Mind the Gap II - Strategic Amnesia : The North Atlantic after 1991

Strategy changes gradually before it changes suddenly. Geography, including oceans, does not change; the political weather, and responses to it, do.

The disappearance of the Soviet Union removed the organising threat around which NATO maritime planning had revolved. Russia in the 1990s faced economic collapse, institutional turmoil and a navy struggling to keep vessels seaworthy. Patrol rates fell sharply, maintenance backlogs accumulated, and Western attention shifted towards expeditionary operations elsewhere. Force structures contracted across the Alliance. Escort numbers fell, and maritime focus drifted away from the North Atlantic.

The arithmetic of presence became increasingly stark. Modern warships are far more capable than their predecessors, yet a warship can only be in one place at one time, however sophisticated its sensors or weapons. The operational canvas itself never shrank: the core waters of the Greenland-Iceland-UK corridor cover on the order of six hundred thousand square miles — an area larger than France and Germany combined — far beyond the reach of continuous physical presence by even a substantial escort fleet.

Reinforcement logic nevertheless endured. The Cold War concept embodied in Operation REFORGER — that Europe's security ultimately depends upon the ability to move forces across the Atlantic — did not vanish with the Warsaw Pact. The credibility of NATO's collective defence guarantee still rests on secure transatlantic lines of communication, despite the United States' growing strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific.

As former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen later observed, the Alliance had spent years assuming "the Euro-Atlantic area was at peace," a judgement that in retrospect understated the persistence of structural risk.

Few decisions illustrated this shift more clearly than the withdrawal of the United Kingdom's Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft. For several years Britain accepted what was widely described as a capability holiday in a domain that had previously been treated as indispensable. Allied cooperation mitigated operational risk, yet the symbolic effect was unmistakable: a gap in coverage where continuity had once been assumed.

The closure of the long-standing United States military presence at Keflavik in 2006 carried similar resonance. The decision reflected a judgement that the North Atlantic no longer demanded the same level of permanent attention. Strategic signals of this kind can have consequences beyond their immediate intent. History offers reminders that visible retrenchment is sometimes read by others as reduced resolve. Keflavik would later re-emerge as a rotational hub as Russian activity increased, underscoring that geography had not altered even if political focus had.

Meanwhile, Russia's maritime posture evolved steadily. Following the severe contraction of the 1990s, investment in the Northern Fleet resumed. New submarine classes entered service, infrastructure across the High North was refurbished, and patrol patterns became more regular. Long-range aviation flights into the North Atlantic approaches, frequently shadowed by NATO aircraft, provided a visible indicator that the region was again a space of strategic signalling rather than routine transit.

The pattern extended across the Arctic littoral, where a number of Soviet-era airfields and support bases along the Northern Sea Route fell into partial disuse or reduced readiness as funding and operational tempo declined.

President Vladimir Putin's characterisation of the Soviet collapse as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" captures the strategic context within which this rebuilding took place.

Open-source assessments suggest that the Northern Fleet today operates the majority of Russia's nuclear-powered submarines, including modern ballistic missile and attack boats, alongside specialised undersea capabilities. Quantitative comparisons with Cold War levels are imperfect, yet the qualitative improvement in platform capability is widely acknowledged.

China's growing interest in the Arctic adds a further dimension. Describing itself as a near-Arctic actor, Beijing has expanded scientific, commercial and diplomatic engagement across the region. While its direct military presence in the North Atlantic remains limited, the long-term implications of increased polar navigation and infrastructure investment broaden the strategic context in which the GIUK corridor sits.

At the same time, the undersea environment has become more crowded and more consequential. Subsea communication cables carry financial flows, digital traffic and military data essential to modern economies and defence systems. Offshore energy infrastructure has expanded. Vulnerabilities that once belonged primarily to naval planners now intersect with economic security and resilience.

Western responses have been gradual rather than abrupt. The United Kingdom's introduction of the P-8 Poseidon restored a sovereign fixed-wing anti-submarine capability. The Type 26 frigate programme — eight ships in total, with HMS Glasgow expected to enter service later this decade — is explicitly optimised for high-end anti-submarine warfare, replacing the Type 23 class that first entered service in 1990. Across NATO, exercises focused on undersea warfare have regained prominence.

Technology extends reach; it does not eliminate the requirement for presence. Mass, in maritime terms, remains a form of deterrent in its own right, even in an era of networked sensors and space-based surveillance.

History does not repeat mechanically; it behaves more like a structure subjected to cyclical stress, where familiar pressure points reappear unless the design adapts. The North Atlantic is one of those enduring stress points. Periods of calm can obscure structural realities, but they do not erase them.

In the next article we will examine how renewed Russian activity, the vulnerability of seabed infrastructure, and the changing balance of maritime capability are bringing the GIUK corridor back to the forefront of strategic planning.

Curated by Robin Ashby, Director General, U K Defence Forum. Drafted by ChatGPT 5.2.