The update the Alliance Maritime Strategy 2025

In an article in 2024 for the Spanish Institute of programs of study (IEEE) on the present and future of the Alliance's maritime posture, the need was raised for "a new Alliance maritime strategy that defines all current challenges at sea for allied navies and report national governments on the most pressing needs of their navies."[1]. Almost two years later, the Alliance has finally released an update the 2011 Alliance Maritime Strategy (AMS).

The new update at a time when the war in Ukraine is approaching its fifth year, the Red Sea crisis and its impact on maritime security in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea itself appears to have subsided, but the Western Indian Ocean has seen a slight uptick in piracy cases. In addition, China continues to strengthen ties with the Russian Federation through regular naval exercises throughout the year, while the size of its navy and coast guard continues to grow, displaying a hostile attitude toward its neighbors in the South China Sea region.

The 2025 version of the AMS, although an update original document, offers important clues about the change of direction that the Alliance is taking in the maritime sphere. This article the Allied maritime strategy by comparing the two versions of the AMS, paying special attention to the update and exploring its most notable aspects.

On maritime strategy and maritime power

NATO remains, in essence, a maritime alliance due to its geographical configuration, with Europe as an appendix the large Eurasian landmass projecting out into the sea, and the Atlantic as the fabric that binds together the allies of both continents. The Alliance needs a maritime strategy insofar as stability and the free flow of goods and services around its maritime periphery depend on a maritime power that guarantees stability and freedom of navigation.

Without going into too much theoretical detail, maritime strategy can be broadly understood as "the art and science of using maritime power to achieve sea-related goals." It is the main instrument used to define the strategic and political objectives to be pursued, as well as the means necessary to achieve them and the ways in which those means are to be employed. Unlike at the national level, developing a maritime strategy for an alliance with 32 member states (each with its own political objectives and different strategic realities) is no easy task. The maritime power of each member is shaped and influenced in particular ways by various factors, including physical, geopolitical, and identity-related aspects.

With regard to NATO's maritime power, aligning visions and coordinating contributions from all members remains a central concern. Furthermore, Europe plays a role that is just as important as that of its allies across the Atlantic. Despite the negative evolution of European naval forces over the last three decades, analyzed and explained in depth by Jeremy Stöhs, Europe and its navies remain a significant asset with considerable potential. As Professor Geoffrey Till states:

“Its Economics is in the same league as China and the United States, and well above that of Russia. Its maritime industries remain substantial and remarkably innovative. Its collective naval strength is already potentially significant and will likely become even more so in the future. The core topic the extent to which these strengths are well coordinated across the European continent.”[3]

In this context, European navies have been struggling for years to expand the size and capabilities of their fleets, while facing ever-scarce budgets and competition from other branches of the armed forces. The period of reduced investment in naval and military capabilities in general during the first decades of this century has had consequences that are visible in situations such as that in the Red Sea, where allied forces have been unable to put an end to the attacks launched by the Houthis in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden regions. The crisis has involved numerous European navies, which have provided escort and support to merchant ships threatened by the Houthis, while attacks on land targets have been carried out solely by US and British forces.

The difficulties experienced in the Red Sea have reminded Europe and the world that maritime power requires constant commitment and sustained investment to be truly effective and useful. In view of this, it is clear that the Alliance will need a coherent and rational vision to guide its efforts at sea; a vision which, as will be seen in the following sections, it has sought to provide with the publication of the Alliance Maritime Strategy (AMS) in 2011 and its update 2025.

The Alliance's 2011 Maritime Strategy

A few decades after the end of the Cold War, the AMS was published in 2011, linked to the 2010 Strategic Concept. It was the first official document of the Alliance published under that name, although, in internship, some (including the author) consider that the US Maritime Strategy of the 1980s influenced the Alliance's maritime and naval strategy during that period.

The document, which is very brief, mainly describes a maritime environment characterized by cooperation. Thus, as highlighted in its opening lines, "the maritime environment lends itself well to strengthening the commitment to cooperative security."[6] Four fundamental pillars are identified on which allied maritime activity is based, which are, in turn, ways of employing joint capabilities: deterrence and collective defense, management , cooperative security (focused on agreements and naval diplomacy), and maritime security[7].

The strategy provides a brief description of the maritime environment at that time, in which, as already noted, cooperation and globalization were essential features. Emphasizing the need to protect freedom of navigation, maritime trade, critical submarine infrastructure, and other issues related to marine resources, the AMS also recognized that the oceans were increasingly accessible to illicit activities such as organized crime, drug and human trafficking, and piracy (which, at that very moment, was reaching historic levels in places such as the Horn of Africa).

Despite its significant contribution at the time of its publication and the fact that it was designed to remain valid over time, the AMS became obsolete not long after its launch. test this is the absence of references to China or Russia, which are not mentioned at any point in the document, and which the 2022 Strategic Concept defines as "the most significant and direct threat to the security of the allies and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area"[9], while also identifying China as a challenge to common interests and values due to the lack of transparency that characterizes its strategy and intentions, as well as its use of irregular actions[10]. Both countries have also made great efforts to strengthen their naval and maritime capabilities in recent years, which at the beginning of this decade highlighted the need for a new strategy to manage them.

The 2011 AMS was an important step in aligning the main ideas of the 2010 Strategic Concept with the joint maritime posture, but its contributions became largely obsolete with the occupation of Crimea in 2014. The document has a approach different tone and approach from its US predecessor from the 1980s, although this is mainly because it responded to completely different strategic contexts. While the 2011 strategy was primarily oriented toward maritime security and cooperation, the 1980s strategy focused much more on a naval strategy aimed at deterrence, given the nature of the threat posed at the time by the Soviet fleet under the leadership of Admiral Gorshkov.

Thus, despite the document's great value in political and strategic terms, since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the Alliance has seen the emergence of new threats at sea, such as the growing vulnerability of critical underwater infrastructure to irregular tactics, or the various threats to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The current trade crisis, exacerbated in NATO's case by the declining trend in its merchant and fishing fleets, to which could be added the resurgence of Somali piracy, has once again highlighted the dependence of the Economics on maritime routes and the strategic passages through which they transit.

The rapid deterioration of the maritime environment over the last two decades—described, as already mentioned, in previous works—is compounded by the eminently maritime nature of conflicts and the current context of confrontation between major powers. All of this has magnified the need for a new strategy that restores greater prominence to naval forces as a central element of deterrence and protection of the main maritime lines of communication.

The Allied Maritime Strategy 2025

update was published on October 29, 2025, although an draft was leaked in August of the same year through the Human Rights at Sea platform. The new document brings with it a visible change in language, although it keeps some parts of its predecessor relatively intact. At first glance, it appears that the Alliance is gradually returning to the language of maritime power. In fact, as an illustration, references to "maritime power" or "power projection" appear 17 times, 15 more than in the 2011 version.

As stated in the opening paragraphs, the updated strategy aims to provide "a reference letter for the exercise of maritime power that will contribute to achieving NATO's objectives both now and in the coming decade."

The first broad section is devoted to the strategic environment. Compared to the environment that existed when the 2011 strategy was developed, 14 years later the picture is very different:

“The global security environment is increasingly complex, contested, and unpredictable […] The area is not at peace. An attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Allies cannot be ruled out; therefore, the Alliance must be prepared to ‘fight today’ and ‘fight tomorrow.’”[14]

The two main threats identified are Russia and terrorism, the latter in all its forms. In addition, climate change, the People's Republic of China, and changes resulting from artificial intelligence and technology are also highlighted.

Russia "is the most significant, direct, and long-term threat to the security of the Allies." It relies on a combination of "increasingly aggressive conventional, cyber, and destabilization actions against the Alliance and its partners." Furthermore, "the multi-domain threat that Russia poses to NATO will persist in the long term."[15] All of these contributions are welcome and necessary, and are written in a concise and clear manner.

The same applies to the inclusion of China, which has become a central challenge to the status quo since the publication of the previous strategy. Indeed, "the People's Republic of China's stated ambitions, confrontational rhetoric, disinformation, coercive policies, and growing assertiveness continue to challenge the interests, security, and values of the Alliance and its partners."[16]

The strategy is based on the vision that "NATO will have the maritime power to maintain freedom of navigation, safeguard sea lanes, protect critical infrastructure, and help deter and counter emerging threats and challenges in all domains." It emphasizes the crucial importance of maritime power in ensuring credible collective defense, in what is probably one of the best definitions of maritime power and its importance seen in an official NATO publication:

“Allied maritime power, supported by the effects of other domains, provides freedom of action to deter and defend. Maritime forces, with their unique characteristics such as range, flexibility, balance, deterrence, deployability, mobility, and availability, possess a utility that is scalable across the Peace-Crisis-Conflict continuum.”[17]

The second part outlines the three main pillars of maritime power's contribution to Alliance security. The three pillars, with a slight change from the 2011 strategy, are: deterrence and defense, prevention and management , and cooperative security. For each of these, the strategy details how Allied maritime power will contribute.

With regard to the first, deterrence and defense, perhaps the most important of all, it is hoped that maritime power will contribute by providing:

a) A credible nuclear deterrent from the sea,

b) Control of the sea and projection of power,

c) Freedom of navigation, maneuvering, and action in the maritime domain, and

d) Protection of maritime routes and critical infrastructure, with a approach the security of underwater infrastructure.

e) Hard power to prevail in conflicts.

Eighteen tasks have been set to achieve these objectives, including contributing to nuclear deterrence and the ambition to "use, expand, and further develop the capabilities of aircraft carrier groups, anti-submarine warfare, mine warfare, and autonomous shipborne systems."

The second pillar is management prevention and management , an area in which allied navies have accumulated considerable experience in recent decades responding to humanitarian crises and natural disasters. Among the courses of action to ensure the fulfillment of objectives in this field, the strategy establishes six core topic tasks, including leveraging "the inherent agility of their maritime forces to conduct flexible and scalable maritime security operations that prevent or respond to emerging crisis situations on land and ensure freedom of navigation at sea." Equally important is the willingness to "maintain credible, rapid-response maritime forces capable of operating in often degraded coastal environments," a trend that is expected to become increasingly common in the coming years.

The third pillar is cooperative security. It establishes six objectives that revolve around promoting multilateral cooperation, improving situational awareness, and conducting diplomatic activities such as port visits. As in 2011, the strategy seeks to "make an important contribution to NATO's outreach policy through partnerships, dialogue, and cooperation," in parallel with similar individual activities undertaken by member states independently.

Finally, the last section of the document briefly addresses the implementation of the strategy. It highlights the role of Standing Naval Groups (SNMGs), which remain a tool in the Alliance's maritime posture. However, the positive tone with which their role and importance are discussed contrasts with the reduction in size they have experienced in recent decades and the need to cover a much broader spectrum of threats.

The document's conclusions broadly emphasize the importance of naval power in pursuing collective security interests, reiterating the goal for the future: "NATO maritime forces will deter and defend against all threats in a future interconnected and contested operating environment."

The message, while sounding firm and decisive, contrasts with a stark reality: maritime power does not come cheap, and building and maintaining a strong and capable naval force requires a major economic effort. It is therefore incumbent upon political leaders to ensure that taxpayers are fully aware of this and understand the importance of investing in national maritime power. As the ever-astute Commander Salamander has pointed out, "the AMS is a solid, compact, informative document that we should be handing out like pamphlets at the church door on Sundays."

Final thoughts

Fourteen years later, NATO has finally updated its Alliance Maritime Strategy. Shortly after its original publication, changes in the maritime environment gradually rendered the AMS obsolete, necessitating a thorough review of its guiding principles, especially following the publication of the 2022 Strategic Concept. The update, which is precisely that, builds on its predecessor and adapts the Alliance's vision to reflect changes in the strategic environment and threats that have emerged since then.

Broadly speaking, the document represents a significant improvement and a step forward for the Alliance in its purpose regaining the strength of a maritime power that was fundamental to prevailing over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. After being left out (understandably) in 2011, Russia, terrorism (read: asymmetric warfare at sea), and the People's Republic of China are now central concerns in a world that is no longer stable or defined by international cooperation at sea. On the contrary, the dramatic deterioration of the maritime strategic environment has been exacerbated by the emergence of asymmetric threats that could jeopardize some of the world's most important lines of communication.

The new update clearly update the strategic objectives that its maritime power should pursue, as well as some of the ways to achieve them. It uses more concise language, with concrete and direct descriptions of the threats that exist at sea today. By keeping the pillars of its maritime power almost intact, it builds on its predecessor to provide a renewed vision. However, some aspects would have required greater attention, particularly those that fall outside the purely naval dimension. In particular, the current state of allied merchant fleets and strategic transport capabilities, the challenges facing the shipbuilding industry in its efforts to expand the size of naval forces, or a approach region-specific approach to describing the strategic environment would have contributed to a much stronger document.

It's a step forward, as we say, but there's still a long way to go.

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