The leaders of five Nordic countries — plus Canada — have gathered in Oslo for a mini-summit to discuss strengthening defence capabilities in the face of higher international tensions, including recent threats by the Trump administration to take over Greenland.
The meeting Sunday is the last stop in Norway for Prime Minister Mark Carney, who arrived early Friday to witness a major NATO military exercise in the northern part of the country involving more than 30,000 troops, sailors and aircrew.
“We sometimes call Canada an honorary Nordic” country, said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who added that when he told the prime ministers of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland that Carney would be in Oslo this weekend, they all jumped at the chance to talk collective security with him.
“They all said, Sunday morning, we’ll come to Oslo, and I think that tells the story,” Støre said on Saturday while he and Carney visited the Holmenkollen Ski Festival in the Norwegian capital.
“There’s a lot to do here, which is positive in the world. And in relation to the U.S., I think, you know, we are allies. But we also are aware that the rest of the allies need to take more responsibility,” he said, nodding to tensions over Greenland.
Earlier this year U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to annex the self-governing Danish territory — ostensibly over security concerns.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — of which all of the countries gathering in Oslo are members — has started an initiative known as Arctic Sentry to better co-ordinate military activity in the region.
Carney said he believes the leaders have important things to discuss.
“We share some common security concerns as well. And so deeper security co-operation is necessary,” Carney said on Saturday.
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Federal officials, speaking on background ahead of the prime minister’s visit, said the five Nordic nations are also interested in hearing more from Carney following his January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about how middle powers can co-operate more closely and effectively in the case of coercion by major powers.
Trump has backed off his threat to take over Greenland — for now.
The war in the Middle East and its effect on energy prices will also figure prominently in the talks. Carney said supporting conditions for de-escalation remains a shared priority during a photo-op on Saturday.
The meeting also comes in the wake of a major, comprehensive report last month by the U.S. policy think-tank the Atlantic Council, which warned that Russia’s economy is more resilient than expected and has largely transitioned to war footing.
The report lays out five stark scenarios of potential moves that Russian President Vladimir Putin could make against the Nordic and Baltic countries, if Moscow ever achieves a victory in its long-running war to subjugate Ukraine.
Three of the five scenarios involve Russian forces seizing key islands off Norway, Finland and Sweden in so-called low risk operations in order to test NATO’s resolve.
Such attacks would trigger the allies’ all for-one, one-for-all clause in the Washington Treaty.
The Western military alliance has said it will defend every square inch of allied territory, but as the council’s report points out, there could be less involvement in NATO by the United States in the coming years.
“If Putin succeeds in such tests, the lack of an effective response could well fracture NATO, fundamentally altering the transatlantic security environment,” the report said.
Mathieu Boulègue, of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the leaders need to have some constructive discussion about security in the Arctic.
“Geopolitics is definitely present in the region, and we need to address the constant insecurity, from sub-threshold operations to kinetic actions to nuclear saber-rattling from the Kremlin,” said Boulègue.
“And if not the Kremlin now, China later. So we need to hone our deterrence posture, we need to hone our presence in the region to be more assertive and to make sure that we defend the national interests of the Arctic.”
