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 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 at The Simons Foundation.
It 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 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 The Simons Foundation.
The American commander of Norad claims that today’s security environment is “more competitive and dangerous” than any in recent generations, and that makes the case for modernizing the North Warning System. But upgrades to this northern transcontinental line of surveillance radars—deployed in support of sovereignty, air defence and frontier controls—are necessary regardless of threat levels.
The NWS joins Pacific and Atlantic coastal radars in monitoring air approaches to Canadian territory. Norad and the Canadian Armed Forces track and identify some 200,000 civilian aircraft that approach or enter Canadian airspace annually. The mission is to sort out which of those represent challenges to Canadian security, law enforcement or public safety.
…
“The point of the NWS, is and will remain, domain awareness—awareness of events within and in the approaches to Canadian territory—and modernization of the system should be driven less by the return of “great power politics” and more by an acknowledgement that domain awareness is as important in peacetime as in crisis.”
…
See the debate at “Face to Face” in Legion Magazine…
Geography alone will continue to ensure that, as long as the United States and Russia place nuclear deterrence at the centre of their security strategies, both offensive and defensive systems will be deployed in the Arctic. As changing climate conditions also bring more immediate regional security concerns to the fore, and even as east-west relations deteriorate, the Arctic still continues to develop as an international “security community” in which there are reliable expectations that states will continue to settle disputes by peaceful means and in accordance with international law. In keeping with, and seeking to reinforce, those expectations, the denuclearization of the Arctic has been an enduring aspiration of indigenous communities and of the people of Arctic states more broadly, even though the challenges are daunting, given that two members of that community command well over 90% of global nuclear arsenals. The vision of an Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zone nevertheless persists, and with that vision comes an imperative to promote the progressive denuclearization of the Arctic, even if not initially as a formalized nuclear-weapon-free zone, within the context of a broad security cooperation agenda. Continue reading at…
“Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic”
See: Ernie Regehr (2019) Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, DOI: 10.1080/25751654.2019.1631696
A single provocative sentence about China deploying nuclear-armed submarines in the Arctic led much of the commentary on the Pentagon’s May 2019 report on developments in the Chinese military. The reference was obviously meant to stoke alarm, and as long as competitive nuclear weapons “modernization” proceeds apace – especially in the United States, Russia, and China – there is little doubt that China could one day be capable of conducting submarine patrols in the Arctic, but that doesn’t answer the question of why they would want to. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.
Deliveries of the used F-18 fighter aircraft that Canada is acquiring from Australia have begun. The point of the new purchase of old F-18s is to provide a temporary fix for the ostensible capability gap that was created by a redefinition of Canadian requirements. It was broadly understood as an unusually sudden insistence on an immediate need for up to 25 more fighter aircraft (18 for operational roles, possibly seven more for testing and spare parts), but it was also part of a pattern of arbitrarily changing requirements for air defence missions that remain essentially unchanged. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.
It’s clear from Cold War arms control agreements that political harmony and broad strategic cooperation are not prerequisites for progress on nuclear disarmament. It is nevertheless hard to see the US and Russia launching new rounds of nuclear arms control talks without some serious efforts at building mutual trust and understanding within the Euro/Atlantic political/security arena, even if that cannot be guaranteed to yield broad areas of agreement. Ultimately, better understanding and the rational management of conflicting interests will have to be underwritten by restrained political-military practices that seek to build confidence and, notably, point towards a renewed arms control agenda – in other words, the kinds of mutual security arrangements envisioned through the OSCE. The prospects for that level of political maturity taking firm hold in the current circumstances are not particularly bright – but that doesn’t mean they are any less necessary. Read further at The Simons Foundation.
The Arctic is the primary home of Russia’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine force. That fleet, like its American counterpart, is being “modernized,” the subs are patrolling more often, and, inevitably, American attack submarines are paying increasing attention. Four decades ago, in a climate of intense Cold War confrontation and nuclear dangers, when American and Soviet ballistic missile submarines and the attack subs that trailed them roamed the oceans, strategists, peace researchers, and some military planners grew intensely worried about the strategic instability wrought by such dangerous cat and mouse maneuvers. That in turn led to innovative proposals for anti-submarine-warfare-free zones as one way of easing tensions and, especially, as a means of reducing the risks that mishaps, miscalculations, or miscommunications would escalate out of control. The Arctic figured prominently in those proposals – the essential elements of which continue to have merit and, unfortunately, relevance. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.
Questions about sovereignty are a constant in Canadian discourse on the Arctic – a current iteration being a study of “Canada’s Sovereignty in the Arctic” by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (FAAE). As of Oct 22, the Committee had held four sessions, heard 15 witnesses, and received four written briefs, and the overwhelming thrust of testimony so far is that Canada does not have an Arctic sovereignty problem. Furthermore, there is an irony in the application of northern sovereignty that the Committee has yet to address – namely, the inescapable reality that, in a challenging region made manageable through international cooperation, part of the responsible exercise of national sovereignty in the Arctic is the willingness to curb purely national prerogatives in favor of regional collaboration and collective well-being. Read Further at The Simons Foundation.