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We are honored to serve as the editors of this special issue of the Journal of Advanced Military Studies. While the global focus and especially U.S. focus has shifted to Asia and the Indo-Pacific, we want to remind readers that the Arctic remains a vital security interest. For the U.S. Marine Corps especially, Europe’s high north and the Arctic are significant. This is an area where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) shares a maritime as well as terrestrial border with Russia, but where geographic features make this northern part of the alliance’s area of responsibility a maritime flank.
The changing environment, both in the realm of climate, security, and diplomacy, coupled with the high north’s proximity to Russia’s most potent military force-complex on the Kola Peninsula—holding some of the world’s largest concentration of nuclear weapons—makes NATO’s northern flank a region of key strategic importance. As the Arctic region also functions as a key area for U.S. global power projection, in addition to its importance in holding vital sea lines of communication open, including control of the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. (GIUK) gap, the North Atlantic and Arctic region is, and will remain, a Marine Corps concern for the foreseeable future.
Russian activity during the last decade, and particularly the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has cooled relations with the other Arctic nations. This has led to overturning the decades-long status of the Arctic as an exceptionally cooperative region to one of heightened tension, where diplomacy has been put on hold. In the immediate aftermath of the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Arctic Council paused its activities. When the chairmanship was transferred from Russia to Norway in 2023, and then again to Denmark in 2025, most of the council’s limited activities were without Russian participation. Diplomatic and senior level interactions between East and West have also remained in limbo. Additionally, China has gradually sought to strengthen its foothold in the Arctic, with Beijing and Moscow declaring an unlimited partnership. Nevertheless, how Chinese Arctic ambitions will materialize in the future and how it will affect the balance of power in the north remains unclear.
While cooperation between the East and West are at a record low in the Arctic, NATO has expanded in the region with the ascension of Finland and Sweden to the alliance, strengthening European security, and the transatlantic ties the European Arctic. The expansion of NATO and the evolving Sino-Russian ties in the north illustrate the dynamic security situation experienced in the Arctic.
In this special issue of JAMS, we bring new research and scholarship on the Arctic to the attention of readers. Jonas Kjellén analyzes how changes in climate, technology, force posture, and assessments of nuclear deterrence influence the plans for the Russian Northern Fleet. He further discusses how potential changes in the Russian bastion defense should influence Western security thinking and defense planning. In Njord Wegge’s article, he investigates how strategic competition play out in today’s Arctic, linking the developments to international relations theory and the instruments on power given by the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) spectrum.1 Charlotte Hulme analyzes China’s economic and security interests in the Arctic as peripheral to the global U.S.-China great power competition. Then Mark Vicik’s article focuses on how China has benefited from Russian diplomatic isolation in the Arctic, the influence this has had on the region, as well as how this has affected Western states. Ryan Duffy, Jahara Matisek, Jeremy McKenzie, and Chad Pillai challenge NATO assumptions about security and defense in Europe’s high north in the face of closer Chinese-Russian cooperation, arguing for the establishment of a dedicated NATO Arctic military force. Finally, Gonzalo Vázquez investigates the return of great power competition in the Arctic and what this means for NATO’s defense planning in the region. The article concludes that NATO should establish a standing maritime group for the Arctic.
Njord Wegge, Professor, Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo
Lon Strauss, Associate Professor, Marine Corps University, Quantico
Endnote
1. For reader transparency, the Marine Corps University Press managed the peer review process of this article.