The New Cold War – Russia Invades Arctic

While President Obama spoke of the dangers of climate change to a gathering of world leaders in Anchorage, Alaska, this week at a conference on “Global Leadership in the Arctic”, Russian President Vladimir Putin continued an aggressive campaign to put vast swaths of the region under Russian control.

Last March, Russia conducted wide-ranging military maneuvers involving 38,000 troops, over 50 ships and 110 aircraft north of the Arctic Circle. Putin has begun restoring Soviet era airfields and ports, eyeing control of shortcut trade routes that are opening up as the Arctic sea ice melts. And now Russian military planes have resumed a Cold War practice of patrolling U.S. airspace and buzzing ships off the Alaskan coast.

U.S. naval planners are not taking the threat lightly. The Arctic region covers about 8 percent of the Earth’s surface and appears to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. By the summer of 2007, Russia’s northern sea route, the Northeast Passage, had become ice-free, shortening the sailing distance between Asia and Europe by as much as 30 percent. If these trends continue, the U.S. Navy predicts the entire Arctic Ocean may be totally ice free in summers by 2050, with ships able to traverse the top of the North Pole.

Putin says he wants the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia to become the next Suez Canal, and is considering charging transit fees on cargo ships using the route.

The Russian government has asked the United Nations to recognize its claim to 463,000 square miles of Arctic territory, including large stretches of seabed extending out from the Russian shoreline. Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources estimates the Arctic sea shelf contains up to 5 billion tons of untapped oil and natural gas reserves worth as much as $30 trillion. This accounts for up to a quarter of the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves.

The sea shelf claimed by Russia includes the Lomonosov Ridge, the Mendeleyev-Alpha Rise, the Chukchi Plateau, and the Podvodnikov and Chukchi basins that separate the three areas, according to the Russian documents submitted to the U.N. commission.

Russian news agency Tass reported that the sea shelf also contains valuable mineral resources, including 90% of Russia’s remaining nickel, cobalt and platinum, 60% of its copper, and practically all of the country’s explored reserves of titanium, tin and barite, as well as reserves of gold, diamonds, lead and bauxites.

President Putin is making sure that he has the muscle to back up his claims. Russia already has the world’s most powerful icebreaker fleet of 22 ships and has revealed plans to expand its nuclear-powered vessels to assist foreign cargo ships through the new northern passage. The Kremlin also announced last year that it was developing a new Northern Fleet to protect its claims to the Arctic’s vast undersea resources.

The United States was once the dominant power in the Arctic, operating more than 600 radar and weather stations extending from the Aleutian Islands to Greenland. In 1957, the first surface ships to navigate the Northwest Passage were Coast Guard cutters. On August 3, 1958, the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus completed the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole.

But now the Russians have eclipsed America as the leader in the Arctic. The symbolic changing of the guard came in 2007, when Russian explorers used their Mir-1 mini submarine to plant a titanium marker bearing the Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole, staking their claim to the top of the world.

Environmental groups like Greenpeace are warning about the hazards of developing fragile Arctic resources.

“The melting of the Arctic ice is uncovering a new and vulnerable sea, but countries like Russia and Norway want to turn it into the next Saudi Arabia,” Greenpeace Russia Arctic campaigner Vladimir Chuprov said in a statement. “Unless we act together, this region could be dotted with oil wells and fishing fleets within our lifetimes.”

President Putin does not seem to be listening.