Atlantic Council warns UK risks High North overstretch

The UK risks being unable to fulfil its leadership role in the High North while simultaneously meeting its other NATO commitments, a senior Atlantic Council analyst has warned in written evidence to the Defence Committee’s Defence in the High North inquiry, raising questions about whether the UK has the readiness, mass and enabling capacity to sustain its ambitions in the region.

Dr Anna Wieslander, Director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council and Head of its Northern Europe Office in Stockholm, told the committee that some defence analysts argued the UK risked strategic overcommitment, assessing that it could not simultaneously lead the JEF, meet NATO war plan commitments for major land reinforcement and sustain its nuclear deterrent under existing defence investment plans, and that the current British Army would struggle to deploy even one division quickly.

The same concern emerged from the UK’s response to drone threats against its own bases, with Wieslander noting that limited quantities and availability of key air defence and maritime assets had constrained the speed and scale of UK action, illustrating what she described as a wider capacity ceiling that could also affect the UK’s ability to surge and sustain forces for the High North alongside other commitments.

On Russia, Wieslander described its High North posture as enduring and strategic, noting that even where Russia’s ground capabilities had been affected by the war in Ukraine, its naval, air and nuclear-linked interests and infrastructure in the north remained central and could be rebuilt over time. She quoted the UK Defence Secretary’s description of Russia in February 2026 as the greatest threat to Arctic and High North security since the Cold War, and pointed to the departure of the ballistic missile submarine Knyaz Vladimir from the Kola Peninsula for patrol in March 2026 as an example of Russia continuing to operate strategically relevant assets from the region.

On the UK’s policy framework, Wieslander described the Atlantic Bastion concept as framed around a connected approach to North Atlantic security including counter-submarine tasks and undersea infrastructure protection, but questioned how explicitly it was connected to High North requirements and NATO activity, and whether ends, ways and means were stated clearly. She noted that achievability depended on prioritisation, pointing to Cold Response 2026 where a planned US F-35 squadron was withdrawn as an illustration of how competing contingencies could affect availability even during high-priority northern exercises.

Critical undersea infrastructure protection is identified as a core High North deterrence task that should be integrated into allied planning and operations, with Wieslander calling for monitoring, attribution and response coordination to be treated as military priorities rather than regulatory ones. She also called for escalation management frameworks to be treated as a priority given the increased pace of allied and Russian activity in the region, saying a more continuous pattern of deterrence postures, surveillance and infrastructure security interactions was raising the risk of incidents and misperception.

On the JEF, Wieslander said it added most value when complementary to NATO plans and timelines, interoperable with allied command, control and ISR sharing, and deconflicted to avoid parallel initiatives that could complicate signalling and escalation management. She called for a clear first-mover role to be defined for the JEF with a structured transition into NATO command arrangements, and questioned whether JEF activity and NATO’s Arctic Sentry coordination were integrated in practice, particularly in the early phase of contingencies.