Big plans and their pitfalls
A recap of the summer in the North American Arctic
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in July released its long-awaited 2024 Arctic Strategy. The document follows up on the White House’s 2022 National Strategy for the Arctic Region, and marks the latest step forward in America’s reviving engagement with the High North.
The 2024 Strategy places a clear prime on China, which is positioned as the U.S.’ major Arctic threat. Given Beijing’s limited importance as a military actor in the Arctic, this seems striking. The decision to ‘name China first’ likely reflects the American national security apparatus’ wider turn towards prioritising great power competition with Beijing wherever it might crop up. Russia-China collaboration in the Arctic, especially in the maritime realm, is identified as a clear security threat to the U.S. Russia’s Arctic military presence is listed as also being of high concern to the Department.
Unlike the 2022 strategy, the DoD’s 2024 paper contains an action plan. The U.S. military expects to reach its Arctic objectives through an integrated monitor-and-respond approach, combining improved intelligence and surveillance capabilities with a transatlantic, Joint Force and NATO-based deterrence posture.
The latter objective may be quickly attainable in light of Sweden and Finland’s recent NATO accession, as well as expanding U.S.-Scandinavian bilateral military cooperation. The successful implementation of the former, however, is by no means a foregone conclusion. U.S. domain awareness and communications abilities in the Arctic are patchy. The region holds the northern approaches to North America, and is considered key flyover territory for hostile ICBMs headed towards the continent. U.S.-Canadian missile radars, sensors, aerospace and maritime surveillance capabilities are in place, but in urgent need of modernisation. Joint Force operations are inhibited by the woeful state of communications infrastructure in the North American Arctic. To remedy this problem, the DoD has called for a vast expansion of modern satellite coverage, both military and civilian. This will be expensive, and require the assistance of commercial actors, in particular Elon Musk’s Space X.
Photo: Falcon 9 rocket carrying Arctic broadband satellites in August 2024 (Source: SpaceX Live Stream)
Be that as it may, the gauntlet thrown by the DoD was duly picked up in Beijing and Moscow. In August, the Chinese-language edition of the People’s Daily made space for local Arctic experts to comment on the strategy and lament its “ever more competitive character” (越来越鲜明的竞争色彩). Chinese MOFA spokesperson Mao Ning 毛宁 accused the U.S. of “distorting China’s Arctic policy.”
In the Kremlin, speaker Dmitry Peskov said that Russia would “ensure that the Arctic [would] not become a territory of discord and escalating tension.” MOFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova chimed a similar tune. She accused the U.S. of “escalating military and political tensions in the region”. Remarkably, Zaharova also favourably contrasted China’s ostensibly peace-oriented Arctic presence with that of Germany and the U.K., whose Arctic strategies she classified as having a clear military component. In July, German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius had publicly spoken of his ministry’s plans to acquire four new 212CD submarines for operations in the High North.
The Moscow-based news portal Gazeta.ru ran an interview with Arctic expert Katerina Labetskaya: “The Arctic has long been the northern front of the global hybrid war waged by the collective West, led by the United States, against Russia and friendly states with interests in the region. Confrontation has intensified since Russia launched the Special Military Operation. Russia, China, and even the BRICS countries, many of which have had their own interests in high latitudes for quite some time, are looking at the Arctic from a new angle."
In a Telegram post quoted in the Kommersant’ newspaper, Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Konstantin Kosachev wrote: “Russia is taking certain military-technical measures to ensure its security in the Arctic in response to the build-up of military potential by the United States and its allies in the north.” He added that “the U.S. is not a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and when expanding the external boundaries of its continental shelf, acts unilaterally, using the method of forceful seizure.” Russia had said it would consider denouncing UNCLOS following the publication of the American extended shelf claim in the spring, but has since publicly walked back on those threats. Kosachev’s comments are an interesting reminder that Russian grievances over the U.S.’ approach to the law of the seas may by now be half-forgotten, but certainly not forgiven.
Photo: Map of the U.S. extended continental shelf claim (Source: U.S. State Department)
Beyond the good intentions encapsulated in the DoD strategy, the U.S. military experienced a more mixed Arctic summer season. Its only operational icebreaker, the USCGC Healy, was forced to return to its home port of Seattle after catching fire in the Chukchi Sea. The accident left the United States without any maritime surface presence in the Arctic for the entirety of the polar summer - an unlucky absence at a time when the U.S. Navy would have preferred to show presence in the region and underwrite Washington’s recent claim to an extended continental shelf in the Arctic and Bering sea.
Beyond the Healy drama, America’s general lack of functional icebreakers continues to pose a serious long-term risk to its Arctic goals. In July, the White House therefore announced the aptly named ICE pact with Finland and Canada. The aim of the pact is to jointly build and buy icebreakers. ICE is exceptional in that it posits the U.S. as the junior partner in a trilateral defence cooperation arrangement, with both Canada and Finland more proficient than the U.S. in all areas of ice navigation. The time for the U.S. to catch up with Russia - which operates approximately forty icebreakers and produces new vessels at high speed - and China, with its four icebreakers, is limited.
Photo: The USCGC Healy, while not yet on fire (Source: U.S. Coast Guard)
Still, the summer season also saw more American army boots hit Arctic grounds. The U.S. Army activated a new Arctic Aviation Command. It will facilitate command structures within the 12,000-strong 11th Airborne Division, which was reactivated in June 2022. This development is a concrete follow-up to the new DoD strategy, and had been expected after Chinese and Russian fighter jets were intercepted near Alaska by the joint US-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in July.
In Canada, debates over the country’s own Arctic defence policy strategy, published in April, continue. Much like some European NATO members, Ottawa has been feeling the heat from a possible return of Donald Trump to the White House later this year. Canada has consistently missed the alliance’s spending target, and is under much pressure to ramp up its defence spending, especially in the country’s Arctic north. Much anticipated, the new strategy paper largely failed to meet the high expectations.
Meanwhile, the desire of policy-makers in Greenland to further integrate the Danish-administered island with the wider North American security space has not gone unnoticed in Canada and the U.S. Marc Lanteigne has written about possible pathways for Canada to further cooperation with Nuuk and Copenhagen. Greenland had published its first own Arctic strategy in February. Given the decades-long pre-eminence of the U.S. military on the island, which dates back to the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Denmark in 1940, American policy-makers have an established tradition of thinking about Greenlandic security issues. In August, the Council on Foreign Relations even publicly considered American options for a possible independence of the island, which plays a crucial role in U.S. missile defence against Russia.
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