While all eyes are on Ukraine, the Arctic is heating up. On May 8, NATO kicked off “Formidable Shield,” a three-week military exercise. The exercise is intended to showcase the strength of the NATO alliance and its commitment to the defense of Europe.
As many as 13 NATO allied and partner nations with more than 20 ships, and 35 aircraft, including the F-35 fighter, and 4,000 personnel are participating in this exercise. As per the Pentagon “encompasses live-fire rehearsal events in a multidomain environment against subsonic, supersonic and ballistic targets.” In effect, this exercise is a shot across the bow of Russia.
Moscow has been active in the Arctic for decades. In 2007, two mini submarines (mini-subs) planted a one meter-high titanium Russian flag more than two and a half miles beneath the North Pole. In a record-breaking dive, the mini-subs Mir-1 and Mir-2 descended to 4,300 meters. In Moscow’s words, this was “a serious, risky and heroic mission.”
Riches Under the Sea and Across it too
It is an open secret that global warming is accelerating and climate change is already upon us. NASA tells us that polar ice is melting dramatically and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year. This is leading to sea level rise, which will be catastrophic for the likes of Bangladesh, Maldives and New Orleans but offers polar powers access to natural resources and new trade routes.
The Arctic has major reserves of oil and natural gas. Large quantities of minerals, including iron ore, copper, nickel, zinc phosphates and diamonds, are also on offer. In 2008, the United States Geological Survey estimated “90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, 1,670 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of technically recoverable natural gas liquids in 25 geologically defined areas” in the Arctic.
The melting of the Arctic is also opening up new trans-Arctic routes, including the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and the Northwest Passage (NWP). The NSR and NWP are shorter maritime routes. They offer an economic boost to Arctic economies. New ports, both hydrocarbon and military, are opening in the region. With such riches on offer, the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland stand to gain.
Russia Ahead in Great Arctic Race
A great Arctic race is now on. As a resource-based economy that exports commodities, Moscow is taking the lead in the militarization and resource grab in the region. Elizabeth Buchanan, the author of Red Arctic, chronicles how Russia has cannily used “international rules for over two decades to secure its rights in the North Pole seabed.”
Russia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1997. Since then, Moscow has worked ceaselessly for the recognition of its claims to the extended continental shelf. The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) has deemed the majority of Russia’s claims in the Arctic to be valid. This February, Moscow gained rights to an approximately 1.7 million square kilometers of seabed.
Russia has used international law to its advantage because UNCLOS allows coastal states to establish the outer limits of their continental shelves beyond the limits of 200 nautical miles. The CLCS seeks scientific data and Russia has been diligent in providing this evidence. It also made its claims to the CLCS first. Danish (thanks to control of Greenland) and Canadian claims came later and might be a decade away from recognition. The US does not recognize UNCLOS and thus cannot make claims to the extended continental shelf.
While bolstering its legal claims, Russia has been building military strength in the Arctic. Last September, Reuters reported that “Russia has reopened tens of Arctic Soviet-era military bases, modernized its navy, and developed new hypersonic missiles designed to evade US sensors and defenses” since 2005. Russia’s bases inside the Arctic Circle outnumber NATO’s by about a third and the West is at least ten years behind.
Russia has seven nuclear-powered icebreakers and around 30 diesel-powered ones. The US and China have just two diesel-powered icebreakers each in operation. The US is the global superpower but Russia is the Arctic superpower.
Apart from resources and sea routes, the Arctic offers some of the best places to station ground stations for satellites. One such place is the island of Svalbard off the Norwegian mainland. SvalSat in Svalbard downloads time-sensitive data from most of the world’s commercial and scientific satellites. In 2021 and 2022, fiber-optic cables on the Arctic seabed…
Read More: The Great Arctic Game Is Now in Full Swing