REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Almost 30 years ago, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in a historic summit here that heralded the beginning of the end of Soviet communism.
American, Russian and other world leaders met again over the weekend in a massive cube-shaped glass waterfront concert hall to prevent another type of cold war.
The globe’s frozen north has become perhaps its hottest arena for bare-knuckled geopolitical sparring, with the U.S., Russia under President Vladimir Putin, and dozens of other countries rushing to stake their claims to the natural resources and the newly open trade routes of the Arctic.
The Reykjavik gathering was intended to lower the temperature. The assembled leaders were part of the Arctic Circle Assembly, an organization convened by Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson to avert tensions and slow down the race to stake claims over the North Pole.
The assembly, which concluded the four-day proceedings Sunday, aims to contain the jockeying among Arctic countries seeking to exploit the resources in the region as a warming Earth melts the sea ice that has long prevented ships from navigating the passage separating the northern coasts of North America, Russia and Scandinavia.
“Now the ice is retreating faster than any of us ever expected,” Mr. Grimsson told the assembly.
Russia’s decision in 2007 to deploy a submarine to plant a Russian flag on the seabed of the North Pole and claim a vast portion of the region was perhaps the most high-profile example of the jostling for advantage, but it was far from the only one.
American oil giants have been probing fields off the Alaskan coast. Canada has beefed up its military presence in the region. China and other major trading nations far from the Arctic have expressed keen interest in access to shorter shipping routes over the North Pole. Denmark has reasserted its sovereignty over Greenland.
The economic and strategic incentives mean the hands-off approach has become obsolete, Shirley Marquardt, the mayor of Unalaska, Alaska, told delegates over the weekend.
“The Arctic will not remain pristine. It is a nice, shiny bauble, and everybody wants it,” she said.
Russian officials said Moscow is determined to be a player in the northern rush.
“Russia is indelibly tied to the Arctic,” said Artur Chilingarov, 78, the Russian representative at the assembly who was also among the explorers who planted the Russian flag on the ocean floor.
Sporting a thick beard and a weathered face worthy of someone who has traveled extensively at the icy fringes of the world, Mr. Chilingarov said the United States and Russia might disagree about events in Ukraine and Syria, but they didn’t need to oppose each other in the Arctic.
“I am doing everything I can to make sure we can hear each other,” he said. “I am very happy that these kinds of contacts are there and can create an understanding that there are no military solutions to Arctic problems.”
’Cat-and-mouse game’
But American journalist William Gasperini, who spoke at a panel at the assembly, was skeptical of Russian intentions.
“Under the ice cap, there has been a cat-and-mouse game going on since the Cold War. Both of the old former nuclear superpowers are becoming active,” Mr. Gasperini said. “A few years ago, when Chilingarov went down and planted a Russian flag, it set off a lot of alarm bells, and they basically staked a claim to everything from the Russian coast to the North Pole, the legality of which was sketchy.”
He added that Mr. Putin has deployed more military resources to the Arctic than other claimant countries, has failed to set aside Arctic territory as wilderness reserves, and has left radioactive material dumped into the sea during Soviet times and in more recent years, including sunken nuclear submarines. Moscow’s involvement in the region has become a means of furthering Mr. Putin’s control of the country, he said.
“The policy that President Putin has been following in recent years is to use militarization as a way of boosting the Russian economy,” he said.
In recent years, Russian aircraft have repeatedly made incursions into British, Danish and Norwegian airspace in the Arctic. In 2010, Norway reopened a Cold War-era military installation in the Arctic rim and moved its military command center underground in response to Russia’s muscle-flexing.
“The continuing Russian resurgence has found form in an extremely bold approach to affairs of the High North,” said John MacDonald, an Arctic researcher who heads the Scottish Global Forum think tank. “It is greatly increasing its military presence inside the Arctic Circle. We also see continuing incursions of Russian naval vessels and military aircraft into the skies and waters of the U.K., Sweden and other Western European nations.”
Russia isn’t alone, though, Mr. MacDonald said.
“The U.S. is understandably seeking to optimize its position in this sphere, both in terms of economic development and in military terms,” he said.
Despite those developments, Dagfinn Hoybraten, the Norwegian who heads the Nordic Council of Ministers, which represents the interests of Russia’s Arctic neighbors, said it wasn’t too late to avoid a messy — and potentially confrontational — free-for-all in the rush to capture the region’s riches.
“The Nordic countries are not threatening anyone,” said Mr. Hoybraten. “We are mediators. It is something the Nordic countries want to continue.”
There is good reason why world leaders should reach an agreement on the Arctic, he said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that there will be ice-free summers off the northern coasts of the U.S., Russia and Canada by 2030 — opening shipping routes and undersea oil and gas fields. A 2013 U.S. Navy report found that ice-free summers could start as early as next year.
A member of the Finnish parliament, Katrin Jakobsdottir, said she hoped the assembly could at least give world leaders a forum to discuss their different points of view. Few people were optimistic about Reagan and Gorbachev’s summit in 1986. In hindsight, however, it was a major step toward peace.
“What Iceland has managed is the need to focus on consensus,” she said. “The best way to keep the Arctic safe is to make sure there is no militarization. There are different powers trying to increase their presence in the Arctic, but we need to secure the Arctic’s future through civilian means.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.