By Ingeborg Breines* – World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates
Last time I wrote about the militarization in the Arctic was in July 2023 under the heading NATO’s Northern expansion – encircling of Russia – consequences and threats. This time I will concentrate on NATO and US-bases in the Nordic countries, primarily as seen from Norway. And let me state already at the outset that the situation has become dramatically worse with also Sweden and Finland becoming members of NATO – and with an enormous expansion of US bases or so-called “joint areas” in the Nordic countries, with a present goal of 44 bases. With these bases USA is in fact able to attack Russia, next door, with nuclear weapons without the knowledge of the Nordic countries. A potential war between USA and Russia risks to be played out on Norwegian and Nordic soil.
As for Norway this happens in blatant disregard of the previous policy of having neither foreign bases nor nuclear weapons on Norwegian soil in times of peace and in disregard of paragraph one of the Constitution guaranteeing Norwegian sovereignty. This ongoing heavy militarization of the Arctic will provide not more security, as proclaimed by the government, but less! The situation can be compared to the dangerous tension that came out of the planned stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962. The escalation is seen as a serious and additional threat to Russian security. If the Russian president’s main security concern is to keep NATO away from the Russian border, he has indeed obtained the opposite.
The Nordic countries have, through this process, become part of the global network of US bases – considered to be between 800 and 1000 in almost half of the countries of the world. For comparison, Russia is supposed to have eight bases on foreign ground and China one. Nordic defence has been Americanized in a short time, nearly without debate. And not to forget, the American military is a tremendous polluter and the bases are environmentally disastrous. They may be harbouring nuclear weapons; they pollute the air, the earth and the water; they are not under national law and protection, but under US dominance. International law, as developed by the UN, is replaced by the so-called “rules based order” profiting the Western big powers – whether countries or multinationals.
Norway has for many years been considered the “eyes and ears of NATO in the north”, which in practical terms not least means sharing vital military information with the US government. People, to the extent that they are informed, are bewildered as to what is NATO and what is the US. The confusion created is probably deliberate. The public has over time been led to think that NATO is essential to Norwegian security. With the uncertainties and the dramatic decline in US democracy, people may well have been much more sceptical to these new bases if they knew they were based on bilateral agreements between the US and Norway as initiated by the USA, with no other link to NATO than the fact that NATO is almost totally controlled by the US.
Norway has previously been of the view that a friendly country with good internal welfare systems, solidarity with the poor and generous foreign development aid, as well as being a strong supporter of the UN, would be the best security guarantee. Now, with NATO and the “Stoltenberg-effect” on the Norwegian government and his native country, the majority, at least as expressed by politicians, media and many academics, seems to think that peace necessitates military might and ever more lethal weapons.
Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty was until recently a political divisive issue in Norway between the traditionally pro-military and capitalistic right wing parties and the socio democrats on one side and the more progressive left on the other. The fact that most people in Norway are against nuclear weapons does not seem to stop the support for an oversized military alliance based on nuclear strategies and with a first use doctrine. And no one so far is seriously asking for a referendum, nor insists that the policy of no to foreign bases and nuclear weapons on Norwegian soil be integrated into the Norwegian Constitution. The USA is braving or occupying parts of Norway almost to full applause.
Of the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Iceland and Norway were among the founding countries of NATO, whilst Sweden and Finland have been non- allied countries, only seeking membership in NATO after the Russian attack on Ukraine 24.02.22. Both Sweden and Finland had, however, been so-called “partners in peace” for some years and with NATO becoming more and more global, they have also participated in different NATO exercises and so called NATO- “operations” out-of-area.
It was the Norwegian Labour party, which in a very clandestine and non-democratic way managed to get Norway into NATO in 1949 and according to historians also influenced Denmark. In Iceland there were riots in the streets of Reykjavik 4. April 1949 when the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C. and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, (Bjarni Benediktsson,) said on behalf of his mostly pacifist country: ”My people are unarmed and have been unarmed since the days of our Viking forefathers. We neither have nor can have an army…But our country is, under certain circumstances, of vital importance for the safety of the North Atlantic Area.” And the result, US bases were established in Keflavik in Iceland and Thule in Greenland!
The Norwegian Prime Minister at the time, (Einar Gerhardsen), who wanted to keep good relations also with the Soviet Union, having liberated the northern part of the country from Nazi reign, promised prior to entering NATO, that that there would be ”no foreign military bases in Norway in times of peace”. At the time Norway was the only NATO country with a border with the Soviet Union. For many years it seemed important to Norway to keep a certain balance between deterrence and reassurance in the dialogue with the Soviet Union and later with Russia.
Now the US has been granted four new so called “joint areas” in Norway (in 2023) and recently the Government has allowed eight new American bases. The decision will be rubberstamped by Parliament this spring. This comes in addition to the sophisticated American military installations of surveillance and spy-facilities – in the air – on the land – in the sea, that the Norwegian government has already allowed for years. These decisions have to a very limited degree been known to the public, perhaps not even to the majority of Parliamentarians. The effects of the new and extended agreement of military cooperation between USA and Norway are of course of huge concern to the peace movement.
The government has also allowed allied nuclear submarines into two Norwegian harbours, in Bergen and Tromsø. NATO and US military exercises are much more frequent, bigger and closer to the Russian border than ever before. We have just had 20 000 soldiers training on a potential war with Russia on North Norwegian ground. Nordic Response 2024 was part of the NATO Steadfast Defender with 90 000 soldiers as well as of the British-led naval exercise, Joint Warrior. These exercises show full disregard for the huge cod-fisheries that take place at the coast in the north exactly at this time as well as the ongoing transfer of reindeers from inland winter pastures to coastal spring pastures. The war-games interrupt and threatens both local and indigenous food security and survival.
Military budgets are skyrocketing and will soon reach the 2 % of GDP demand by NATO – whilst inflation, higher interests rates and diminishing welfare programs create difficulties for people with ordinary income and below – and solidarity with the south is diminishing.
Militarism is in fact the black hole of democracy – also in our countries ranking on top of the global successful-democracy-list.
There are many reasons for looking more carefully at what is happening in the far north. The Arctic is presently attracting huge international interest as the global warming and the melting of the ice open up for more fisheries, more drilling of oil and gaz and extractions of minerals from the sea bed, and, not least, allow for new and efficient transportation routes notably in the North-East passage with new possibilities for trading between the West and the far East. The location of the Arctic and this new situation with broader access to valuable natural resources adds to the tension and already heavy militarization of the area.
This happens in parallel to a very sad weakening of ordinary, friendly, cultural, diplomatic and business relations between Norway and Russia. Norway almost fully participate in US and EU sanctions. Russia is excluded from the very important Arctic Council despite the fact that half of the Arctic belongs to Russia. A new Iron Curtain is established with detrimental effects not least on the important cooperation between the different indigenous groups (The Sami population is in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia), as well as on environmental protection and safety at sea.
For many years it was important to Norway to keep a certain balance between deterrence and reassurance in the dialogue with the Soviet Union and later with Russia. Now the militaristic definition is growing stronger – and we have to protest vigorously! We need more both “human security” and “common security”, as defined by the Palme Commission years back, which became so important for ending the former Cold War.
Instead of the old patriarchal model of economic growth, militarism, competition and confrontation, with warfare over welfare, which risks leading ultimately to apocalypse, we acutely need to strengthen our peace- and disarmament processes, including eliminating nuclear arms, and in stead build trust and international solidarity. NATO must never replace the UN.
There are difficult and urgent tasks ahead of us. A good start, ahead of the marking of the 75 years of NATO in the US in July of this year, would be to insist on the closing down of US military bases on foreign ground and by encouraging NATO-countries not to hesitate to use NATO paragraph 13 which says: Any body having been a member for a year, can leave the organisation by informing the US government, who will then inform the others. April 2024
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*Ingeborg Breines (born 14 August 1945 in Singerfjord) is a Norwegian peace educator. She is senior advisor to the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. She served as director of the Women and a Culture of Peace Programme of UNESCO and from 2009 to 2016 was President of the International Peace Bureau