The Baltic Sea has clearly not become a NATO lake. The most recent incident of cable damage has highlighted, once again, the vulnerability of undersea energy and communications infrastructure — both in the region, and globally. NATO quickly decided to increase its Baltic presence. The details have not been announced, but its response will probably be similar to what followed the cutting of the Balticconnector and several cables in October 2023. This included additional maritime surveillance and AWACS flights, and the dispatch of four minehunters. NATO's actions, and later JEF deployments with similar purposes, underline the importance that Allies attach to including a visible capability component in any deterrence strategy — in this case, a surface naval presence both to deter and, if necessary, to respond to any suspicious activity, as well as to contribute to better maritime situational awareness

NATO's deployment will most likely end at some point. If a persistent deterrent naval presence is to be established, the NATO states that surround the Baltic Sea — including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — will need to step forward. However, the land-centric development of the Baltic states' defense forces has left their navies small and underpowered. Their at-sea capability is limited to a small number of mine warfare vessels and a handful of coastal patrol boats, whose operations are restricted in adverse weather. If Estonia is to play its part, it will need larger warships, perhaps in the 80- to 90-metre range, that can undertake sustained operations in poor conditions.

Estonia cannot, of course, procure such ships solely for the purpose of protecting critical infrastructure: a multirole capability would be necessary. In the Nordic-Baltic region, Sweden's Visby class corvette (73 metres, commissioned in 2009) and Finland's Pohjanmaa class (117 metres, planned for commission in 2028) both accommodate surveillance systems, command and control, anti-air and anti-ship missiles, torpedoes, mines, and helicopters, ensuring that these countries can fulfil the full range of naval tasks that are essential to the security of a coastal state.

Even these smaller warships, though, are expensive. Finland's fleet of four Pohjanmaa corvettes will cost 1.3 billion euros (2019 estimate) and have been financed from a special strategic fund outside the defense budget. If the Baltic states were to invest in such a capability — as we have argued they should — costs like these could be mitigated through a project to commonly acquire, maintain, train the crews of, and perhaps operate such vessels. Around the end of this decade, the service lives of the mine warfare vessels of all three Baltic states will come to an end, offering an opportunity for far-reaching decisions about Baltic naval procurement cooperation to be taken. This should help ensure the most effective and efficient acquisition of the larger ships apparently already included in Estonia's future plans.

Navies cooperate at the operational level too. A quick glance at the map above indicates that cable and pipeline protection is more an issue for Estonia than it is for its southern neighbors. Operational cooperation with Finland and Sweden will be a higher priority for this particular naval task (the map, based on open-source data is incomplete — for example, the internet cable between Ventspils and Sweden is not shown). Nonetheless, all eight Allies around the Baltic Sea have an interest in this issue and some degree of international coordination of their activities would be helpful. NATO's Commander Task Force Baltic, established in Rostock in October, is an obvious choice.

More broadly, though, and despite NATO's response to recent critical infrastructure incidents in the Baltic Sea, NATO (and the EU) places the primary responsibility for responding to hybrid attacks on the targeted country. As Russia increases its hybrid attacks throughout Europe, it makes sense for allies and partners to work together more across all domains, sharing information, pooling resources for responses, and demonstrating unity. A territorial attack will result in a collective response from NATO, but a hybrid attack — unless it is sufficiently serious to trigger Article 5 (a proposition so far not tested) — will mostly not.

Asking NATO (the U.S.) to underwrite yet another aspect of European security, however, is unlikely to be well received by the incoming Trump administration. Even inside Europe, finding consensus on just how to respond in the blurry hybrid domain is difficult. The JEF, a famously like-minded a group of nations, was, for example, unable to find full agreement to introducing a relatively mild maritime counter-hybrid instrument — checking proof of insurance of suspected Russian shadow fleet vessels — when leaders met in Tallinn in December.

Nonetheless, the European states clearly need to do more for their own security and to demonstrate that they are doing so. They should be ready to take on the larger part of any collective response to hybrid threats on the continent, either through sub-regional groups such as the JEF, or by further empowering the EU. The Baltic Sea may not be a NATO lake, but it need not become a maritime free for all.

This article was first published by the ICDS here.

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