Arctic risks loom as Blinken tours northern NATO

As the Arctic ice melts, Russia, already a major Arctic power, wants to make the region its own. China has ambitions for a ‘polar Silk Road’. And NATO is embracing Finland and Sweden – soon members, Washington hopes – giving the alliance a new reach in the far north.

Climate change is accelerating and intensifying competition in the Arctic like never before, opening up the region to more commercial and strategic jostling just as Russia, China and the West are all seeking to expand their military presence there.

The growing importance of the region is underscored by the travels of US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who will attend an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Norway on Thursday.

Mr Blinken makes it a point to also visit Sweden and Finland, to meet the leaders of all three countries as they put pressure on Turkey to ratify Sweden’s swift entry into NATO. He will deliver an important speech on Russia, Ukraine and NATO on Friday in Helsinki, the capital of NATO’s newest member.

For a long time, countries hesitated to discuss the Arctic as a possible military zone. But that is quickly changing.

Russian aggression plus climate change make “a perfect storm,” said Matti Pesu, an analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. There is a new atmosphere of the Cold War, mixed with melting ice, influencing military planning and opening up new economic opportunities and access to natural resources.

“So these are all interrelated and reinforce each other,” Mr Pesu said. “It makes the region intriguing.”

While NATO welcomes Russia’s difficulties in Ukraine, the alliance has significant vulnerabilities in the north.

Russia remains a huge Arctic power, with naval bases and nuclear missiles in the far north, but also along Russia’s western fringes: on the Kola Peninsula, near Norway, where Russia keeps most of its nuclear-armed submarines, and in Kaliningrad, bordered by Poland and Lithuania.

With climate change, shipping lanes are becoming less ice-bound and easier to navigate, making the Arctic more accessible and attractive for competitive commercial exploitation, as well as military adventurism.

Russia has said it wants to make the Arctic its own – a fifth military district, similar to the other four – said Robert Dalsjo, research director at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

China has also been busy establishing itself in the region and using new unfrozen routes, one of the reasons why NATO considers China a major security challenge.

In its most recent strategy paper, adopted in Madrid last summer, NATO stated that Russia is “the most important and immediate threat to the security of allies and to peace and stability”, but for the first time it turned to China, saying that its “stated ambitions and compelling policies challenge our interests, security and values.”

Creating a ‘northern bubble’ to deter Russia and keep an eye on China is one of NATO’s latest and greatest challenges.

In response to NATO’s enlargement, “Russia is increasingly emphasizing the Arctic, where it is stronger and less surrounded by NATO,” said Mr. Pesu of the Finnish Institute. Russia may have withdrawn its troops to fight in Ukraine, but it retains its air force, northern fleet, nuclear submarines and nuclear-armed missiles in the northern empires.

“So it remains a pretty urgent concern,” he said. Finland, Sweden and Norway “recognize this very urgently”, even though some in NATO do not, he said. As a result, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark have decided to merge their air forces, creating one with more aircraft than either Britain or France.

Until now, competition in the region has been largely mediated through the Arctic Councilfounded in 1996, which includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States, promoting research and collaboration.

But it has no security component and soon all members except Russia will be NATO members. The council has been “paused” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. When the Russian presidency ended in May, Norway took over, so activity could pick up again.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 prompted reconsideration across NATO, and there was new concern about the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – coupled with submarine hunts in Sweden and more serious war games, said Anna Wieslander, the director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research institution.

General Philip M. Breedlove, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe at the time, called for “a denial of access area” – to deny Russia access to the Baltic Sea from Kaliningrad, the isolated Russian strongpoint with access to the sea.

China began gaining ground around 2018, buying ports in Finland and mines in Greenland, opening scientific research stations as it continued its “Polar Silk Road,” Ms. Wieslander said, prompting former President Trump to buy Greenland.

Washington then began to reinvest militarily in the Arctic with more ships, planes and military exercises, just like other NATO countries in the region. In 2018, NATO even went so far as to create a new operational command – a kind of regional headquarters that plans and conducts military operations to defend specific areas of NATO. Based in Norfolk, Virginia, the new command is naval-focused and defends the Atlantic sea routes, Scandinavia and the Arctic.

Concerns remain that China, which now has even closer ties with Russia, will continue to operate in the far north and build large icebreakers there. “China will reach Europe through the Arctic,” Ms Wieslander said.

An important question is whether the real Russian threat to Scandinavia will come from the sea, as Norway fears, or from the land, with a possible Russian invasion of the Baltics or Finland, and then an advance westward.

Both Finland and Sweden, if they join, would like to be part of the same NATO operational command, given their long history of defense cooperation.

Norway belongs to Norfolk’s command, and it makes sense to include both Finland and Sweden in that command, as reinforcements would likely arrive from the west, across the Atlantic.

But there may be more logic, given the current threat from Russia, to join the land-oriented command in Brunssum, the Netherlands, charged with defending Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic States.

“There’s logic to both,” said Niklas Granholm, deputy director of studies at the Swedish Defense Research Agency. “It’s not resolved yet.”

According to Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, NATO is recommending placing both countries under Brunssum’s command, despite Finland’s early interest in being part of Norfolk, which Sauli Niinisto, Finland’s president, visited in March.

That’s because it’s easier for Finland to be reinforced by Norway and Sweden, Mr. Pesu, the analyst of the Finnish Institute, op.

There are fears that a modernized Russian Northern Fleet could snake through the straits between Greenland, Iceland and Britain, a move known in NATO as a “red right hook”, to cut sea lanes and underwater cables and destroy the US threaten the east coast with cruise ships. rockets.

Mr Dalsjo of the Swedish Defense Research Agency, who calls himself a heretic, warns in a recent article that this threat is real, but perhaps exaggerated, especially after Russia’s losses in Ukraine.

Russia is predominantly a land force, and the Northern Fleet is considerably smaller than it was during the Cold War, when there were concerns about the kind of major Soviet naval attack described in the Tom Clancy novel “Red Storm Rising.”

“If they didn’t do it with 150 ships then,” Mr. Dalsjo asked, “why would they do it with 20 ships now?”