THE ARCTIC EMERGES AS A GEOGRAPHIC BATTLEGROUND

 

The Arctic emerges as a geographic battleground

America’s engaging in a new ‘Cold’ War as Russian and China challenge U.S. interests in the’high north’
Jamie McIntyre   is a senior national security reporter for the Washington Examiner
May 14, 2020

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: 

The U.S. is only now focusing on the region after what the CSIS report termed “a decade of U.S. Arctic inactivity,” when the U.S. essentially watched from the sidelines as Russia and China methodically implemented economic and military policies that could profoundly alter the balance of power in the Arctic.

“It started with the Obama Arctic strategy, which I held up in a hearing,” said Sullivan. “It was 13 pages, six of which were pictures. Russia was mentioned once in a footnote. It was a joke.”

Sullivan said that, thanks to a bipartisan Arctic strategy mandated by Congress, the U.S. is getting back in the game, beginning with the building of six new Polar-class icebreakers.

Currently, the U.S. has only two icebreakers, but only one, the more than 40-year-old USCGC Polar Star, is in working order. The second ship is being used for parts.

The Russians, at last count, had 54.

Earlier this month, three U.S. Navy destroyers and a British warship conducted an exercise in the frigid waters of the Barents Sea, the first time U.S. surface ships have ventured into Russia’s Arctic backyard since the mid-1980s.

It comes as global warming is melting the polar ice cap, opening new sea routes and increasing competition for oil and mineral resources, with Russia, in particular, aggressively seeking to assert its preeminence in the region.

“Russia has really prioritized the Arctic as a region that is going to be so important for its future, both economically and militarily,” said Heather Conley, an Arctic expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Moscow is well aware, she said, that, in the next 30 years, “the country that controls the Arctic controls the world.”

Conley is one of the authors of “America’s Arctic moment,” the think tank’s recent report that details Russia’s increasing militarization of its islands in the Arctic Ocean in much the same way China has been militarizing islands in the South China Sea.

That includes rebuilding a naval base and installing a new, powerful radar on Russia’s Wrangel Island, located just 300 nautical miles from Alaska.

 

“Russia has returned to Soviet-era outposts and has built new military facilities in the Arctic Circle,” Adm. James Foggo, commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, said in a podcast last year.

“Russia’s even built an icebreaker that can carry the Kalibr [cruise] missile,” said Foggo. “So, I’ve got to ask: Who builds an icebreaker with a missile battery on board?”

There is a lot more open water in the spring and summer than there used to be, and Russia has roughly half of all the coastline in the Arctic, some 15,000 miles, compared to the 1,060-mile U.S. coastline of Alaska.

The Arctic is the world’s smallest ocean, but with the “high north” warming at twice the rate of the rest of the globe, it has become the largest new area for competition among the United States, Russia, and China.

The CSIS report said Russia’s growing offensive capabilities in the Arctic consist of hypersonic cruise missiles and precision-strike munitions that are designed to be undetectable by U.S. missile defense systems.

“Such capabilities strengthen Russia’s power projection capabilities in the Barents Sea and increase its ability to deny aerial, maritime, or land access to NATO or U.S. forces,” the report said.

And with the steady reduction in polar sea ice, Russia is seeking to act as a gatekeeper of the new sea lanes, which hold the potential to reduce travel time between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.

“Russia’s made some statements recently about, if you’re going to use the northern sea route, then you’ve got to ask for permission 45 days in advance and put Russian pilots on board,” Foggo said at a breakfast session with defense reporters in December. “We’re typically not inclined to do that sort of thing because we see it as transit passage, and it should be freedom of navigation in accordance with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

That prompted the U.S. and Britain to conduct this month’s surface exercises in the Barents Sea for the first time in 30 years.

To “avoid misperceptions, reduce risk, and prevent inadvertent escalation,” the U.S. warned the Russian Defense Ministry ahead of time that the warships would be coming, according to a statement from the U.S. 6th Fleet.

Moscow’s response was to schedule a live-fire exercise for the day before the ships departed.

The deployment would have made more of a statement if other NATO nations had joined in, said retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former supreme NATO commander.

“It would have been reasonable to expect the Germans, Italians and French — all of whom operate surface ships capable of handling the northern waters — to come along. And Canada, with the largest NATO border on the Arctic, was conspicuously absent as well,” Stavridis wrote in an op-ed this month.

“Still, even this modest flotilla is a sensible and clear demonstration to Russia that the U.S. and the U.K. are willing to operate in challenging waters in a corner of the world’s oceans that the Russians wrongly see as their own property.”

Though it sits more than 900 miles south of the Arctic Circle, China last year declared itself also a “near-Arctic” nation, a claim dismissed out of hand by the U.S.

“There are only Arctic states and non-Arctic states,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech to the Arctic Council in Finland. “No third category exists, and claiming otherwise entitles China to exactly nothing.”

Or, as Sen. Angus King said at a recent confirmation hearing for the new Navy secretary: “That’s like Maine saying it’s a near-Caribbean state.”

Coincidentally, Trump’s pick to head the Navy, Kenneth Braithwaite, testified that he’d seen firsthand how Beijing has been trying to use its economic power to pressure the tiny Scandinavian country to allow China to build a port as a western terminus to the northern sea route.

“You’d be alarmed at the amount of Chinese activity off the coast of Norway in the high north,” Braithwaite told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The Norwegians — proud people, independent people — they stood up against the Chinese, and they suffered for that economically.”

“There is much more Chinese activity than we’ve ever seen up there. They use it to come across the pole because it makes fiscal sense and business sense to them,” Foggo said in December. “It’s in accordance with their Arctic Silk Road policy that they’re going to use that route to their benefit. As long as they do that peacefully, there’s absolutely no problem.”

“The great power competition that we now know is upon us is really taking place in that part of the world,” Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan said. “Unfortunately, the Pentagon has really been probably the last agency in town to realize this.”

The U.S. is only now focusing on the region after what the CSIS report termed “a decade of U.S. Arctic inactivity,” when the U.S. essentially watched from the sidelines as Russia and China methodically implemented economic and military policies that could profoundly alter the balance of power in the Arctic.

“It started with the Obama Arctic strategy, which I held up in a hearing,” said Sullivan. “It was 13 pages, six of which were pictures. Russia was mentioned once in a footnote. It was a joke.”

Sullivan said that, thanks to a bipartisan Arctic strategy mandated by Congress, the U.S. is getting back in the game, beginning with the building of six new Polar-class icebreakers.

Currently, the U.S. has only two icebreakers, but only one, the more than 40-year-old USCGC Polar Star, is in working order. The second ship is being used for parts.

The Russians, at last count, had 54.

 

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