Iceland has no standing army, yet its location, submarine cables, ports, energy systems and reliance on imported goods make it indispensable to NATO — and potentially vulnerable to the hybrid threats reshaping security across the High North.
Geography has returned to the centre of European security
For decades, Iceland’s absence of a standing army appeared compatible with its image as a peaceful and geographically isolated Nordic country. However, renewed strategic competition in the Arctic and North Atlantic has exposed a more complicated reality. Iceland occupies a pivotal position in the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom Gap, commonly known as the GIUK Gap: the maritime corridor connecting the Arctic Ocean with the wider Atlantic. During the Cold War, this area was essential to monitoring Soviet naval movements; today, its importance has returned as NATO seeks to track submarine activity, protect transatlantic supply routes and secure the infrastructure linking Europe and North America.
A strategic asset that also creates vulnerability
Iceland’s position gives the country considerable strategic value, but it also concentrates risks on an island with a small population, no permanent armed forces and a heavy dependence on international trade. Its economy and public services require the continuous arrival of fuel, food, machinery, medicines and industrial components. The country’s digital connections, meanwhile, depend largely on a limited number of submarine cables. A prolonged interruption affecting transport, communications or energy infrastructure could therefore become a national emergency even without a conventional military attack taking place.
The cables connecting Iceland to the world
Iceland’s principal international data routes include FARICE-1, DANICE and IRIS, operated by Farice, together with Greenland Connect, which links Iceland with Greenland and Canada. IRIS, completed in 2022, added a direct connection between Iceland and Ireland and significantly increased the system’s capacity and geographical diversity. These cables support ordinary internet traffic, public administration, banking, telecommunications and the country’s growing data-centre industry. Their importance makes them valuable national assets, but also illustrates the wider dependence of Nordic societies on infrastructure located beneath the sea and largely invisible to the public.
The danger of a coordinated hybrid crisis
The most plausible threat may not be a direct assault on Iceland, but a coordinated sequence of apparently separate incidents designed to create uncertainty and overload the country’s response systems. Damage to an undersea cable could coincide with cyberattacks against ports or logistics companies, interference with satellite-navigation signals and disinformation intended to obscure responsibility. Individually, each event might be treated as a technical failure or criminal act; together, they could disrupt communications, transport and essential services before NATO members had agreed on whether the situation constituted an armed attack.
Below the threshold of Article 5
This ambiguity is one of the defining characteristics of contemporary hybrid warfare. NATO’s collective-defence guarantee was designed around the concept of an identifiable armed attack, while hostile states can now exert pressure through cyber operations, sabotage, economic coercion and interference with civilian infrastructure. The difficulty lies not only in preventing such actions, but in attributing them quickly and deciding when a pattern of disruption requires a collective response. Iceland’s dependence on a small number of critical systems makes it a particularly revealing example of this challenge.
Keflavík and Iceland’s unusual role in NATO
Iceland was a founding member of NATO in 1949 despite having no standing military. Its contribution has traditionally rested on geography, civilian capabilities and the facilities available to allied forces. Keflavík Air Base remains central to air surveillance and maritime operations in the North Atlantic, while NATO aircraft periodically conduct air-policing and surveillance missions from the country. Iceland also participates in alliance planning, hosts exercises and provides infrastructure that allows allied forces to operate across the region. In this model, national security depends on the ability to receive assistance rapidly and keep ports, airports, communications and supply networks functioning during a crisis.
Civil preparedness becomes part of defence
Protecting Iceland consequently requires more than aircraft, ships or radar systems. It demands a whole-of-society approach bringing together government agencies, municipalities, emergency services, telecommunications companies, energy providers, transport operators and the wider population. Emergency communications need alternatives to terrestrial and submarine networks, while essential services require tested contingency plans. Strategic reserves of fuel, medicine, food and replacement equipment can reduce the consequences of an interruption, but maintaining them involves long-term investment and close cooperation between public authorities and private companies.
Private infrastructure and collective security
Much of the infrastructure supporting modern national security is commercially owned or operated. Cable landing stations, data centres, ports, power systems and logistics networks serve civilian markets, yet they also perform functions essential to national resilience. This makes clear rules on ownership, investment screening and security standards increasingly important. Iceland must remain open to legitimate foreign investment while preventing strategically important assets from becoming dependent on opaque capital, vulnerable technology or suppliers connected to potentially hostile governments.
The wider Nordic and Arctic dimension
Iceland’s security cannot be separated from developments elsewhere in the Nordic region and the Arctic. Greenland’s growing strategic importance, increased military activity around Norway and the integration of Finland and Sweden into NATO have created a more closely connected northern security environment. The GIUK Gap is therefore no longer merely a line on a Cold War map. It is part of a broader network extending from the North American Arctic through Greenland and Iceland to the Norwegian Sea, the British Isles and continental Europe.
Resilience as an economic investment
Security expenditure is often discussed as though it competes with economic development, but the Icelandic case shows how closely the two are connected. Financial services, fisheries, tourism, energy-intensive industries and digital businesses all depend on stable communications, transport and power. Investment in redundant cables, satellite backup, protected energy installations, port capacity, surveillance and emergency stocks can therefore be understood as insurance for the productive economy. The cost of preparedness may be substantial, but the economic damage caused by a prolonged disruption would be considerably greater.
An island that the Atlantic alliance cannot overlook
Iceland’s peaceful traditions and lack of an army do not make the country irrelevant to European defence. On the contrary, they underline how security has expanded beyond conventional armed forces. The resilience of cables, ports, airports, energy networks and civilian institutions may determine whether Iceland can withstand coercion and continue supporting allied operations during a crisis. In the contemporary North Atlantic, protecting the systems beneath the surface has become as important as controlling the sea and air above them.
Suggested Online Sources
Farice – Iceland’s international connectivity network; NATO – Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic; International Institute for Strategic Studies – The strategic significance of the GIUK Gap; CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues – The GIUK Gap in a new strategic age; Ciena – Farice and Iceland’s international cable connections
