The fallout from Russia’s attack on Ukraine has reached the top of the world.
The West’s cooperation with Moscow in the Arctic, already strained after years of Russian military buildup, has ground to a halt because of the conflict in Ukraine. The eight-member Arctic Council, which Russia currently chairs, has effectively paused operations, shelving a crucial forum for Washington, Moscow and the six other member nations to tackle and sidestep clashes over issues such as climate change, energy and economic resources, and military activity in the high north.
Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his military campaign in Ukraine wouldn’t sidetrack the Kremlin’s quickly expanding Arctic ambitions. Long before the unprovoked Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin saw the region as crucial to Russia’s economic development. The crushing Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to its invasion of Ukraine have made the Arctic even more pivotal for Russia’s financial future.
“Taking into account all kinds of external restrictions and sanctions pressure, special attention must be paid to all projects and plans related to the Arctic,” Mr. Putin said last week, according to the state-run Tass news agency. “Not to postpone them, not to shift them right, but instead, we must respond to attempts to curb our development with maximum increase of the pace of work both on current and upcoming tasks.”
The Arctic region is a vital economic hub in the 21st century as sea ice melts and shipping lanes open for the first time in centuries. As Russia forges ahead in the Arctic despite widespread condemnation over its actions in Ukraine, global leaders say the security situation is much more fragile. Russia’s willingness to launch a full-blown military assault on a neighbor could signal that it is also willing to use force to achieve its strategic goals in the Arctic, including claiming sea routes as its own and exploiting the region’s vast energy supplies, officials say.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine is a watershed moment. It is a new normal for European security — and also for Arctic security,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a speech after the invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Stolenberg’s home country of Norway is a prime competitor of Moscow in the race to exploit Arctic opportunities.
“In the last few years, we have seen a significant increase in Russian military activity here. Russia has reestablished Soviet-era Arctic bases. This is a test bed for many of Russia’s novel weapon systems. It is the home of Russia’s strategic submarine fleet,” he said. “Russia’s military buildup is the most serious challenge to stability and allied security in the high north.”
Indeed, global security analysts say Russia has built or reactivated 13 air bases and other military facilities in the Arctic. The Russian military has the world’s largest fleet of icebreakers and has invested heavily in submarines able to operate in the icy polar waters.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are racing to catch up. Although U.S. military budgets have invested heavily in the Arctic, the balance of wartime power remains roughly equal, according to a comprehensive study by the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
“In high-intensity conflict scenarios, there exists a balance of power in the [Arctic] between Russia and NATO,” the study says.
There also exists a significant risk for the peaceful competition so far in the Arctic to quickly spiral out of control.
“This balance is, however, highly offense dominated,” RUSI said in a summary of its report. “In other words, both sides are effective on the offensive but suffer from defensive vulnerabilities that make a reactive posture difficult to execute. This creates the potential for NATO to offset its lack of mass in theaters like the Baltics through horizontal escalation, but also raises the risks of mutual miscalculation in a crisis.”
A new reality
Against that backdrop, tensions among Arctic nations are rising fast. Sweden and Finland, which are members of the Arctic Council, signaled last week that they might announce plans to join NATO within weeks. Russia responded by making thinly veiled threats to both countries.
The Arctic Council virtually froze its operations last month as a result of “Russia’s flagrant violation” of the council’s principles, said the other seven members: the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway.
Representatives from those nations met recently in Anchorage, Alaska, to map out a future without Russia.
“The Russia we see today is an aggressive, violent war machine,” Anniken Ramberg Krutnes, Norway’s ambassador to the U.S., said at the gathering.
“We have to admit that [Moscow’s partnership is] over now,” she told Arctic Today. “Now we have to proceed without them.”
It’s unclear when the council could resume full operations. Last year, before Russia’s two-year chairmanship began, officials in Moscow vowed to use the international body as a forum to discuss “national security” matters. The council’s 1996 charter says that “the Arctic Council should not deal with matters related to military security.”
Although Arctic nations say there are some areas where cooperation with Russia remains vital, Mr. Putin’s willingness to launch an unprovoked war against an Eastern European neighbor inevitably colors what he might do in a clash of interests in the Arctic, Andreas Osthagen, a senior fellow at the Arctic Institute’s Center for Circumpolar Security Studies and a senior research fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, told Scientific American last month.
“We have to be prepared, and we have to assume that there might be deliberate attempts by Russia to undermine Arctic cooperation or NATO’s cooperation in the Arctic, and use the Arctic to gain some sort of benefit that we are probably unable to see,” Mr. Osthagen said.
Russian officials say it is the West that is weakening Arctic security by suspending council operations and that work should resume despite the military activity in Ukraine.
“The council’s mandate explicitly excludes matters related to military security,” Nikolay Korchunov, Russia’s ambassador-at-large to the council, recently told Newsweek. “It is enshrined in all its founding and strategic documents that the Arctic should remain as the territory of peace, stability and constructive cooperation. Therefore, this unique format should not be subject to the spillover effect of any extraregional events.”
The suspension, “initiated by the Western states, could lead to the accumulation of the risks and challenges to soft security in the region, which the council has been addressing effectively,” he said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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