How should Britain adapt its strategy towards the Wider North?
The Big Ask | No. 22.2025
The United Kingdom’s (UK) geographical location provides a natural interest in the Wider North – the geopolitical region encompassing the northern Atlantic, Arctic and Baltic. As recognised by His Majesty’s (HM) Government, this northern theatre is crucial to Britain’s defence strategy – particularly the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap – and warrants investment of resources, attention and critical thinking.
With Russia’s Northern Fleet presenting a challenge to freedom of navigation and the UK’s maritime capability, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) expressing interest in the establishment of a ‘Polar Silk Road’ – as well as new Arctic shipping routes set to become navigable due to climate change and the prevalence of the region’s considerable natural resources – the Wider North is increasingly becoming an important geopolitical and geostrategic region. Keeping this evolving significance of the Arctic in mind, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked six experts: How should Britain adapt its strategy towards the Wider North?
PhD Candidate, Department of War Studies, King’s College London
Adapting its strategy is insufficient. To succeed, the UK must close its say-do gap in the Wider North.
Militarily, Britain risks over-promising and under-delivering. As the framework nation for the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), cutting the capabilities central to that construct calls British leadership into question. At the same time, the JEF offers the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) complementary value below the threshold of conflict. To unlock this potential, the UK must lead in strengthening JEF competencies through joint procurement, integrating partners’ niche strengths and advancing public-private resilience. Crucially, exercising JEF-to-NATO transitions will give the force credible deterrent weight as a scalable force for escalation control.
Diplomatically, the gap is just as apparent. In opposition, David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary, called for ‘energetic diplomacy’ to uphold the international rules-based order. Yet, save for King Charles III’s recent visit to Canada, Britain has been either muted or belated in defending Danish and Canadian sovereignty. While closed-door diplomacy may be effective, the opacity of such efforts risks undercutting public confidence and emboldening revisionism.
The Wider North is where the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific overlap, offering the UK the chance to demonstrate good-faith efforts as a burden-sharing ally. It is also Britain’s backyard. If defence is to be the ‘central organising principle’ of this government, closing the say-do gap is a good place to start.
Professor of Geopolitics and Executive Dean, School of Life Sciences and Environment, Royal Holloway University of London
The Wider North is going to face further geostrategic competition. Russia, under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, considers itself to be a civilisational power which simply must recover its sphere of influence – stretching from Longyearbyen to Lviv. NATO members and allies, such as Finland, Latvia, Norway, Poland and Ukraine, are frontline states. The United States (US) is not a reliable partner, as Denmark has experienced regarding its ownership of Greenland. Donald Trump, President of the US, and Putin share a worldview which is highly transactional and ruthless in the pursuit of their national interests.
The UK is a North Atlantic nation, and is part of that Wider North. Britain and its allies and partners need to deter Russia and other hostile third parties in order to protect its national interests, including critical infrastructure around the UK, and to ensure that international frameworks such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) are not undermined. This will require long-term investment in ice-capable ships, drones and specialist mountain leaders training. Space is another fundamental domain.
The British public must learn to look north, and understand better the new geopolitical realities which confront them. This requires a trifecta of platforms, partnerships and presence being animated by a strategy, not a policy framework.
Professor of International Security and Co-Director of Security Research Institute, Lancaster University, and Visiting Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre
The Wider North has witnessed a ‘strategic acceleration’. First, climate change creates economic opportunities but also environmental, safety and security challenges, as well as geopolitical tensions. Second, the revisionism of the status quo of the post-Cold War European order by Russia negatively impacts Arctic governance and security. These two systemic changes act synergistically: the impacts of climate change require cooperative governance to address economic, social, safety and environmental risks and vulnerabilities, whereas Russia’s behaviour prevents cooperation and even creates risks of confrontation at, above, and under the sea, while shifting attention away from the vulnerability of Arctic ecosystems and populations.
The UK’s strategy towards the region should be guided by three objectives: reassuring allies, deterring adversaries and securing Britain’s national interests, which includes freedom of navigation in the Arctic and the defence of NATO’s northern flank, which would be the UK’s first line of defence in case of war. Additionally, deterring, preventing and responding to below-the-threshold activities in the Wider North requires attention.
This strategy necessitates enhanced presence and projection capabilities into the Wider North, working with allies (including NATO, JEF partners and the Five Eyes, but also with the European Union’s (EU) civilian/space infrastructure) to create economies of scale and send a strong message of unity to adversaries. Britain could even become a net provider of security in the Wider North if, within the next Strategic Defence Review (SDR) cycle, HM Government makes the necessary investments in platforms, training and infrastructure.
Senior Analyst, RAND Europe
Despite its absence of sovereign territory in the Arctic, the UK considers itself the ‘Arctic’s closest neighbour’ given its geographic proximity and reliance on sea lines of communication through Wider North waters, such as those which connect Europe to North America and navigate the GIUK gap.
Additionally, as a major NATO member, and amid worsening relations with Russia, Britain contributes to securing the alliance’s northern flank, participating in multilateral military exercises while maintaining close cooperation with Arctic allies such as Norway.
As such, the UK should prioritise investments in maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare, improving interoperability through organisations such as NATO and the JEF to remain an essential partner in the region.
Promoting shared situational awareness and pooling resources in multilateral settings would also help addressing budget constraints. Integrating military activities with diplomatic and scientific initiatives would ensure coherence in strategy while avoiding unintended escalation, particularly with Russia.
Developing a unified threat assessment across allies would further reinforce Britain’s strategic posture. However, misalignment of priorities, funding pressures and competing policy demands across different parts of HM Government could present persistent barriers to fully optimising its defence strategy in the region.
Professor of War Studies, Loughborough University
The concept of the ‘Wider North’ is relatively novel, and extends the traditional geopolitical designation of a ‘High North’. The Wider North is useful as it points to a vision which links the northern Atlantic, the Arctic and the Baltic. This is a space in which the UK has a range of interests and responsibilities – these are economic, scientific and defence related. Across the Wider North, Russia seeks military and nuclear dominance in the European Arctic, unfettered access to the North Atlantic and revisionism against the sovereignty of the Baltic states. The PRC seeks infrastructure, critical minerals, fish stocks and influence in Arctic societies.
Britain has, after a period of neglect, burnished its defence capabilities on the northern flank through leadership of the JEF, an uptick in military exercises, closer cooperation with allies – such as Norway and Iceland – and a public articulation of its interests in the ‘backyard.’ Given the recent threats of President Trump to invade a NATO ally (Greenland), and his volatile relationship with Putin, coherent European leadership is sorely needed. The question is whether the SDR will deliver capabilities to allow the UK, and its allies and partners, to deter and defend effectively across the Wider North.
Visiting Professor, King’s College London; Head, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre; Associate Fellow in Naval Strategy and Associate Director, Sea Power Laboratory, Council on Geostrategy (writing in a personal capacity)
We have all become familiar with the idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific. We now need to embrace the concept of a free and open Arctic, where sovereignty is respected, but where seas are accessible for navigation, research and fair resource exploitation. Unlike the Antarctic, there is no special regime for Arctic exceptionalism, and the 2023 House of Lords report and government strategy were right to call for a return to high cooperation and low tension.
To achieve a free and open Arctic, the UK should maintain its approach of near-neighbour influence, abiding by international norms and working with others to prevent the Arctic from becoming a fiefdom for revisionist states. There should be no maritime ‘toll roads’, no excessive seabed claims and no threats of territorial annexation for ‘national security’. We need Arctic order, not Arctic anarchy.
But this does not come free. The imminent SDR and National Security Statement need to prioritise the wider region. Britain should invest in military and diplomatic presence. Observer status on the Arctic Council, ice patrol ships exercising freedom of navigation, UK-led JEF operations, and bilateral economic, cultural and environmental activity are the least Britain should do.
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