Matthew Van Wagenen

For NATO, the High North has never been a peripheral concern. It is the geographic hinge that connects the Arctic, Scandinavia, and the North Atlantic—terrain that shaped Cold War strategy and is once again central to Alliance security. After decades of relative quiet, the region has re-emerged as a decisive arena of competition, and the Alliance must treat it as such.

NATO’s most pressing capability gaps are not the ones that attract political enthusiasm or public support. They are expensive, industrially demanding, ethically complex, and often environmentally unfashionable. Yet they are also the capabilities that determine whether the Alliance can deter, fight, and win against adversaries who are already investing in them at scale. The uncomfortable truth is that the systems democracies hesitate to buy.

The Iran War revealed the real contours of modern conflict, and the Alliance must reshape its defense accordingly.