The perils of the Arctic loom over Blinken during his Northern NATO tour

BERLIN – As the polar ice melts, Russia, already a great Arctic power, wants to take over the region.

China covets a “polar silk road”.

And NATO is embracing Finland -and also a Swedenhopes Washington, giving the alliance new reach in the Far North.

Climate change is accelerating and amplifying the competition in the Arctic like never before, opening up the region to greater trade and strategic struggle at a time when Russia, China and the West is looking to expand its military presence there.

The growing importance of the region is underlined by the trips of the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who will attend an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Thursday Norway.

Blinken will also visit Sweden and Finland, meeting the three countries’ leaders as they press Turkiye ratify Sweden’s early entry into NATO.

He is scheduled to deliver a major speech on Russia, Ukraine and NATO on Friday in Helsinki, the capital of the new NATO member.

For a long time, countries have been reluctant talk about the Arctic as a possible military zone.

But that is changing rapidly.

Russian aggression and climate change constitute “a perfect storm,” said Matti Pesu, an analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

There is a new atmosphere cold War, mixed with the thaw, affecting military planning and opening up new economic possibilities and access to natural resources.

“So all of these are connected and they magnify each other,” Pesu said.

“That makes the region intriguing.”

While NATO has welcomed Russia’s difficulties in Ukraine, the alliance does indeed have significant vulnerabilities in the north.

Russia remains a major Arctic power, with naval bases and nuclear missiles stationed in the far north, but also along Russia’s western border:

on the Kola Peninsula near Norway, where Russia keeps most of its submarines with nuclear weapons, and in Kaliningrad, on the border with Poland and Lithuania.

With climate change, sea lanes are becoming less ice-covered and easier to navigate, making the Arctic bigger accessible and attractive for competitive commercial exploitation and military adventurism.

According to Robert Dalsjo, director of research at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, Russia has said it wants to own the Arctic, a fifth military district, on a par with the other four.

China has also been very busy trying to gain a foothold in the region and use new unfrozen routes, one of the reasons NATO regards China as an important challenge your safety.

In its latest strategic document, approved last summer in Madrid, NATO declared that Russia is “the most significant and direct threat to the security of the allies and to peace and stability”, but for the first time it referred to China, stating that its “declared ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values”.

How to create a “northern bubble” to deter Russia from controlling China is one of NATO’s biggest recent challenges.

In response to NATO enlargement, “Russia is placing more and more emphasis on the Arctic, where they are stronger and less surrounded by NATO,” said Pesu of the Finnish Institute.

Russia may have reduced its troops to fight in Ukraine, but it retains its air power, its Nordic fleet, its nuclear submarines and its nuclear missiles in the northern kingdoms.

“So it’s still a pretty pressing concern,” he said.

Finland, Sweden and Norway “see this with the utmost urgency,” even if some in NATO don’t, he said.

Due, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark they decided to combine their air forces, creating one with more planes than either Britain or France.

Until now, competition in the region has been largely mediated by the Arctic Council, founded in 1996, which includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United Statesand promotes research and cooperation.

But it lacks a security component, and soon all but Russia will be members of NATO.

The Council has been “on hiatus” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

When Russia’s presidency ended in May, Norway took over, so business could pick up again.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 sparked second thoughts across NATO, and there was new anxiety about the baltic states -Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania- combined with Swedish submarine hunting and more serious war games, said Anna Wieslander, Northern Europe director at the Atlantic Councila research institute based in Washington.

General Philip Breedlove, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe, called for “an area ban” to prevent Russia from entering the Baltic Sea from Kaliningrad, Russia’s isolated sea-access stronghold.

China started making inroads around 2018, looking to buy ports in Finland and mines in Greenland, opening scientific research stations as it pursues its “Polar Silk Road”said Wieslander, urging the former president Donald Trump offer to buy Greenland.

Washington then began to reinvest militarily in the Arctic with more ships, aircraft and military exercises, as did other NATO countries in the region.

In 2018, NATO even created a new operational command, a sort of regional headquarters that plans and carries out military operations to defend specific NATO areas.

The new command, headquartered in Norfolk, Va., focuses on the Navy and supports the sea ​​routes the Atlantic, Scandinavia and the Arctic.

Concerns remain that China, which now has even closer ties to Russia, is still active in the far north, building massive icebreakers. “China will reach Europe through the ArcticWieslander said.

A major question is whether the real Russian threat to Scandinavia will come from the sea, as Norway fears, or from the mainland, with a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic states or Finland, and then a move westward.

Both Finland and Sweden want to be part of the same NATO operational command when they join, given their long history of defense cooperation.

Norway belongs to the Norfolk command, and it stands to reason that both Finland and Sweden belong to that command, as reinforcements would likely come from the west, across the Atlantic.

But perhaps it makes more sense, given the current Russian threat, for them to join Brunssum, the Netherlands-based ground command tasked with defending central and eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic nations.

“There is logic to both,” said Niklas Granholm, deputy director of studies at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

“It’s not resolved yet.”

According to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, NATO is recommending including both countries under Brunssum’s command, despite Finland’s initial interest in being part of Norfolk, which Sauli Niinisto, President of Finland, visited in March.

That’s because it’s easier for Finland to receive reinforcements from Norway and Sweden, said Pesu, an analyst at the Finnish Institute.

The fear is that a modernized Russian Northern Fleet could swoop down the strait between Greenland, Iceland and Great Britain, a maneuver known in NATO as the “right red hook”, to cut sea lanes and submarine cables e threaten the east coast of the United States with cruise missiles.

Dalsjo of the Swedish Defense Research Agency, who calls himself a heretic, warns in a recent article that this threat is real but may be exaggerated, especially after Russian losses in Ukraine.

Russia is predominantly a land power, and its Northern Fleet is considerably smaller than it was during the Cold War, when there were concerns about the kind of large Soviet naval attack described in Tom Clancy’s novel. “Red Storm Rising”.

“If they didn’t do it then with 150 ships,” Dalsjo asked, “why would they do it now with 20?”

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