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Arctic Security

Fighter Aircraft (1): Threats and Priorities

Posted on: May 29th, 2015 by Ernie Regehr

The current deployment of Canadian fighter aircraft for bombing attacks in Iraq and Syria, along with the resurgence of “air power diplomacy” from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean, should refocus attention on the Ottawa melodrama known as the CF-18 fighter replacement program. The dénouement was once again put off when Ottawa announced refurbishments intended to keep the CF-18s flying to 2025; it’s a useful delay that furnishes more time for debating the options, including those that some find unpalatable. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Security: The View from the “Top of the World”

Posted on: May 13th, 2015 by Ernie Regehr

Ever since the late 2013 escalation of conflict in the Ukraine and the similarly escalated souring of relations with Russia, Arctic watchers have been asking about consequences for relations in the Arctic. A new EKOS Research survey (“Rethinking the Top of the World”), commissioned by the Gordon Foundation, is thus especially welcome for offering a window onto the views of Arctic populations on security and much more. 1 It’s a mixed picture, but it’s clear that most people living in the Arctic do not want what is an essentially southern conflict to spill over into their region. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

America’s Arctic Security Strategy

Posted on: May 1st, 2015 by Ernie Regehr

Few will dispute the observation that the Arctic state least focused on Arctic security is the United States. Alaskan-based forces and arctic submarine patrols obviously figure into US security operations, but their focus is on Asia and America’s strategic nuclear posture, not security conditions in the Arctic. The Arctic is not central to American national mythmaking or identity, to sovereignty concerns, or, since the end of the Cold War, to national security. And none of that is about to change. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Re-visiting Missile Defence Cooperation?

Posted on: January 14th, 2015 by Ernie Regehr

Recent reporting on Russia’s new military doctrine accorded banner coverage to the Kremlin’s designation of NATO as its “number one threat,” but very few news stories acknowledged the new doctrine’s statement of Russian openness to cooperation on missile defence. Arctic missile defence installations may not figure prominently in the current deep strains in NATO/Russian relations, but East/West relations are unlikely to reach any sustainable equilibrium without some resolution of the missile defence question generally, so any opening on that front deserves attention.

 Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

 

Close Encounters with the Russian Military: Implications for Arctic Security Cooperation?

Posted on: November 25th, 2014 by Ernie Regehr

What does the recent burst of Russian military activity or brinkmanship, as some have characterized it, mean for the Arctic? While current Russia-NATO strategic posturing may accurately reflect the sorry depths to which relations between Russia and most of the Western world have sunk, a new SIPRI report on “Russia’s Evolving Arctic Strategy” is among some timely antidotes to the return-of-the-cold-war-in-the-Arctic narrative.

Close encounters with the Russian military do seem to be on the rise. Russian bombers have been on more frequent flights over the Barents, Norwegian, and Baltic Seas, as well as along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. Further south there has been a Russian air presence over NATO vessels in the Black Sea, and ships of the Russian navy sailed near Australia’s northern exclusive economic zone in a not fully appreciated military accompaniment to the G-20 summit.

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.