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Melting ice prompts military moves in Arctic
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-23 09:02 OSLO: Arctic nations are promising to avoid new "Cold War" scrambles linked to climate change, but military activity is stirring in a polar region where a thaw may allow oil and gas exploration or new shipping routes.
The six nations around the Arctic Ocean are promising to cooperate on challenges such as overseeing possible new fishing grounds or shipping routes in an area that has been too remote, cold and dark to be of interest throughout recorded history.
"It will be a new ocean in a critical strategic area," said Lee Willett, head of the Marine Studies Program at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London, predicting wide competition in the Arctic area. "The main way to project influence and safeguard interests there will be use of naval forces," he said. Ground forces would have little to defend around remote coastlines backed by hundreds of km of tundra. Many leading climate experts now say the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by 2050 in summer, perhaps even earlier, after ice shrank to a record low in September 2007. Among signs of military concern, a Kremlin document on security in mid-May said Russia may face wars on its borders in the near future because of control over energy resources - from the Middle East to the Arctic. Russia sent a nuclear submarine in 2008 across the Arctic under the ice to the Pacific. Canada runs a military exercise, Nanook, every year to reinforce sovereignty over its northern territories. Russia faces five NATO members - the United States, Canada, Norway, Iceland and Denmark via Greenland - in the Arctic. In February, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized Russia's "increasingly aggressive" actions after a bomber flew close to Canada before a visit by US President Barack Obama. And last year Norway's government decided to buy 48 Lockheed Martin F-35 jets at a cost of 18 billion crowns ($2.81 billion), rating them better than rival Swedish Saab's Gripen at tasks such as surveillance of the vast Arctic north. Much may be at stake. The US Geological Survey estimated last year that the Arctic holds 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil - enough to supply current world demand for three years. And Arctic shipping routes could be short-cuts between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in summer. Other experts say nations can easily get along in the North. "The Arctic area would be of interest in 50 or 100 years - not now," said Lars Kullerud, President of the University of the Arctic. "It's hype to talk of a Cold War." Governments also insist a thaw does not herald tensions. "We will seek cooperative strategies," US Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg told Reuters during a meeting of Arctic Council foreign ministers in Tromsoe, Norway. "We are not planning any increase in our armed forces in the Arctic," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the talks in late April, also stressing cooperation. Agreeing with them that Cold War talk is overdone, Niklas Granholm of the Swedish Defense Research Agency nonetheless said: "The indications we have is that there will be an increased militarization of the Arctic." That would bring security spin-offs. Many may be humdrum - ensuring safety of shipping or deployment of gear in case of oil spills. Wider possibilities include a possible race between Russia and the US for quieter nuclear submarines. Submarines, which can launch long-range nuclear missiles, have long had a hideout under the fringe of the Arctic ice pack where constant waves and grinding of ice masks engine noise. "It might lead to a new generation of ultra-silent submarines or other, new technologies," said Granholm. Reuters |
