the Black Sea region, while the United States expects European allies to assume greater responsibility for the continent's defence. At the same time, Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, it’s hybrid warfare against EU and NATO members in Europe and the war in the Middle East have exposed European shortfalls in naval capacity, readiness and resilience.

After a period of benign neglect, European NATO and European Union members are reinvesting in naval power. The main driver for the recapitalisation – which comes amid Europe’s broader refocusing on defence and security – is not only a new sense of urgency that Russia poses a direct military threat to European security. At the same time, the lessons from the accelerating pace of change on the Ukraine battlefield are testing Europe’s ability to keep up with the evolution of military technology even as it seeks to assume a greater share of its own defence burden. Meanwhile, the Iran war, and its repercussions around the Middle East and beyond, have posed yet more questions about Europe’s readiness for high-intensity warfare. Finally, the United States expects a new ‘burden shifting’ arrangement where European allies assume primary responsibility for security on the continent. This includes a reduction in its contribution as a traditional provider of key naval capabilities.

Against this background, European allies must accelerate efforts to develop and implement a coherent and sustainable maritime strategy, with the wider northern theatre serving as a centre of gravity for Euro-Atlantic defence. This will require aligning priorities and leadership roles, maximising cooperative capability developments, sharing burdens more effectively on key tasks and developing a clearer division of labour among allies, to deliver increased overall capacity. It also involves sharing burdens further afield, including with NATO members on the southern flank and beyond the traditional NATO area in the context of wider coalition efforts.