From Reluctant Ally to Worthy Ally

Björn Bjarnason takes the phrase Icelandic ministers now use – that Iceland should be a "worthy ally" in NATO – and asks when the country stopped being the "reluctant ally" of Donald E. Nuechterlein's 1961 book, which portrayed an Iceland that joined Western defence out of necessity rather than conviction.

From reluctance to consensus. Neutral from 1918, Iceland was pulled into Western defence by Cold War realities: the 1946 Keflavík Agreement, NATO membership in 1949 (opposed violently by communists), and the 1951 defence agreement with the United States, joined on the condition that Iceland need neither raise an army nor host bases in peacetime. Bjarnason argues Iceland long treated membership as a matter of national interest rather than loyalty to larger powers using its position as leverage during the Cod Wars with Britain, and balancing Western ties against the Soviet market when Britain banned Icelandic fish, which in turn spurred US financial aid to keep the country aligned. This was also a cultural struggle over American influence on Icelandic identity. The turning point came in the 1970s: the 1974 "Varið land" petition, signed by 55,522 voters against expelling the US force, reframed it as essential to national security rather than a symbol of foreign interference. By 1978 the principle of Western defence cooperation was settled; debate shifted only to its scale.

The North Atlantic reawakens. When the Keflavík base closed and the US flag came down in 2006, the prevailing view held that the North Atlantic had lost strategic value and Russia was a potential partner. That assumption eroded fast – Putin's 2007 Munich speech, the 2014 annexation of Crimea (which returned the GIUK gap to NATO planning), and decisively Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which made Iceland a key link in NATO's North Atlantic defence once more. With Finland and Sweden in NATO, all the Nordic countries now sit under one allied command for the first time; Iceland falls under NATO's Norfolk command, with new harbour facilities at Helguvík and, since 2023, US nuclear-submarine visits. Bjarnason notes this has unfolded with little public debate in Iceland, where discussion has focused on EU ties which, he argues, cannot replace the United States as Iceland's security guarantor.

What a worthy ally owes. NATO, he insists, is an alliance of action, not a debate club: credibility rests on the capacity to act, not on declarations. Because Iceland is unarmed and geographically pivotal, special responsibility falls on the civilian side of security – airports, harbours, communications, radar, energy, cyber-security, and civil defence – much of it Iceland's own to deliver. He is sharply critical of a governance failure: after 2006 Iceland never restructured the centralised apparatus built around the US force, leaving responsibility unclear. He argues execution should have passed to the justice ministry and its agencies (Coast Guard, police, civil defence), with the foreign ministry retaining international policy — the kind of clear chain of command that has let the other Nordic states build rapidly. Citing Varða's own report on disaster preparedness, he notes Icelanders are willing but that resilience weakens where responsibility and communication lines are unclear.

Conclusion. The 2026 defence and security policy – Iceland's first – reaffirmed NATO and the US relationship as cornerstones while stressing greater participation, domestic readiness, and clearer institutional responsibility. Bjarnason welcomes this but warns that leadership ambitions must be matched by capacity. The era in which NATO membership was a fundamental source of political conflict is over, even as Iceland's military importance has risen again. Iceland can no longer shelter behind a US force that handles execution; that responsibility now rests on Icelandic institutions. A worthy ally, he concludes, is made not by declarations or speeches but by demonstrable responsibility – strong institutions and the capacity to do what has been agreed – with the first duty being to secure its own citizens. Iceland has long since moved past reluctance; the task of the coming years is to live up to what a worthy ally is expected to be.