Dis-Putin Who Controls the Arctic

Back on April 29, 2017, in my $35 Trillion Antics in the Arctic blog, I noted how Russia has officially claimed most undersea land mass beneath the Arctic ice, even planting a titanium Russian flag under the North Pole on the sea floor, building a fleet of nuclear super-icebreakers beyond the capacity of any other nation, and greedily eyeing what is estimated to be $35 trillion worth of unexploited natural resources as well as a climate-change-melting shipping lane known to us as the Northwest Passage. Russian sea and air military installations increased all across adjacent Russia land. Neither the United Nations nor any other nation bordering the Arctic has accepted the Russian claim… but no other nation really has done anything about it. Certainly not Putin-ophile, Donald Trump.

Russia’s Arctic efforts have since continued unabated. Russian geographers attempted to justify the land grab by tracing ridges deep under the ocean that emanated they claimed from Mother Russia. To Moscow, the Arctic was theirs just as much as was their seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Pretending to advance regional dialogue over access to and use of the region, Putin addressed leaders from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden at an Arctic forum in St. Petersburg on April 9^th. Meanwhile, Putin is simply saturating the Arctic with powerful Russian assets, military capability and an existing fleet of four heavy nuclear icebreakers (Russia is the only nation with such vessels) with plans to build 5 more such nuclear vessels (3 of those are being built now) and 8 more conventional heavy icebreakers.

In time, Russian assets, interests and activities will simply overwhelm the region. No other nation, no other combination of nations, has or is developing anything comparable to what Russia has and will have. Russia will control (dominate or actually annex) shipping lanes and mineral/oil exploration sites, probably to the exclusion of all but a token presence from other countries. Russian military bases in the region send an ominous signal to the world.

At the above-noted forum, Putin’s address gave lip service to international law while his highest cabinet officer hinted at reality: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that military deployments in the Arctic are intended to protect national interests… ‘We ensure the necessary defense capability in view of the military-political situation near our borders,’ Lavrov said, noting that a recent NATO exercise in Norway was openly directed against Russia…

“The Russian military has revamped and modernized a string of Soviet-era military bases across the Arctic, looking to protect its hold on the region, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas.” Los Angeles Times, April 10^th.

Russia is already transshipping 20 metric tons (2018) of cargo through that Northwest Passage in the months where ice flow is minimal; by 2025, Putin brags, that number will increase to 80 million metric tons a year: “This is a realistic, well-calculated and concrete task… We need to make the northern sea route safe and commercially feasible.” Putin added that “his country plans to expand the ports on both sides of the Arctic shipping route — Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula and Petropav-lovsk-Kamchatsky on the Kamchatka Peninsula — and invited foreign companies to invest in the reconstruction project… Other ports and infrastructure facilities along the route will also be upgraded and expanded, he said.

“Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic as shrinking polar ice creates new opportunities for resource exploration and new shipping lanes.

“Speaking at the forum, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg emphasized the need to respect international law and noted that the Arctic Council provides a key arena for dialogue… ‘Now and then I hear the Arctic described as a geopolitical hot spot,’ she said. ‘This is not how we see it. We know the Arctic as a region of peace and stability.’… Solberg and other leaders who spoke at the forum underscored the need for all countries in the Arctic region to focus on areas of mutual interest despite differences.” Los Angeles Times. Like dialogue stopped Russia from annexing Crimea, Ukrainian territory, in clear defiance of an actual treaty that Russia signed guaranteeing that Crimea would remain Ukrainian? The world is threatening Russia’s steel and concrete Arctic ambitions with sweet words and a peashooter.

We have a president with the weakest foreign policy experience and knowledge of any president since World War I. His blind adherence to all things “Netanyahu,” an effort to curry favor with his evangelical base and rich donors from the US Jewish community combined with his attacks on allies while embracing traditional enemies, have made Donald Trump’s international efforts the diplomatic equivalent of the Keystone Cops. As climate-change denial remains Trump’s official policy, Russia has embraced that same climate change to bate a weakened United States and establish a presence right on our international border (Alaska) that truly reflects Donald Trump’s obeisance to a corrupt foreign power with some very nice locations for future Trump hotels and residential towers.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I find it strange that his story is so completely downplayed in our media and that a once-strong-against Russia Republican Party seems fine with it all.