Half a mile inside a mountain in the north of Norway, the U.K. is preparing for war.

Axar.az informs, citing Politico, the country's military planners have travelled to Bodø, nestled between the sea and snow-capped peaks of the Arctic Circle, to rehearse what it would look like if Russia decided to unleash hostile activity on its doorstep.

The exercise is set a year after an imagined ceasefire in Ukraine. It asks leaders of Nordic and Baltic countries to calculate what they would do as they begin to track pro-Russia civil unrest inside a bordering country.

Defense ministers and generals in attendance are supplied with newspaper reports about the incidents, patchy intelligence updates and social media posts and asked to decide the best course of action.

The task is not purely hypothetical. An unexplained attack on a Baltic undersea cable last year, Russian drones and airplanes violating NATO airspace and an increase in Russian ships threatening British waters have called attention to the vulnerability of the so-called “high north.”

In the wake of Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea, Britain put itself forward to lead a group of like-minded European countries in preparing for threats on their northern flank, founding the 10-nation Joint Expeditionary Force.

The question now is whether this alliance can live up to its potential as the Russian threat morphs — and the U.S. continues to turn away from European security under Donald Trump.

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