The United Kingdom has offered to extend its national nuclear deterrent to nine partner countries in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). The corresponding agreement is expected to be signed in November.
The countries in question are Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The Finnish newspaper Iltalehti reported this, citing First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff General Sir Gwyn Jenkins and Heikki Autto, chair of the Finnish parliament’s Defence Committee.
All of these states are already NATO members and are therefore formally covered by the Alliance’s nuclear umbrella. The point of the British initiative is to explicitly link the UK’s national nuclear forces to the JEF, a UK-led rapid-response format for Northern Europe, the Baltic, the North Atlantic and the Arctic. According to Jenkins, British nuclear-powered submarines play a key role.
“Finland is under the nuclear umbrella. This is guaranteed by our submarines, which are currently patrolling the Atlantic,” he said during a visit to Finland.
The British embassy in Helsinki later clarified that Jenkins’s remarks were based on the fact that JEF countries are NATO members and therefore operate within the Alliance’s wider deterrence framework. On this reading, a separate nuclear umbrella outside NATO is not being created.
In November, JEF countries are expected to sign an agreement on the creation of new combat formations. According to Finnish sources, the meeting may take place in Oslo. The new units are expected to receive wartime defence plans and to be able to act without the mandatory activation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Britain’s nuclear deterrent is intended to serve as the strategic “backstop” for these conventional forces.
The JEF is a UK-led military partnership of ten countries. The format was created in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea and is designed for rapid response to threats on Europe’s northern flank. Finland and Sweden joined it before they entered NATO.
