Monday, September 7, 2015
Cold Polarization
On August 2, 2007, A Russian MIR deep submersible
dropped to 4,261 meters (almost 14K feet) below the Polar ice cap and planted a
39 inch platinum Russian flag (and a time capsule with a message from Vladimir
Putin) directly on the North Pole (pictured above). Claiming that outcroppings
from the Russian mainland extended undersea veins of land towards the pole and
all along the polar region, Russia had claimed that entire region as Russian
territory back in 2001. Russia also claimed the passageway that we call the
Northwest Passage in the West, a block of ice that has slowly turned into an
occasionally-navigable body of water. A United Nations arbitration failed to
support those claims for lack of sufficient substantiating evidence.
Russia, which also claims that the Tsars
lacked the right to sell Alaska to the United States (the 1867 “Seward’s
Folly”), has hardly given up in claiming massive rights within the polar
region, a seabed rich in fish, minerals and oil. On August 4th, the
Russians once again asserted territorial exclusivity to 1.2 million square
kilometers (463,000 square miles) of the Arctic sea shelf. The other nations
bordering the Arctic – Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark/Greenland –
quickly rejected what they believed to be a preposterous Russian grab at
precious resources in one of the world’s most delicately-balanced ecological
environments. Environmentalists screamed almost as loudly as did the
non-Russian Arctic nations.
Citing new scientific data, Russia claimed
that her assertion was now fully sustainable and irrefutable. Global warming
has contracted the polar ice caps and opened upon once-inaccessible lands to
exploration, exploitation and use as part of new, expected long-range
commercial ocean passages. The formal demand was presented by Russia to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental
Shelf for review.
But Russia was hardly just counting on the good
graces of the United Nations to vindicate its claims. Two years ago, Russia
began building a new, massive, nuclear powered ice breaker on a scale that the
world had never seen before: “Russia
has started building the world’s largest universal nuclear-powered icebreaker
capable of navigating in the Arctic and in the shallow waters of Siberian
rivers. The unique vessel will further increase Russia’s dominance in the
region.
“The 173m ship is being
built by the Baltiysky Zavod shipyard in St Petersburg, and is planned to be
completed by 2017. Once finished the ship will be 14 meters longer and 4 meters
wider than the current record holder, ‘50 year Victory’ that is 159 meters [521
feet] long and 30 meters [98 feet] wide.” RT.com, November 6, 2013. It is
a huge ship, a record-size for 2013, but more and bigger craft are being added
rapidly to the Russian ice breaking fleet all the time.
“The higher the ambitions in
the Arctic, the more icebreakers under construction. That appears to be the
case, at least, for Russia. The country currently has at least 14
icebreakers under construction and several more under planning… In
addition, several other kinds of icebreaking vessels are under construction,
among them special LNG tankers.
“The construction of the new
vessels is all concentrated on yards located in and around St Petersburg. While
the Baltiisky Yard is constructing the new generation nuclear-powered
icebreakers, the Admiralty Yard and the Vyborg Yard produce diesel-engined
vessels. Also the Yantar Yard in Kaliningrad has been involved in construction
processes. In addition, the Russian-owned Arctech Yard in neighboring Finland
is delivering icebreaking vessels for Russian stakeholders [vessels that
can break ice sideways as well].
“The biggest and most
powerful of all the new vessels is under construction at the Baltiisky Yard.
The nuclear-powered LK-60 icebreaker (project 22220) will be the
world’s most powerful icebreaking vessel -- 568 feet long, 111.5
feet wide and able to sail in ice nearly 10 feet thick. It will be part of
the state-owned Rosatomflot fleet of nuclear icebreakers based
in Murmansk. Russia intends to build at least two of this class vessel,
the first to be ready by the end of 2019, the other by the
end of 2020.” Alaskan Dispatch New, May 11th.
No other nation or group of
nations can mirror the expected ice-breaking capacity of this new Russian
fleet. And no regional powers, including the United States, have remotely the
same sea-going capacity to police and control the polar region as do the
Russians. And it’s not just this new fleet that has set Russia’s saber-rattling
over the Arctic. “The new move comes a week after the Kremlin said it was
strengthening its naval forces in the Arctic as part of a new military
doctrine… Earlier this year, Russia's military conducted exercises in the
Arctic that involved 38,000 servicemen, more than 50 surface ships and
submarines and 110 aircraft.” BBC.com, August 4th.
In recent years, Russia has moved on
Georgia’s rebel state (South Ossetia), Crimea, Ukraine, the Arctic and even
someday… we can expect against Alaska. Russia is increasingly a rogue state, a
global pariah that loves to make friends with extremists (North Korea, Syria,
Iran, etc.) and seems to be the living paradigm of “might makes right.” As the
world is distracted with Islamic turmoil and genocide, disarmament focused on
Iran and wars all across Saharan and even Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the
Middle East, a dark sinister force is skulking in the Arctic, believing that
sooner or later, one way or the other, the Arctic will simply be one more part
of the Russian motherland. Are we ready? Willing? And able to resist this land
grab?
I’m
Peter Dekom, and with a gridlocked and highly polarized government, with
Americans tearing at each other’s throats, Russia has to be cackling at what it
perceives to be its inevitable control of the entire Arctic region.
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