BRULOTTE: The North Atlantic is a strategic front again — Canada is not ready

Dr. Bryan Brulotte is Chairman of Sterling-Trust, a Canadian private equity firm. He brings more than four decades of leadership experience spanning the military, private, and public sectors.For most of the generation that followed the Cold War, Canadians had the luxury of forgetting about the North Atlantic. The Soviet Union disappeared, NATO expanded eastward, and the waters between North America and Europe seemed less like a strategic front than a vast and secure highway connecting friendly countries. That comfortable assumption is now dangerously out of date.The North Atlantic is becoming strategically important again, and Canada sits directly at its western entrance. Greenland, Iceland, the Arctic approaches, and the sea lanes connecting North America to Europe are once again becoming critical terrain as Russia rebuilds its military presence in the High North and China seeks greater access and influence across the Arctic. Geography has placed Canada at the centre of this emerging strategic theatre, whether we are prepared for it or not.The map explains why. Russian naval forces operating from the Kola Peninsula must pass through or operate around the maritime approaches stretching from Greenland through Iceland toward the United Kingdom before gaining unrestricted access to the wider North Atlantic. During the Cold War, NATO called this the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap, or GIUK Gap, and devoted enormous attention to monitoring Soviet submarines moving through it. NATO once again describes the GIUK Gap as a strategically vital transit corridor and early-warning zone.That matters because Russia remains a formidable maritime and undersea power. Its Northern Fleet protects part of Russia's nuclear deterrent and gives Moscow the ability to threaten the Atlantic sea lanes upon which reinforcement of Europe would depend in a major conflict. NATO's 2025 Alliance Maritime Strategy explicitly warns that Russia is upgrading its maritime forces, developing underwater reconnaissance and warfare capabilities, and retaining the capacity to disrupt Allied reinforcements and freedom of navigation..The Atlantic is not simply a military highway. It is an economic one. Trade in goods and services between Canada and the European Union (EU) reached $178.6 billion in 2025, making the EU Canada's second-largest trading partner after the United States. The ships moving across the Atlantic carry everything from energy and minerals to machinery, food, and manufactured goods, making secure Atlantic access an essential component of Canadian prosperity.Beneath those ships lies another strategic system that is largely invisible. Submarine telecommunications cables carry more than 99% of international data traffic, supporting financial transactions, government communications, cloud computing, and much of the digital economy. The International Telecommunication Union reports a global network of more than 500 operational cable systems stretching roughly 1.4 million kilometres, making the seabed itself an increasingly important part of modern national security.This is why recent incidents involving underwater infrastructure in European waters deserve more attention than they sometimes receive. An adversary does not necessarily need to sink a ship or attack a NATO base to impose enormous economic costs. Severing communications cables, interfering with energy infrastructure, jamming navigation systems, or conducting persistent surveillance of critical infrastructure can create disruption while keeping responsibility deliberately ambiguous.Greenland and Iceland consequently matter far beyond their populations or economies. Greenland overlooks the Arctic approaches and the western side of the GIUK Gap, while Iceland sits astride the routes connecting the Norwegian and Arctic seas to the open Atlantic. NATO's Military Committee visited Iceland this June and described the country as being at the heart of the GIUK Gap and effectively serving as NATO's eyes and ears in the North..NATO is already adapting. In February, the Alliance launched Arctic Sentry to strengthen deterrence and defence across the Arctic, while Finland and Sweden's membership has fundamentally improved NATO's strategic position in northern Europe. NATO has also shifted Denmark, Finland, and Sweden into the area of responsibility of Joint Force Command Norfolk, whose principal responsibilities include protecting the strategic sea lines connecting North America and Europe.Canada should understand what these changes mean. For decades, we behaved as though possessing an enormous Arctic territory and the world's longest coastline automatically made us an Arctic and Atlantic power. It does not. Geography creates strategic opportunity, but military capability determines whether a country can exploit it.Canada therefore needs to think simultaneously about the Arctic and the Atlantic. The Royal Canadian Navy requires sufficient ships and submarines to maintain a persistent presence rather than occasionally appearing in waters that we claim are strategically important. The Royal Canadian Air Force needs modern maritime patrol, surveillance, and long-range sensing capabilities, while Canada must accelerate investments in underwater surveillance, satellite coverage, northern infrastructure, ports, and communications.This is also where Canada's commitment to NATO's new spending target becomes more than an accounting exercise. At the 2025 Hague Summit, NATO allies agreed to invest 5% of GDP annually by 2035 on core defence and broader defence-and-security requirements. Canada should direct a meaningful portion of that investment toward capabilities that correspond to our geography: Arctic surveillance, submarines, maritime patrol aircraft, drones, sensors, infrastructure, and the ability to protect critical undersea systems..There is also an important opportunity here. Canada does not have to duplicate every military capability possessed by the United States or our European allies. We should instead become exceptionally good at defending the northern and Atlantic approaches that geography has assigned to us, while working closely with the United States, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom.China adds another dimension to the equation. Beijing has described itself as a "near-Arctic state," despite having no Arctic territory, and has demonstrated sustained interest in northern shipping routes, energy, critical minerals, scientific access, and infrastructure. NATO now explicitly identifies growing Chinese activity and increasing Russia-China cooperation in the Arctic as developments with strategic implications for the Alliance.None of this means that conflict in the North Atlantic is inevitable. The purpose of military strength is precisely the opposite: to make aggression, coercion, and interference less attractive by convincing potential adversaries that the cost will exceed any conceivable benefit. Deterrence works when capability is visible, credible, and backed by political will.Canada has spent too much of the post-Cold War period assuming that three oceans and a friendly superpower would insulate us from the world's strategic problems. Those oceans are no longer barriers. They are highways carrying our trade, our communications, our allies, and, potentially, our adversaries.The North Atlantic is becoming a strategic front again. Canada can either recognize that reality and become a serious Arctic and Atlantic power, or continue relying on others to defend the approaches to our own continent. Geography has already made the choice for us; what remains to be determined is whether Canada will finally act like the country the map says we are.Dr. Bryan Brulotte is Chairman of Sterling-Trust, a Canadian private equity firm. He brings more than four decades of leadership experience spanning the military, private, and public sectors.

BRULOTTE: The North Atlantic is a strategic front again — Canada is not ready

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