Germany’s cooperation with Norway, Sweden and Finland in the field of security and defense in the mid-2020s

Annotation

By the early 2020s, Germany had begun to significantly increase its military presence in the forward part of NATO’s area of responsibility — primarily in Eastern and Northern Europe. This article examines the recent evolution of Germany’s relations with Norway, Sweden and Finland in the field of security and defense. The methods of chronological and comparative analysis are used, along with the principles of neorealist theory. The author explores Germany’s steps towards strategic penetration into the Arctic, based on cooperation with Norway in the mid-2010s to early 2020s, and Berlin’s gradually developing support for Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO. All the decisions were considered in the context of a gradual yet consistent tightening of Germany’s approach to “containing” Russia. The study analyzes three Germany’s Arctic strategies (2013; 2019; 2024) and the increasing importance and share of security and defense issues within them. The paper discusses the specific features of the functioning of the N5+1 format (five Nordic countries and Germany) at the highest level, and the securitization of the content of the negotiations. In developing bilateral political contacts in the mid-2020s, Berlin paid the greatest attention to Stockholm, viewing Sweden as a potential leader in Northern Europe. The main reason for the decline in the intensity of high-level contacts with Norway was the limited military resources of Germany. This was due to both the slow growth of the Bundeswehr’s overall strength and the difficulty of intensifying the deployment of its forces simultaneously in the Baltic Sea region and the Arctic. The study analyzed a range of specific solutions involving the rational deployment, in terms of timing and location, of German corvettes, frigates, mountain infantry and fighter aircraft. The author concludes that Germany’s bilateral cooperation with both Sweden and Norway as key regional partners will remain unchanged in the long term.

About authors

Philipp O. Trunov, Dr. Sci (Polit.), Leading Researcher
Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nakhimovsky pr., 51/21, Moscow, Russia
1trunov@mail.ru, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7092-4864

Keywords

Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, NATO, Arctic, Baltic region, “containment”, political cooperation, N5+1, Bundeswehr, military exercises

DOI

https://doi.org/10.37482/issn2221-2698.2026.64.229

UDC

327.5(430)(481)(485)(480)(045)