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On the 30th of September 2006 for the first time in its history as an independent nation, Iceland was free of all foreign military forces or their representatives. A quiet and almost unnoticed ceremony took place at the Keflavik NATO base. American and Icelandic flags were lowered, folded, given to representatives of the respective countries and the small official party drove away. Quietly, with no fanfare or demonstration, or even much notice, the Keflavik base, the focal point of an issue that roiled and divided Iceland politics like one of the fire trenches that mark the country, an issue that had simmered and erupted throughout most of the Cold War, became a ghost town.

Iceland remains in NATO but alone among the now 26 member nations Iceland has no military of its own nor does it now even have forces from another alliance country on its soil. The nearest NATO forces that could provide help are 600 miles away in the UK. Realistically, these British forces, now at a total of 80,000 for all services and still in decline, can hardly be expected to deploy, even if they were able, to aid their distant sometime adversary and alliance partner. To be sure, both the US and Icelandic governments insist that the 1951 Defense Agreement is still operative and that instead of fighters at Keflavik there is a new and mostly secret arrangement that involves periodic exercises of US military forces in Iceland and communications plans between the countries in the event of crisis. A mostly secret arrangement or entente such as Britain and France had on the eve of World War I may be reassuring to some in the respective governments but a largely unexplicated agreement can cause problems. Iceland’s negotiators labored hard to get what they could but in spite of their best efforts that may prove to be little enough.

Without fighter aircraft is Iceland defenseless as Prime Minister David Oddson suggested at ceremonies marking the 50 the anniversary of the 1951 Defense Agreement in Reykjavik in 2001? Does this new Agreement provide an equally sufficient defense for Iceland? Or, as one government official sardonically put it, has a “visible and credible”deterrent been replaced by one that is invisible and incredible? The answer to such questions is multi-faceted but depends greatly on two particular factors. First, how much can such an agreement, most of whose provisions are to be taken on faith, do now that physically present F-15 fighter aircraft (and their companion rescue helicopters) used to do? Second, and ultimately more important, just what sort of threats is Iceland facing or likely to face? For instance, are the threats, if any, such that even if the fighter aircraft were still here they might prove irrelevant?