Could Sara Palin’s Alaska be Next?

At least she can see Russia from her state. But wait, there’s more. “Russia has laid claim to the seafloor at the North Pole, planting its national flag underwater in the hopes of securing the Arctic's potential motherlode of natural resources... In an unprecedented dive beneath the ice, two three-person submersibles descended 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) to the bottom, where one symbolically dropped a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag.” NationalGeorgraphic.com, August 3, 2007. Nobody really talks about it; few seem to care. But as global warming is slowly opening up that long-sought-after Northwest Passage, as melting ice is opening more areas to mineral and petroleum extraction, battles over rights and territories loom.

Back during President James Buchanan’s time, Russia approached the U.S. about selling them Alaska, but that didn’t happen until 1867, when, for $7 million the United States agreed (Seward’s Folly, it was labeled in the press, named after then-Secretary of State William H. Seward). That was Czarist Russia, and many in the old Soviet Union and today, Russia, believe that this transfer was both stupid and illegal. The monarch could never have had the power to sell his people’s heritage that way.

So it’s bad enough that Vladimir Putin aced out “lame duck” Barack Obama as Forbes’ most important person in the world, but Russia has her eyes on the great northern riches, lands that border the United States, Canada and Scandinavia (including Greenland, a Danish territory). Russia has begun building an all-weather fleet of state-of-the-art icebreakers to allow them the kind of access that could easily dominate the sea lanes in that Northwest Passage (which they call the “Northern Sea Route”): “Russia will float out a new-generation nuclear ice-breaker by 2017 with two more to follow in 2020 under a government program to ensure commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) – a 6,000-km Arctic waterway stretching from the Barents Sea in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. Russia is the only country with a nuclear-powered ice-breaking fleet. By the early 2020s, the NSR is expected to start recouping its cost.

“The NSR is currently operational all year round. As cargo traffic increases, Russia will need more ice-breakers to cut the way for commercial ships. At present, Russia has five ice-breakers in its Arctic waters. But by 2021, four of them will be decommissioned.” VoiceofRussia.com, August 25^th.  Nobody in the U.S., Canada or Scandinavia has boats like those.

Lest you doubt the seriousness of Russian intentions, you only have to look at the fate of those involved in a recent Greenpeace effort to protest against drilling for oil in the environmentally sensitive Arctic region off the Russian coast. “The activists knew the protest was risky. Two of them, Sini Saarela of Finland and Marco Weber of Switzerland, tried to scale the offshore oil platform in the Pechora Sea owned by Russia’s state energy giant, Gazprom.

“They plunged into the icy waters after guards sprayed water from fire hoses and fired warning shots, and they were plucked from the sea by a Russian coast guard ship and held as ‘guests.’ The next day, Sept. 19, however, the Arctic Sunrise was seized by border guards in international waters… Greenpeace staged a similar but more successful protest in the summer of 2012. In that instance, activists, including Greenpeace’s executive director, Kumi Naidoo, scaled the same platform and unfurled a banner. After several hours, they departed, and the Russian authorities did not pursue any charges.” New York Times, October 30^th.

In that recent September incident, Russian border guards dropped at night from helicopters and seized the Netherlands-registered Greenpeace ship and its international crew of 30. They towed the vessel to Murmansk, where the entire crew was arrested, imprisoned and now face serious criminal charges (including piracy) with very long prison sentences. These crew members “are now confined in separate cells and [a]ll face criminal charges that could result in years in prison as a result of having grossly underestimated Russia’s readiness to assert — and even expand — its sovereignty in a region potentially rich with natural resources.

“The vigorous legal response by the authorities, including the seizure of the ship itself, appears to have caught Greenpeace off guard and left the crew’s families and friends worried that the consequences of what the activists considered a peaceful protest could prove much graver than any expected when they set out…

“Critics of the government of President Vladimir V. Putin have added the crew of the Arctic Sunrise to a catalog of prisoners here who have faced politically motivated or disproportionate punishment for challenging the state. Among them are the former oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the punk performers of Pussy Riot and the protesters awaiting trial more than a year after violence broke out on the day of Mr. Putin’s inauguration last year… But there is one crucial difference: Most of those who were aboard the Arctic Sunrise are foreigners.” NY Times.

International requests for leniency, even a request from Italian oil company Eni (Gazprom’s partner in many activities), have fallen on deaf ears. The prisoners’ own requests for bail have been denied. “When the government of the Netherlands, where Greenpeace International is based, filed an appeal to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to have the ship and crew released, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it would not recognize the tribunal’s jurisdiction, citing the country’s sovereignty. The tribunal has scheduled a hearing on the Dutch claim anyway, but unless Russia seeks a compromise that would free the prisoners, the crew could be detained for months awaiting trial.

“Greenpeace’s activists and their cause have not found much sympathy in Russia, their fate shaped in part by hostile coverage on state-owned or state-controlled television. The main state network, Channel One, recently broadcast an analysis that suggested that Greenpeace’s protest had been orchestrated by powerful backers with economic incentives to undermine Gazprom.” NY Times. The bottom line is that Russia wants what it wants, and sooner or later appears to be willing to incur international wrath to do it. You can expect more harsh confrontations between even established authorities and Russia as the sea ice continues to melt. And if you think Alaska will always be part of the United States… well, perhaps you are underestimating the longer-term intentions of those in power in Russia. Ignoring the little things can open the door to much, much worse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and these tea leaves are becoming increasingly unsubtle.