Norway’s foreign minister admits NATO has no answer for Russia’s hybrid playbook
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told the opening session of Wednesday’s Arctic Security Conference in Oslo that Russia is actively testing its ability to sabotage undersea infrastructure in the North Atlantic and admitted NATO still hasn’t figured out how to respond to threats that stay below the Article 5 threshold.
“We have said that Russia is testing new capacities in case they need to or decide they want to create serious trouble — for instance, our communication lines or other undersea structures,” Eide said at the conference, hosted by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
“It doesn’t mean they’ve done it, but it means that we know that they’re developing capacities to do it.”
Norway and its allies have started going public with intelligence that used to stay classified, Eide said, partly to signal to Moscow that they’re watching. But the gap remains.
“To try to develop responses in that space, which does not itself trigger the Article 5 threshold, is something we’re not yet good enough at,” he said.
Eide called Norway’s approach a “hedging strategy”: closer bilateral defense ties with Nordic and Baltic neighbors plus the UK, Germany and France, all while staying anchored in NATO. Finland and Sweden joining the alliance, he said, erased “this white spot on the NATO map” that used to sit between Norway and the rest of Europe.
He also pushed back on the idea that China and Russia operate as a bloc in the Arctic.
“This idea that China and Russia are the same is something I would warn against,” he said, noting China’s economy and population dwarf Russia’s many times over.
He defended letting China into the Arctic Council as an observer years ago.
“I would rather have them in our club than them building another club.”
EU’s Arctic envoy previews a security-first strategy
The EU’s forthcoming Arctic strategy, due “toward end of October,” will add security as a central pillar for the first time, alongside the bloc’s existing focus on climate change and Arctic communities, said Claude Véron-Réville, the EU’s Special Envoy for the Arctic.
“The Arctic is another frontline of global power competition,” she told the panel, citing a joint declaration EU member states signed at a recent meeting in Rovaniemi pushing Brussels to do more in the region.
Véron-Réville said the strategy will prioritize maritime domain awareness, military mobility between Nordic states, and joint procurement of icebreakers and satellite capacity. Undersea cables were clearly on her mind.
“It takes a split second to sabotage a cable or a pipeline, and in a split second you disconnect a whole land. I’m thinking Iceland. I’m thinking Greenland. I’m thinking Svalbard.”
Canada and Alaska report a surge in Chinese activity
Jonathan Quinn, Canada’s director general of continental defense policy, described a shift from episodic patrols to “year-round campaigning” in the Canadian Arctic: new long-range radar, uncrewed underwater vehicles, submarines, and folding the Canadian Coast Guard into the defense structure.
From Alaska, former U.S. Arctic ambassador Mike Sfraga painted a busier picture still: Chinese and Russian naval vessels and bombers operating in formation off the Aleutians, alongside four or five Chinese icebreakers and research vessels working the same waters. He repeated his longstanding call for a U.S. Arctic deepwater port, comparing the Bering Strait’s strategic weight to the Barents Sea on the Atlantic side.
Eide pressed on trust with northern communities
High North News editor Arne Holm put Eide on the spot over whether governments are leveling with northern populations about what the security buildup actually costs, citing Svalbard’s shrinking population and financial strain in Tromsø.
“You have to have trust in the people. If you have good leadership, the people have to believe in you. If that’s not so, we can see what happened in Germany and other places,” Holm said.
Eide didn’t dispute the point. He said his government has been out talking to unions and the public directly, including a recent trip to Tromsø, but conceded there’s more to do.
“We still have a way to go. That’s true,” he said.
The panel opened the one-day Arctic Security Conference, which continued Wednesday with sessions on an ice-free Arctic Ocean, hybrid threats at sea, and transatlantic and Nordic partnerships.
