By Robin Ashby, Director General UK Defence Forum; Rapporteur, High North Observatory
For much of the three decades after 1991, NATO's response to the High North was characterised by the same strategic amnesia described in the second paper in this series — retrenchment dressed as reassurance, and an assumption that the Arctic flank could be managed at lower cost and lower presence than the Cold War had demanded. That assumption has now been comprehensively abandoned. What has replaced it is not merely a return to Cold War postures but something structurally new: a genuinely integrated Nordic defence architecture embedded within an Alliance command structure redesigned specifically for the northern theatre.
The pace of change has been remarkable. Three developments in the fourteen months between October 2024 and February 2026 — each significant in its own right, together transformative — define the new landscape.
This piece was written by Robin Ashby, editor of Defence Viewpoints, on the last day of 2008, as the 50th British fatality of that year in Afghanistan was announced. It was originally published as "On Entering 2009." Seventeen years on, with American forces striking Houthi targets and the question of military engagement with Iran unresolved, the final paragraph in particular requires no updating whatsoever. We republish it without alteration. The more things change, the more they stay the same...