“Should Canada boost its military presence in the Arctic?”
The debate is part of the magazine’s “Face to Face” feature. To view the full debate, visit Legion Magazine through this link:
The debate is part of the magazine’s “Face to Face” feature. To view the full debate, visit Legion Magazine through this link:
Speculation about Canada joining the North American component of the Pentagon’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) system of systems makes periodic appearances in Canadian defence discourse – though direct participation has never gained broad political support. Now, with a more “progressive” Democrat back in the White House and NORAD modernization moving up the continental defence agenda, the Canada-and-BMD The Simons Foundation.
question could be cued for another round of attention. The context undeniably includes a persistent threat to North America from strategic range, nuclear-armed, missiles, but the American “homeland” missile defence system, due to technical and strategic constraints, offers no defence against the overwhelming majority of missiles aimed at North America. Continue reading atThis volume publishes the proceedings from a series of virtual sessions co-organized by the Canadian Pugwash Group, the Rideau Institute, the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN), and Trent University in February 2021. Available in PDF at NAADSN.
Panel Themes:
Reconceptualizing Arctic Security
Whitney Lackenbauer and Ernie Regehr
Reshaping the Face of the Canadian and Circumpolar Arctic
Wilfrid Greaves and Douglas Causey
A Changing Arctic: Northern Perspectives
Bridget Larocque and John Mitchell
Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon and Aldo Chircop
Resurgent Great Power Competition: What does it Mean for Arctic Security and Stability?
Andrea Charron and Nancy Teeple
Conclusions and Recommendations for Canadian Action
Whitney Lackenbauer and Peggy Mason
Moderators: Rob Huebert, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, Peggy Mason, Paul Meyer,
Heather Nicol, and Ernie Regehr
ON THIN ICE? Perspectives on Arctic Security, edited by Duncan Depledge and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, is a new collection of essays on Arctic Security published by the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN).
The editors of this volume describe it as addressing the Arctic’s rules-based order that “advances the Arctic states’ national interests but their global ones as well,” including possibilities for, among other things, shaping responses to climate change. At the same time, while Arctic cooperation is to be celebrated, defence and security cooperation is facing the challenges “of resurgent major power competition internationally.”
All these dynamics are explored in this volume. Editors Duncan Depledge and Whitney Lackenbauer do not expect it “to settle the debate about whether the Arctic will still be peaceful in the years and decades ahead,” but in these pages you will find “a range of expert perspectives on Arctic security” and on “the key actors, dynamics, issues, and challenges to which politicians, civil servants, and military planners should be attentive as they make their own enquiries into Arctic defence and security affairs.”
Ernie Regehr’s contribution on “Soft Security Responses to Hard Power Competition” is included as Chapter 6. The full publication can be accessed at the link below.
The likelihood that internal Arctic disputes would rise to crisis levels in danger of escalating to armed combat in any foreseeable future is by all accounts remote. The worries about armed combat in the arctic centre instead on the possibility that war between Russia and NATO away from the Arctic, somewhere in Europe, would spill into the Arctic. In an East/West war in Europe, combat could spill both into and out of the Arctic by virtue of each side seeking advantage by attacking the other’s war-making capacity away from the immediate theater of operations.
Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.
The Arctic and World Order is a Johns Hopkins University project which editors Kristina Spohr and Daniel S. Hamilton describe as an exploration of the “…political, legal, social, economic, geostrategic and environmental challenges confronting the Arctic in the face of global warming and a shifting world order….”
Here is the link for my contribution:
Chapter 8 – “Military Infrastructure and Strategic Capabilities: Russia’s Arctic Defense Posture” by Ernie Regehr
Kristina Spohr and Daniel S. Hamilton, Editors
Jason C. Moyer, Associate Editor
List of Chapters:
Introduction – From Last Frontier to First Frontier: The Arctic and World Order by Kristina Spohr and Daniel S. Hamilton
Chapter 1 – Shifting Ground: Competing Policy Narratives and the Future of the Arctic by Oran R. Young
Chapter 2 – Conservation in the Arctic by Henry P. Huntington
Chapter 3 – Greenland, the Arctic, and the Issue of Representation: What is the Arctic? Who Has a Say? by Inuuteq Holm Olsen
Chapter 4 – A Tipping Point for Arctic Regimes: Climate Change, Paradiplomacy, and a New World Order by Victoria Herrmann
Chapter 5 – Russia and the Development of Arctic Energy Resources in the Context of Domestic Policy and International Markets by Arild Moe
Chapter 6 – Governance and Economic Challenges for the Global Shipping Enterprise in a Seasonally Ice-Covered Arctic Ocean by Lawson Brigham
Chapter 7 – Climate Change and the Opening of the Transpolar Sea Route: Logistics, Governance, and Wider Geo-economic, Societal and Environmental Impacts by Mia M. Bennett, Scott R. Stephenson, Kang Yang, Michael T. Bravo, and Bert De Jonghe
Chapter 8 – Military Infrastructure and Strategic Capabilities: Russia’s Arctic Defense Posture by Ernie Regehr
Chapter 9 – Freedom of the Seas in the Arctic Region by J. Ashley Roach
Chapter 10 – Constant and Changing Components of the Arctic Regime by Alexander N. Vylegzhanin
Chapter 11 – The U.S.-Canada Northwest Passage Disagreement: Why Agreeing to Disagree Is More Important Than Ever by Suzanne Lalonde
Chapter 12 – Power, Order, International Law, and the Future of the Arctic by Nengye Liu
Chapter 13 – The ‘Regime’ Nature of the Arctic: Implications for World Order by Lassi Heininen
Chapter 14 – Arctic Exceptionalisms by P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Ryan Dean
Chapter 15 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Three Levels of Arctic Geopolitics by Andreas Østhagen
Chapter 16 – Inside, Outside, Upside Down? Non-Arctic States in Emerging Arctic Security Discourses by Marc Lanteigne
Public awareness of Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) aid to civilian governments and agencies has once again come to the fore in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Military assistance to civil authorities is routine in Canada and variously includes emergency help in law enforcement, humanitarian relief, natural disaster recovery, and search and rescue. From the earliest days of the present pandemic, critically important CAF resources have been mobilized. Continue Reading… at The Simons Foundation.
An emerging question is whether these core civilian support roles, for which there is increasing demand, should be elevated for priority attention in military planning, training, and procurement, or whether they should continue to be treated as spin-offs from the primary combat-readiness focus of the Armed Forces.One of the more troubling manifestations of re-emerging big power competition in the Arctic is the apparent determination of both the US and Russia to demonstrate their willingness to mount destabilizing anti-submarine warfare operations in the Barents Sea and the North Atlantic.
Continue reading at The Simons Foundation Canada.
When a Canadian Armed Forces official recently told an Ottawa security conference that “we cannot deter what we cannot defeat, and we cannot defeat what we cannot detect,” his audience may well have heard it as the credible proclamation of a prudent and resolute defence posture. In truth, the statement seems to run The Simons Foundation.
counter to decades of defence policy and practice. It ignores the inconvenient reality that there is no defence against a nuclear attack, even though current and planned early warning systems ensure that such an attack would be reliably detected. Continue reading atIt is now seemingly routine for pundits and security professionals to warn of an impending militarized scramble for dominance over the lands, seas, and resources of the Arctic, with Russia enjoying a formidable advantage – all evidenced by the undeniable expansion of military facilities throughout the The Simons Foundation.
region. But it’s not clear that the official West is buying it. The Americans have ratcheted up the rhetoric, but little else has changed. The 2019 NATO summit ignored the Arctic, and individual states like Canada and Norway are sticking with a more nuanced and restrained posture on Arctic security. Continue reading at