Norway spy agency sees U.S. pullback as security risk

Norway’s foreign intelligence service sees a growing risk of a more assertive Russia and China as the U.S. pulls back from international cooperation and institutions.

The weakening of the global rules-based order is “shaking the foundations of Norwegian security,” Nils Andreas Stensones, the head of the service, known as E-tjeneste, told reporters in Oslo on Friday.

“The political behavior in Washington influences how Beijing and Moscow are thinking and maybe how they are acting in the future,” Stensones said in an interview.

Norway is one of the members of the NATO alliance that shares a border with Russia. The Nordic nation has sought to play up its importance for U.S. security as it monitors Russia’s nuclear-armed Northern Fleet near its frontier. Yet it has also reiterated its backing for neighboring Denmark that’s faced pressure from President Donald Trump who wants to take over Greenland.

At the same time, speculation has grown that Russia may have designs on Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, which Oslo has vowed to protect.

“A change of the status quo in the Arctic is raising the risk that Russia and China also alter their ambitions and behavior in the region,” the service said in its annual threat-assessment. It highlighted how Moscow and Beijing are “closely following Washington’s statements on ambitions in Greenland.”

A Danish intelligence agency in December for the first time described the U.S. as a potential security risk, pointing out that the U.S. is “now using its economic and technological strength as a tool of power, also toward allies and partners.”

Stensones said his agency’s view differs from that of his Danish colleagues, mainly because “there are no rhetorical threats from the U.S.” against Norway.

Norway’s “great” cooperation with the U.S. may influence the willingness of Russia and China “to use power and threaten using power,” he said.