RIGA - The United Kingdom has offered a "nuclear umbrella" to members of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) military partnership (the Baltic states, Nordics countries and the Netherlands) as part of a wider defence agreement.
The umbrella is a security guarantee by a nuclear-armed state to protect a non-nuclear ally.
The offer was confirmed during a visit by General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the First Sea Lord and Chief of the UK’s Naval Staff, to Finland on Monday, where he met with MP Heikki Autto (NCP), chair of parliament’s defence committee.
It is believed that the JEF member countries will sign an agreement at a meeting in Oslo in November.
The deal would mean a separate nuclear umbrella outside of Nato’s extended deterrence strategy offered by the US, UK and France to all non-nuclear member states within the alliance.
"Finland is under the nuclear umbrella. It is guaranteed by our submarines, which are patrolling the Atlantic right now," Jenkins said.
JEF is a coalition of ten like-minded countries-Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, and Sweden - that comprises high-readiness forces capable of responding rapidly to crises in the high north and Northern Europe.
The coalition was established in 2014 on the initiative of the United Kingdom in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Finland and Sweden joined the JEF in 2017, even before these countries were admitted to NATO. The JEF is now considered a first-response force that complements NATO.
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