Arctic Security

Denuclearization and the Golden Dome

Amidst the new American President’s persistent rhetorical attacks on Canadian sovereignty we might still allow brief recognition of his repeated and, in some ways, unprecedented references to what he calls “denuclearization.” One can hardly quarrel with his view that “the power of nuclear weapons is crazy,” or his conclusion that “it would be great if everybody would get rid of their nuclear weapons.” Given his famously mercurial and regularly insulting outbursts, few political friends or adversaries seem ready to take up the challenge and encourage the president to move from an apparent ambition to action. Of course, there is always a caveat, and in this case it’s major, since it is the same President that has mandated the development of an “Iron Dome” (renamed the “Golden” dome) of missile and air defences that would derail any serious nuclear disarmament efforts. Even so, governments supportive of concrete nuclear disarmament would do well to press the point and explore whether there are any arms control opportunities in those musings. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Arctic security needs a Team Canada commitment

Diplomacy across the Arctic’s deepening strategic divide is now dangerously dormant, just as tensions rise and military operations scale up.

Canadian sovereignty and national security have never depended solely—or even primarily—on military defence. In the Canadian Arctic, the military component is currently of growing importance, but Arctic security is still fundamentally a whole-of-government, or Team Canada, challenge.

Even the USAID website—or what is left of it—refers to the “3Ds” of security: “Diplomacy, Development, and Defence” it explains, “are the three pillars that provide the foundation for promoting and protecting U.S. national security interests abroad.” Some formulations add two more Ds: Democracy as good governance, and Disarmament.

Continue reading at The Hill Times.

NORAD Renewal and a Team Canada approach to security

Analysts and pundits now routinely warn that Canada must urgently beef up Arctic defences to protect Canadian sovereignty and territory from the expansionist ambitions of strategic adversaries – Russia and China (and these days, we could add a third). NORAD ‘modernization” is a primary response, and Ottawa has announced the planned expenditure of an initial $38 billion over 20 years on the project. But what are the targets to be defended, and against what weapons? NORAD has in fact always been focused on defending the more southerly regions of the continent against threats coming via the North, rather than the Arctic itself. A renewed NORAD, in the face of new generations of conventionally armed missiles, promises to largely maintain that core mission. Though the strategic environment is obviously changing, threats of direct attack on the Canadian Arctic are still broadly deemed to remain low. Furthermore, the security of the Canadian North, indeed of all of Canada, depends on a much deeper “whole-of-society” effort.  Continue reading at The Simons Foundation Canada.

The Imperative to Talk With Adversaries Includes the Arctic

Among its strengths, Canada’s new Arctic Foreign Policy (AFP)  upholds diplomacy as “a first line of defence for Canada’s national security.” For now, however, it seems this “line of defence” is to remain somewhat idle when it comes to dealing with the adversary identified as a prime threat to our security. The insistence that a return to political engagement and cooperation with Russia, including in the Arctic, must await the end of its war on Ukraine is a sharp departure from past practice. In the face of similarly egregious transgressions, direct engagement with the Soviet Union persisted throughout the Cold War, in the interests of both accountability and strategic stability. The AFP rightly rejects “business as usual” with Russia, but that should not translate into ignoring critically important business at hand in the Arctic – especially the recovery of strategic stability and addressing the gathering climate catastrophe at the regional level. 

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation…

The Arctic and the East-West Nuclear Confrontation

Not so long ago, the Arctic was a region of low tension and high cooperation. In the brief interlude from the final years of the Cold War and Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous 1987 call to establish the Arctic as a zone of peace to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, several notable agreements on international cooperation were reached. But Today’s headlines and commentaries reflect a starkly different regional and strategic climate, and these heightened strategic tensions are exacerbated by the ways in which Russian and NATO nuclear weapons-related forces are now operating in the region.

A logical, if modest, policy response would be to seek a mutual agreement or arrangement to curtail ASW operations against second strike deterrent forces in designated areas.

Read the full policy brief at the Centre for International Policy Studies, University of Ottawa.

Military Footprints in the Arctic

This new report from The Simons Foundation Canada identifies 69 continuously staffed Arctic military sites. It includes maps and satellite images and covers the Arctic territories of the five states with Arctic Ocean coastlines and discusses the challenges of reducing strategic tensions and recovering diplomacy. As Canada’s first northern indigenous Governor General, Mary Simon, has reminded all Arctic states, there is a need “to figure out how [they] can continue working together when a terrible war is going on [which is] contradictory to the rules-based international order.”

Read the report at The Simons Foundation.

Cooperation, Stability, and Security in the Arctic? Strategies for Moving Forward

This was the theme of a one-day conference at Massey College, University of Toronto (November 30, 2023). Dr. Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon, Professor Emerita at Western University and Senior Fellow of Massey College, opened the conference with the question: “how can we engage Russia in the shared pursuit of pan-Arctic security, stability, and cooperation, while still holding it to account for its egregious violation of international law in invading Ukraine?”

The security panel, chaired by Ernie Regehr, explored prospects and possibilities for “military cooperation in a Divided Arctic.” The Chair’s introduction follows:

 It is safe to say that seven of the Arctic states are in broad agreement that there cannot be business-as-usual with Russia in the north as long as its assault on Ukraine continues. At the same time, there is recognition that a posture of strict non-engagement can also have troubling ramifications—especially given that Russia makes up half or more of the Arctic’s geography, demography, economy, and, of course, military infrastructure.

One global objective for which the potential consequences of non-engagement loom large is the urgent need to more effectively address the climate crisis, noting especially the rapid environmental and climate changes being experienced in the Arctic. That sense of urgency led a scholar with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs to write in the 2022 Arctic Yearbook that “we need Russia’s partnership for saving the future” (1). While offering that controversial assessment, he still insisted that Russia’s explicit violations of the UN Charter and international law mean “there cannot be a return to business as usual,” but he was driven to ask whether the planet has the time to wait for a future and more compatible Russia.

Provocative military operations on both sides of the Arctic divide certainly risk further heightening regional tensions – for example, the Pentagon’s demonstration on Norway’s Arctic Andoya Island that it could launch an air-to-surface cruise missile from a C-130 transport aircraft (2), and Russia’s test launch of a Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile from within Norway’s EEZ (3). The American commander of the test launch from the C-130 explained, “we are intentionally trying to be provocative without being escalatory” (4), and it can be assumed that the Russian Tsirkon launch involved a similar rationale—without either side offering any explanation of how deliberate provocation could avoid increasing tension.

Intensified military operations pose serious risks of military close calls, misunderstandings, and the classic security dilemma that sees security enhancement measures on one side produce reciprocal escalations on the other, leaving both less secure. The specific consequences may be unpredictable, but the overall results are inevitable. Such risks necessarily prompt questions of whether security and stability can be served when all security discussions or engagement with Russia in the Arctic are deferred until after the war on Ukraine has ended.

Governor General Mary Simon raised essentially that question by challenging all Arctic states “to figure out how you can continue working together when a terrible war is going on [which is] contradictory to the rules-based international order” (5).

The commander of the US Coast Guard in Alaska has suggested that some level of engagement is prudent. He put it like this: “You have to be able to speak to your neighbor, your next-door neighbor. You don’t have to be best friends with them, but you’ve got to be able to speak with them for shared interests across what is the natural physical border directly with Russia here in Alaska” (6).

Read the full Conference Report here.

Notes

(1) Michael Paul, “Russia’s war and the prospects for Arctic States’ cooperation,” Arctic Yearbook 2022. https://arcticyearbook.com/images/yearbook/2022/Commentaries/2C_AY2022_Paul.pdf.

(2) John Vandiver, “‘Unconventional’ delivery of US airpower in Arctic tailored to serve notice to Russia,” Stars and Stripes, 09 November 2022. https://www.stripes.com/branches/air_force/2022-11-09/red-dragon-missile-norway-russia-7986361.html

(3) Thomas Nilsen, “Russia’s new hypersonic Tsirkon missile was fired from Norwegian sector of Barents Sea,” The Barents Observer, 23 February 2022. https://thebarentsobserver.com.

(4) John Vandiver, 09 November 2022.

(5) “Climate change, Indigenous issues transcend boundaries with Russia says Governor General,” APTN National News, Canadian Press, 28 February 2023. https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/climate-change-indigenous-issues-transcend-boundaries-with-russia-says-governor-general.

(6) Yereth Rosen, “Despite Russia’s post-invasion isolation, some narrow openings for Arctic cooperation remain,” Arctic Today, 05 April 2023. https://www.arctictoday.com/despite-russias-post-invasion-isolation-some-narrow-openings-for-arctic-cooperation-remain.

Good Governance and Arctic Security

Emerging security challenges in the Arctic require policies that squarely face changing conditions, strategic and environmental, but preserving the basic stability that still exists in the region must be a clear priority. Relying too heavily on military responses risks exacerbating rather than easing Arctic tensions, and it ignores the post-Cold War reality that vulnerability to military threats is linked as much to political as to military weakness. In other words, good governance at home – political stability, national unity, and ongoing public trust in the institutions of governance and accountability – and regional diplomacy should be at the core of Arctic security strategies.  Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

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US Strategic Ballistic Missile Defence: Why Canada won’t join it

Two Parliamentary Committees have recently recommended that Canada “reconsider” it’s 2005 decision against joining the US homeland Ballistic Missile Defence system. The Pentagon acknowledges the system has no capacity against Russian and Chinese ballistic missiles, and its operational design means it also has no capability against cruise and hypersonic missiles. With continental security concerns shifting to the latter, Canada is unlikely to seek direct involvement in strictly ballistic missile defence.

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Strategic Nuclear Patrols and an Arctic Military Code of Conduct

While rising northern tensions clearly challenge notions of the Arctic as a durable zone of peace, current tensions are rooted in fears of a European conflict spilling northward, not in conflict endemic to the Arctic. Two decades of high north military expansion have certainly added to the region’s strategic uncertainty, but even more consequential are the currently increasing levels and pace of competing strategic patrols in the Arctic and North Atlantic, especially those that undermine basic nuclear deterrence. Strategic patrols impacting geopolitical stability need to be guided by normative operational rules. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.