This article is part of a series featuring Atlantic Council experts’ analysis and recommendations on the key challenges facing allies at the upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, and beyond.
WASHINGTON—A major theme of this year’s NATO Summit in Ankara will be evaluating how the Alliance’s thirty-two members are stepping up to take on more responsibility for their own defense. This will be most evident in progress toward reaching defense-spending commitments agreed to last year in The Hague. But just as important will be assessing where NATO’s European allies and Canada are using their capabilities to shoulder more of the burden for conventional defense in Europe. Heading into the Ankara summit, the Arctic region offers a prime example of where European allies are stepping up and laying the groundwork for deeper cooperation.
In June of this year, NATO launched a new multinational presence in northern Finland offering enhanced deterrence and operational exposure to Arctic conditions. Plans for the presence were announced at the Washington summit in July 2024 and, later that year, Sweden was confirmed as the framework nation for the Alliance’s Forward Land Forces (FLF) in Finland. This latest FLF is the ninth along NATO’s eastern flank, and each is intended to enhance the Alliance’s ability to deter and defend. Although the Finland battlegroup has been in the works since 2024, the timing is particularly significant given NATO’s renewed focus on Arctic security this year following tensions over Greenland.
Drawing on the two newest NATO allies—Finland and Sweden—this FLF can serve as the flagship of NATO’s Arctic activities, with profound implications for the Alliance’s posture in the region, cold weather capabilities, and interoperability. These efforts can also serve as an example for other NATO allies as they shoulder more of the burden for their common defenses in other areas.
The road to FLF Finland
After Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, NATO established its first four FLFs (then known as “enhanced Forward Presence”) in Poland and the three Baltic countries. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO held an extraordinary summit in March, where allied leaders agreed to establish four additional battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. This move effectively doubled NATO’s troop presence on its eastern flank. Soon thereafter, in May 2022, Finland and Sweden both applied to join NATO. FLF Finland was a natural next step for the Alliance to improve deterrence along its eastern flank. The placement of this FLF to fortify Lapland harkens back to when the Soviet Union invaded Finland during the 1939 Winter War, attempting to cut the country in half by seizing the town of Oulu at Finland’s narrowest point.
Today, Russia is restructuring its posture along its northwestern flank with NATO. The 833-mile border between Finland and Russia features sparse Russian military installations, particularly along the northern region. Most of these outposts had reportedly been largely emptied in 2022 and 2023 in order to shift Russian troops to the fight in Ukraine. But in 2024, Russia’s Ministry of Defense reactivated the Moscow and Leningrad military districts along its border with Finland. This is likely in preparation for a larger force structure in northwestern Russia and to centralize operational command. According to Finnish military intelligence, after the conflict in Ukraine reaches an end, Russian troops along Russia’s border with Finland in Karelia and the Kola peninsula could surge from around 30,000 to more than 80,000, further underscoring NATO’s need for deterrence in the region. A new Russian garrison in nearby Karelia has entered active development and could add up to 15,000 troops in the region, sparking a larger conversation in Finnish media over how Russia’s force posture might shift in the future.
As the newest NATO member and eager to demonstrate its value to the Alliance, Sweden was the natural choice to serve as the framework nation for Finland’s FLF. Finland and Sweden are each other’s closest bilateral security partners. The two have a high degree of interoperability, including taking steps to integrate their air forces into a single command in wartime. Within NATO planning circles, Finland is often referred to as a frontline state with Sweden serving as a vital logistics and coordination hub. This is visible in the FLF, with a six-hundred-strong Swedish battlegroup in Boden—the Norrbotten Regiment—capable of rapid transfer and a Multinational Staff Element in Rovaniemi. Both are under the command of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe through Joint Force Command Norfolk and Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest in Mikkeli, Finland. In addition to Sweden, which serves as the framework nation and lead of the multinational presence, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and the United Kingdom each contribute to the development of FLF Finland.
Finland’s FLF differs from other FLFs, in part because instead of hosting permanent or rotational multinational forces, it serves as a flexible training site. The peacetime strength of the battlegroup will be about two dozen—the same as the Multi Corps Land Component Command in Mikkeli—although in the future the force will be scaled to a brigade-size unit. Although just outside of the Arctic circle, the region is known for its extreme cold, deep snow, and limited infrastructure, making it useful grounds for training and testing militaries’ cold-weather capabilities.
Forging an allied Arctic identity
When it comes to the Arctic, NATO has a complicated history and a fragmented identity. Five of the eight Arctic states—those with territory within the Arctic circle—were founding members of the Alliance in 1949. Throughout NATO’s history, however, the Alliance has avoided a formal Arctic strategy, instead deferring to national policies toward the remote region. For Canada and the United States, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has focused on the North American Arctic. On the European side, Norway has been the primary voice of the European Arctic at NATO headquarters in Brussels, with its substantial military basing, capabilities, and know-how in the High North. The mere fact that the Alliance refers to the Arctic as the “High North,” a Norwegian term, shows the extent to which NATO’s Arctic identity has been shaped by Norwegian military doctrine.
But this has started to change since Finland and Sweden joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Their addition to the Alliance, along with a massive review of the Alliance’s strategic posture and regional battle plans begun following NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept, has set in motion a rethink of how military planners and policymakers view Lapland’s defense and, by extension, the European Arctic.
In the past few years, NATO has organized numerous drills, exercises, and activities in the Arctic, all aimed at improving interoperability. Already this year, in addition to Finland FLF, NATO launched Arctic Sentry and Task Force X-Arctic. In part, this has been a response to greater Russia-China cooperation in the region. But it is also a result of other changes, including tensions within the Alliance over Greenland and the White House’s perception that allied investments in Arctic security had been inadequate.
But despite greater allied presence and activities in the region, NATO has not gone far enough to develop a larger vision or end-goal for its efforts in the Arctic. A more comprehensive NATO Arctic Strategy is needed and should begin consultations now with the goal of completing it by 2030. This strategy should aim to harmonize and clarify allied investments in the region, including infrastructure needs and gaps. It should also highlight potential hybrid threats facing the Arctic and ensure deterrence in the Arctic keeps the region stable and free from conflict.