Polar politics heats up over security - PART III

The Danes also are sparring with the Canadians over ownership of tiny Hans Island, a rocky Arctic outcrop, which both countries claim. The Danes are not the only ones on the move in Scandinavia. Norway, an energy giant, plans to spend more than US$100 million on a new electronic surveillance system to monitor Russian actions in the north, according to a Defense News report in June.

Reminiscent of the Cold War and its role as a front-line NATO state in it, Norway will establish radar stations and open-water monitoring facilities in the Barents and Norwegian seas, according to Oslo. The proposed surveillance system is a response not only to Russia’s re-invigorated interest in the Arctic, but also to Moscow’s heightened military activity on the neighboring Kola Peninsula and surrounding environs.

The Americans, who lay claim to the Arctic through Alaska, also are paying more attention to the region. For instance, in May, the U.S. military launched its annual Northern Edge series of exercises in and around Alaska. Over a two-week period, the exercise involved more than 5,000 personnel from units from as far away as Hawaii and Japan, as well as more than 100 aircraft and a number of U.S. Navy ships. The Russians, not surprisingly, highlighted the annual Alaska exercise this year, using it as a rhetorical foil for justifying their own military build-up in the Arctic. Although always tight-lipped about its operations, the American silent service is believed to have held submarine exercises with the British last year in northern waters, no doubt to test itself in the Arctic’s changing environment.

The diminished ice coverage certainly will change the strategic situation in the Arctic region, long a hopeful safe harbor for Russian fleet ballistic missile submarines in their cat-and-mouse game with adversary attack submarines and anti-submarine aircraft.

While seemingly natural allies on Arctic issues, Canada and the U.S. actually dispute some territory in the Beaufort Sea, known as the Wedge, as well as the navigational status of the Northwest Passage. Washington views the Northwest Passage as international waters, while Ottawa sees it as an internal waterway. Canada has strongly objected to U.S. submarine transits of the passage, which has become a cause celebre in the Canadian press from time to time.

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