http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/loose-cannon-and-nuclear-submarines-west-prepares-for-arctic-warfare
Stop NATO
December 1, 2009
Loose Cannon And Nuclear Submarines: West Prepares For Arctic Warfare
Rick Rozoff
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The Arctic Ocean, in particular that part of it under the ice cap, is Russia's
last retaliatory refuge, that spot on the earth where any element of its
strategic forces is comparatively safe from a Western first strike and least
targetable by interceptor missiles after such an attack.
That Canada has advanced to the front rank of Western nations confronting and
challenging a disproportionately stronger Russia in the Arctic strongly
suggests that it has been put up to the task. Being a smaller and weaker nation
allows it to be cast in the role of a sympathetic victim of "Russian
aggression," much like Estonia two years ago with alleged cyber attacks and
Georgia last year after its invasion of South Ossetia. Leading Western elected
officials were champing at the bit to activate NATO's Article 5 in the last two
cases (even though Georgia is not yet a full member of the bloc), and Canada
could provide a casus belli impossible to resist.
----------
This year is ending as it began, with heightened U.S. interest in the Arctic
Ocean. For energy, transportation and military purposes. Especially the third.
An American website has scanned and posted a 36-page document released by the
U.S. Department of the Navy on November 10, 2009 called Navy Arctic Roadmap [1]
The paper states that "The primary policy guidance statements influencing this
roadmap are the National Security Presidential Directive 66/Homeland Security
Presidential Directive 25 (NSPD 66/HSPD 25) and the Cooperative Strategy for
21st Century Seapower (CS21)." [2] The second policy document was issued by the
U.S. Navy on October of 2007 and the first, the National Security Directive,
was written on January 9 of this year. A previous article in this series
examined the second in detail shortly after it was made public. [3]
The key components of January's National Security Directive are these, the
first reproduced verbatim:
"The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the
Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction
with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include such
matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems
for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime
security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight."
The document also speaks unapologetically of the intent to “Preserve the global
mobility of United States military and civilian vessels and aircraft throughout
the Arctic region” and stipulates in its fourth point that “The Senate should
act favorably on U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea
promptly, to protect and advance U.S. interests, including with respect to the
Arctic. Joining will serve the national security interests of the United
States, including the maritime mobility of our Armed Forces worldwide. It will
secure U.S. sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the
valuable natural resources they contain.” [4]
A Russian news source commented four days after the directive's release as
follows: “In his final days in power, President George W. Bush asserted U.S.
military ’sea power’ over the oil-rich Arctic in a fresh effort to ensure
permanent American presence in the region and the deployment of missile defense
facilities there.
“According to the text of a sweeping new directive on the Arctic released just
eight days before Barack Obama is to be sworn in, the United States declares
the territories within the Arctic Circle a zone of its strategic interests and
the new Administration is advised to expand the US foothold in the Arctic.” [5]
Indeed the new American administration has here as in most every other instance
proven a faithful enforcer of its predecessor's geopolitical blueprints.
Less than three weeks after the Bush White House unveiled its new Arctic
strategy, NATO held a hastily convened two-day meeting in Iceland attended by
its secretary general and its top military commanders. The get-together, called
a Seminar on Security Prospects in the High North, dutifully followed the
American Arctic initiative and proclaimed that "the High North is going to
require even more of the Alliance’s attention in the coming years." [6]
Four of the five official Arctic claimants - the U.S., Canada, Denmark and
Norway - were represented as founding members of the military bloc; Russia was
not invited to send even an observer.
Another Russian news report wrote of the inescapable logic of the meeting:
"NATO is seriously thinking of [establishing] military presence in the Arctic.
It considers global warming and consequently an Arctic thaw as an occasion for
this. NATO sees this as a possibility for its Arctic expansion.
“When taking into account the fact that all Arctic littoral nations but Russia
are NATO member countries, it is quite clear who the alliance considers its
rival in this region.” [7]
In the intervening months the four NATO members with longstanding territorial
claims in the region - Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States - have
made military moves into the Arctic Circle in fulfillment of the Alliance's
pledge in January.
Norway has moved its Operational Command Headquarters into the Arctic and
purchased 48 Lockheed F-35 fighter jets for Arctic patrols, and Denmark
announced plans to establish an all-service Arctic Command, an Arctic Response
Force and a military buildup at the Thule airbase in Greenland, to be shared
with its NATO allies. [8]
Great Britain, Finland and Sweden have been conscripted into the common effort,
the latter two nations having been surreptitiously integrated into NATO behind
the backs of their peoples. [9]
But it is Canada that has been appointed the role of vanguard in the impending
showdown with Russia over the Arctic. Specifically, over the Lomonosov Ridge
which runs 1,800 kilometers from Russia’s New Siberian Islands through the
center of the Arctic Ocean to Canada’s Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic
Archipelago. [10]
Ottawa has conducted its largest-ever military exercises, established new bases
and exhibited increasing truculence and saber rattling toward Russia in the
region.
Washington, although it along with Brussels is employing Canada to confront
Russia at the top of the world, is not shy in asserting its own military
presence and pursuing its own geostrategic objectives in the Arctic.
The Navy Arctic Roadmap - a curious choice of nouns when speaking of a part of
the globe without land - as the document itself takes pains to point out,
proceeds from the National Security Directive of the beginning of the year and
reaffirms most of the latter's major goals.
It highlights these strategic components for the intensified application of
military deployments in the Arctic region:
Strategy, policy, mission and plans
Operations and training
Investments in weapons, platforms, sensors, command, control. communications,
computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C41SR)
installations, and facilities
Strategic communications and outreach
In another section of the document these are the four operations mentioned
first:
Undersea Warfare
Expeditionary Warfare
Strike Warfare
Strategic Sealift
The Navy Arctic Roadmap also states that "the naval services must be prepared
to prevent or limit regional conflict when required," giving particular
emphasis to strategic deterrence and ballistic missile defense. [11]
A reiteration of the priorities itemized in the National Security Presidential
Directive 66 ten months earlier.
What the practical implementation of this policy means is the expanded
penetration of the Arctic Circle by the U.S. Navy's submarine-launched
ballistic missile (SLBM) third of the American nuclear triad, as will be
examined later, and the extension of plans for a U.S.-NATO-Asian NATO worldwide
interceptor missile system already being put into place near Russia's western,
southern and eastern borders. U.S. and NATO radar, submarine and missile
deployments in the so-called High North will complete the encirclement.
The U.S. and Britain have conducted joint submarine warfare exercises under the
polar ice cap twice in the last two years, Operation Ice Exercise 2007 and
Operation Ice Exercise 2009. A U.S. Navy website said during the first exercise
that "The submarine force continues to use the Arctic Ocean as an alternate
route for shifting submarines between the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans....Submarines can reach the western Pacific directly by transiting
through international waters of the Arctic rather than through the Panama
Canal.” [12]
The Arctic Ocean, in particular that part of it under the ice cap, is Russia's
last retaliatory refuge, that spot on the earth where any element of its
strategic forces is comparatively safe from a Western first strike and least
targetable by interceptor missiles after such an attack.
Earlier this month the American attack submarine the USS Texas "completed an
Arctic mission, with some U.S. media outlets noting the nuclear-powered
submarine broke through the ice near the North Pole and stayed on the surface
for 24 hours." [13]
A Canadian news agency reported that the government's Foreign Affairs spokesman
Alain Cacchione "said information about submarine operations is considered
secret. He noted...that Canada permits shipping through its Arctic waters...."
[14]
A rather broad definition of shipping, to be sure, but Cacchione's attempt at
evasiveness wore thin when he added "There are safety protocols in place under
NATO that provide for the exchange of information on allied submarine
movements...." [15] That is, the U.S. submarine was off the Canadian coast with
Ottawa's full knowledge. And blessings. "The U.S. navy did not release details
on what, if any, weapons tests were performed by the Texas." Nor did the
Canadian government ask, even though January's U.S. National Security Directive
explicitly challenges Canada's claim to exclusive rights over the legendary
Northwest Passage, now navigable for the first time in recorded history.
Instead, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence
Cannon "have taken a hard line in regard to excursions by the Russians into the
Arctic. Earlier this year, [Defence Minister Peter] MacKay accused the Russians
of sending military aircraft too close to Canadian northern airspace. He vowed
that Canadian Forces CF-18 fighter aircraft would intercept Russian aircraft
each and every time they came near the country."
By excursions are meant routine patrols over neutral, international waters
conducted according to the terms of the relevant treaties.
"In March, Cannon said Canada 'will not be bullied' by a Russian plan to create
a new security force for the Arctic." [16]
If loose lips could sink ships, Harper, Cannon and McKay would have sent the
entire Russian navy to the bottom of the Arctic and the North Atlantic. All
three have delivered a steady stream of exhortations, bluster and downright
threats to Russia throughout the year.
This blunt, eminently non-diplomatic, and incessant saber rattling by a
relatively minor military and international political player would not persist
for as long as it has - questionable domestic gains notwithstanding - if the
three ministers were not assured of support from the United States and NATO. In
the second case, the Article 5 mutual obligation to engage in armed
intervention if any member state requests it. In fact Canada has nothing to
back it up except for its military ties with Washington and the Alliance.
That Canada has advanced to the front rank of Western nations confronting and
challenging a disproportionately stronger Russia in the Arctic strongly
suggests that it has been put up to the task. Being a smaller and weaker nation
allows it to be cast in the role of a sympathetic victim of "Russian
aggression," much like Estonia two years ago with alleged cyber attacks and
Georgia last year after its invasion of South Ossetia. Leading Western elected
officials were champing at the bit to activate NATO's Article 5 in the last two
cases (even though Georgia is not yet a full member of the bloc), and Canada
could provide a casus belli impossible to resist.
In line with that scenario, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, the
self-styled Lawrence of the Arctic, was back on the warpath on November 23,
warning "the world...that this country will respond 'firmly' when other nations
'push the envelope' with military exercises or other provocative actions
anywhere along Canada's northern frontier." [17]
He was not, of course, referring to the United States or Great Britain or
Denmark, who as NATO allies are allowed to parade their military presence off
Canada's coast as they choose to do. He singled out Russia.
Cannon spoke three days after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the
Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. "The future of NATO and
international claims on untapped Arctic oil [also] dominated discussions,
largely behind closed doors, between Gates and top officials from Belgium,
Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, Germany, India, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.
"Gates announced...that Washington planned to boost cooperation with Canada in
the Arctic, as Russia and others eye its vast energy and mineral resources."
[18]
Cannon's - laughable except for the broader context - comments were made at the
Economic Club of Canada in Toronto where he retrieved a chestnut from the
archives ("Arctic superpower" and "energy superpower" from last August) and
"said the country's future as an 'energy superpower' is closely tied to
potentially rich deposits of Arctic oil and gas on land and seabed." [19]
This year's study by the U.S. Geological Survey "assessed the area north of the
Arctic Circle and concluded that about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and
13% of the world’s undiscovered oil may be found there, mostly offshore under
less than 500 meters of water. Undiscovered natural gas is three times more
abundant than oil in the Arctic and is largely concentrated in Russia.” [20]
Hence Cannon's assertion that "This is why we react so strongly when other
nations, like Russia, engage in exercises and other activities that appear to
challenge our security in the North...." [21]
Three North American news sources, one Canadian and two U.S., all not
unsympathetic to the initiative, recently wrote about the new Navy Arctic
Roadmap.
The National Post recently published this:
"The U.S. Navy is planning a massive push into the Arctic to defend national
security, potential undersea riches and other maritime interests.
"An 'Arctic road map' released by the Department of the Navy details a
five-year strategic plan to expand fleet operations into the North in the
expectation the frozen Arctic Ocean will be open water in summer by 2030.
"[I]t is clear the United States is intent on seriously retooling its military
presence and naval combat capabilities in a region increasingly seen as a
potential flashpoint as receding polar ice allows easier access." [22]
An American source which linked the online version of the Roadmap added of it
in relation to U.S.-Canadian collaboration in the Arctic:
"It includes a comprehensive, three-phase outline of measures the Navy hopes to
undertake in the Arctic region within four years: develop new, resilient
vessels and weaponry; map the seabed floor for potential resources and
geological information; and innovate diagnostic tools to more accurately
predict when the cap will thaw.
"Even as the ratification process lurches through the Senate, the U.S. Navy is
launching the first phases of its program. In August, Navy service-members and
administrators took part in a Canadian training program, Nanook, where they
learned tactical strategy for rugged climates and underwent disaster-relief
training. In October, the United States Naval War College hosted the 19th
biennial Seapower Symposium, where American and Canadian Naval administrators
discussed their 6,500-nautical-mile dispute over waterway boundaries." [23]
Third, with the unabashed title of "U.S. Navy Prepares for Militarization of
the Arctic," another report revealed that "the U.S. Navy is...planning for
potential combat situations that may arise once global warming has melted the
Arctic Ocean’s summer ice within two decades. A 35-page memo from the
Department of the Navy spells out a five-year plan expressing the need to
develop new technology and strategies in the event things become contentious in
the open waters of the Arctic Circle by 2030." [24]
As the U.S. and NATO campaign in Afghanistan is being intensified to an
all-time high level of fighting (with more foreign troops in that nation than
at any previous period in its history), with the Pentagon expanding into
Colombia in a move that could trigger a regional and even continental war, and
with Western proxies in the South Caucasus eager to launch new armed
hostilities on Russia's southern border, even the top of the world, the remote
Arctic Circle, is not being spared the threat of war.
1)
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2009/11/us-navy-arctic-roadmap-nov-2009.pdf
2) Ibid
3) NATO’s, Pentagon’s New Strategic Battleground: The Arctic
February 2, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/natos-pentagons-new-strategic-battleground-the-arctic
4) National Security Presidential Directive 66
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-66.htm
5) Voice of Russia, January 16, 2009
6) NATO, January 29, 2009
7) Voice of Russia, January 30, 2009
8) Encroachment From All Compass Points: Canada Leads NATO Confrontation With
Russia In North
Stop NATO, August 5, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/encroachment-from-all-compass-points-canada-leads-nato-confrontation-with-russia-in-north
9) End of Scandinavian Neutrality: NATO’s Militarization Of Europe
Stop NATO, April 10, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/end-of-scandinavian-neutrality-natos-militarization-of-europe
10) Canada: Battle Line In East-West Conflict Over The Arctic
Stop NATO, June 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/canada-battle-line-in-east-west-conflict-over-the-arctic
11) Navy Arctic Roadmap, November 10, 2009
12) Navy NewsStand, March 20, 2007
13) Canwest News Service, November 16, 2009
14) Ibid
15) Ibid
16) Ibid
17) Canwest News Service, November 24, 2009
18) Agence France-Presse, November 22, 2009
19) Ibid
20) Science, May 29, 2009
21) Canwest News Service, November 24, 2009
22) National Post, November 27
23) World Politics Review, November 30, 2009
24) AllGov, November 30, 2009
===========================
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