The strategic drivers behind establishing such an exercise – which could be similar in construct to the USN’s ‘Rim of the Pacific’ (RIMPAC) event, held bi-annually off Hawaii – would be to reflect the region’s growing significance. This significance is accelerating, as climate change potentially opens up new sea lines of communication (SLOCs) across the polar regions.
Such SLOCs would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans geophysically; they would also reflect the increasing geostrategic connection being drawn between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres by the return of state-based competition and conflict, and by Western need to counter simultaneously a peer competitor in each theatre (namely, Russia and China).
“Just as we have a RIMPAC exercise every two years, I could see in the future that we would have an exercise – not necessarily led by the United States, but led by another country – that would be centred on the polar ice rim,” Adm Gilday told the RN First Sea Lord’s Sea Power Conference 2023, hosted at Lancaster House in London, in partnership with the Council on Geostrategy and King’s College London, on 16 May.
“We should think big in terms of large exercises up there with like-minded navies, to basically send the message that this area is really important strategically, [and] it needs to remain open and free.”
Admiral Michael M. Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations of the U.S. Navy
Adm Gilday pointed to several specific events and sustained trends that are shaping Western strategic focus on the Euro-Atlantic polar region.
“We no longer just talk about the trans-Atlantic nature of the [NATO] alliance. We are going to start talking about the trans-Polar aspect much more often. I think it’s going to drive our behaviour,” CNO said. Here, he noted, Finland’s recent accession and Sweden’s anticipated accession to NATO have been fundamental in shifting NATO focus further north in the Euro-Atlantic theatre.
“I think that [region] is increasingly going to get more attention as it becomes an area of more intense economic competition,” Adm Gilday continued. Underlining the impact of climate change on global trade through the prospective opening up of Arctic SLOCs, CNO added:
“Within the next couple of decades, the trade routes between Asia and Europe will fundamentally change.”
Moreover, there is already a naval operational element to the increasing security linkage between the two theatres, with European navies regularly operating with the USN in the Indo-Pacific theatre, Adm Gilday explained. “You increasingly see combined patrols by US and European navies out of the European theatre, whether it’s in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, or further east in the South China Sea,” he said. “So, I think we’re on a trajectory right now that is trans-regional, that is all-domain, and that has driven us even closer.”
“The obvious natural bridge between the Atlantic and the Pacific … is the Arctic,” CNO continued. “Combined [naval] patrols up there are increasing.”
