Reflecting on One Year of War: A Transformational Year in Maritime NATO​

By James H. Bergeron

In 2022, the world witnessed Russian aggression in Ukraine, the return of mine threats and other attacks on shipping in the Black Sea, and a greater awareness of the vulnerability of subsea infrastructure. The blockade of Ukrainian grain threatened food supply on a global scale. All these threats had a maritime dimension, some of them a dominant one.

The Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) in Northwood, U.K. was called on to lead maritime NATO’s response to the war that  began in February, support maritime security, assure Allies and deter Russia from expanding its war to NATO. The year proved transformational for MARCOM and for the Alliance’s deterrence and defense posture at sea.

The maritime dimension of NATO is a spectrum and continuum; a strategic unity that links the Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) across the Atlantic; the North Atlantic and GIUK Gap, the Norwegian Sea, the Arctic passages to the Pole, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. But also, beyond that, to the global seas and oceans that feed our trade and commerce. In the context of the current crisis, the seas matter tactically due to the potential threat of sea-based missile attack on Allied ships or indeed land targets. It matters operationally in the ability of an adversary to disrupt SLOCs between North America and Europe and within the NATO Area of Responsibility. And it matters politically and strategically as the symbol of our essential connectedness as an Alliance.

Deterrence is NATO’s prime focus but was given a new urgency after the Russian illegal annexation of Crimea and the War in the Donbas. NATO Summits in Wales 2014 and Warsaw 2016 expanded and reoriented its NATO Response Force towards collective defense. The command structure reforms of 2018 saw the establishment of Joint Force Command Norfolk to secure the Atlantic SLOCs. And within NATO, new thinking saw the release of the NATO Military Strategy and then the Concept for Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) which set us up very well, I believe, for the challenges we faced from December 2021 to the present.

The specifics of DDA are classified, but the essential point of it is the appreciation that credible deterrent posture and defense planning must deal with all of NATO’s geography. There is no crisis or conflict with a peer power in one area only, to be addressed by one small NRF task force, all deployed to one place at one time. Rather, the Alliance needs to present dilemmas for potential aggression along several vectors, tailored to the effects needed in each area but reinforcing all of them. A further key element is the need to effectively coordinate NATO and national activity to leverage the totality of Allied maritime power in planning and establishing NATO’s overall deterrent posture. Adversaries can tell the difference between mere activity and a credible posture. Sea power excels at delivering these kinds of effects.

As NATO’s Theatre Maritime Component Commander and Principal Maritime Advisor to SACEUR, a great part of this command and coordination responsibility fell on MARCOM’s shoulders. The headquarters has been intensively busy, especially since last February. MARCOM commands NATO’s four Standing Maritime Groups – the Standing Naval Forces (SNF) of two Frigate/Destroyer task groups and two mine countermeasures task groups, as well as our Operation Sea Guardian focused on maritime security in the Mediterranean. Force generation in previous years was a challenge, but not in 2022.

Since March of that year, the SNF have been at or near full strength for the first time in well more than a decade, with 26-29 ships under MARCOM’s Operational Control. On a typical ratio of 3.7:1 between the ships required in national inventory to have a fully trained, certified, ready warship deployed at sea, if MARCOM was a navy, it would be one with fifty DDG/FFG and thirty MCMs in its order of battle. That is larger than any individual navy in NATO other than the United States. Being fully resourced in 2022 provided SACEUR and MARCOM with greatly enhanced flexibility and deterrence management options. MARCOM was able to respond quickly to Allied calls for deterrent presence and assurance throughout the year. It is very important that nations continue their excellent support in 2023.

The second critical task as Theatre Maritime Commander was coordination with national navies to deliver the deterrent posture that the North Atlantic Council has directed amidst changing tactical balances and the cascade of events of a Europe in wartime. The response of Allied navies to the crisis was to increase our deterrence and defense posture at sea, strengthen interoperability and become as agile and flexible as possible. On a typical day, the balance between deployed Allied and Russian maritime forces ranges from 2:1 on a bad day, to more than 4:1 on an ever more common good day. But with such scale advantages come a potential vulnerability: NATO’s inability to combine that fleet, to join up those ‘blue dots’ in an integrated, effective way. Which is why a critical component of MARCOM’s command, coordination and exercise strategies is to ensure that Alliance maritime forces are capable of rapid force integration, and that this is understood by any adversary.

Our ability to act coherently – for deterrent effect – was strikingly demonstrated in the Spring of 2022 when MARCOM played a key coordinating role between four Allied Carrier Strike Groups: the TRUMAN strike group commanded by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRKFORNATO) in the Adriatic under NATO Command, itself a first. The CHARLES DE GAULLE strike group in the Eastern Mediterranean, the CAVOUR strike group in the Central Med, and the PRINCE OF WALES strike group in the North Atlantic. All but the TRUMAN under national command, but effectively aligned and correctly positioned to demonstrate forward defense and contest any move against, or coercion of, the Alliance in those uncertain early months of the war. The initiative led to a regular Maritime Strike Forum, co-hosted by MARCOM and STRKFORNATO, to share ideas and coordinate carrier strike presence across the NATO AOR.

But we were also reminded that sea power is more than battleships, or their modern equivalents. There are high suspicions that Russia was responsible for the Nordstream pipeline explosions. Their blockade on Ukrainian exports of grain, not justified by the laws of war, threatened to make grain unaffordable for large parts of the developing world. As a result, NATO is actively considering how it can support Allies in the area of critical seabed infrastructure and keeps an eye on the food supply challenge out of the Black Sea.

The Alliance Maritime Strategy of 2011 considered maritime security solely in the frame of private action. The classic case was Horn of Africa piracy. But in the noughties, we increasingly saw insurgents and proxy actors impact maritime security such as the Houthis in Yemen and the warring sides in Libya. Then there were direct but denied state attacks on shipping by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Gulf. In 2022 this paradigm of maritime security as a non-state affair imploded with Russian attacks and losses of merchant vessels, the grain crisis, floating mines in the Black Sea, and the pipeline explosions. The Strategic Concept adopted in Madrid recognized this shift (in para 24) where it committed to strengthening posture and awareness to deter and defend against all threats, uphold freedom of navigation, secure maritime trade routes and protect main lines of communication, threats more state than non-state in origin.

In sum, we learned some important lessons in 2022, many with heavy maritime relevance. Once the dice of war is rolled, it is extremely hard to put the clock back. Deterrence really matters and is worth shoring up at sea. The Ukraine conflict also pushed aside the notion that any 21st century great power war would necessarily be short. Once Russia had lost their initial gambit on collapsing the government in Kyiv, the conflict became a protracted, attritional ground campaign. This puts a premium on the transatlantic SLOCs and the materiel reinforcement that only the U.S. can provide in a protracted conflict. The ending of European energy dependence on Russia means that strategic quantities of energy, especially LNG, are and will be transported by sea. An asset and a potential vulnerability. Finally, critical undersea infrastructure is a fertile terrain for grey zone attacks.

2023 will see the Alliance leaders meet in Vilnius to deliver on the commitments made at Warsaw and to agree further steps to enhance NATO’s deterrence and defense posture. Maritime NATO – the headquarters, the Standing Forces, the Allied fleets – are at work on the seas every day to deliver that deterrent posture.

James Henry Bergeron is the Political Advisor to the Commander of NATO’s Allied Maritime Command and was previously the POLAD to Commander Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO. He has advised eleven maritime and joint force commanders on the politico-military dimension of Allied operations and was one of the authors of the NATO Maritime Strategy of 2011. He is an Honorary Professor of the University of Plymouth in the UK and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has published over 20 articles and book chapters in the fields of international affairs, strategy and international law.

This article is offered in a personal capacity. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or of any Ally.

The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.