With the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, the new northern alliances are changing the geopolitical balance of power, and soon Arctic NATO nations will outnumber Russia seven to one. And currently, world leaders are increasingly discussing how likely escalation is in the Arctic region, writes Foreign Policy.
With the expansion of NATO, the Far North of Europe is perceptibly shifting to a combat basis. On January 9, 2024, the Commander-in-Chief of Sweden’s army, General Mikael Biden, took the stage in Salen, Sweden, and made a presentation intended to shock. Projecting a series of harrowing footage from the frontline of the war in Ukraine, superimposed on a snow-covered Swedish field, he asked: “Do you think this could be Sweden?”
Over the past few decades, bilateral and international agreements between Russia and other Arctic states have strengthened shared northern security as well as scientific interests. But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, those arrangements quickly fell apart.
“If the war in Ukraine has achieved anything, it is bringing the northern countries closer together on security issues,” writes Foreign Policy.
“We now have seven out of eight Arctic countries geopolitically united and with powerful armed forces. I don’t know if there is such a concentration of coherence and capabilities between countries anywhere else in the world,” one expert said.
However, experts note that this is all done in the name of deterrence and agree that a full-scale northern conflict is unlikely. At the same time, paradoxically, Russia’s military potential and economic resources, which increase tensions in the Arctic, also deter real escalation. In the north, Russia simply has a lot to lose: huge territorial mass and large fossil fuel resources are the main claims to its identity as a global superpower. Therefore, the Kremlin is interested in maintaining a “low level of tension” in the North.
For now, that means hybrid warfare: “gray zone” tactics that are harder to track or attribute.
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2024-02-10 11:09:00
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