NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed on Friday the need to strengthen security on the Alliance’s northern flank to counter Russia, after a tour of Canada during which he visited military installations in the Arctic.
“The Far North is strategically important for Euro-Atlantic security,” he told a news conference at an air base in Cold Lake, Alberta, in the west of the country, noting that with the accession of Finland and Sweden, seven of the eight The Arctic states would soon be members of NATO.
“The shortest route to North America for Russian missiles and bombers would be the North Pole,” he also warned. “This makes Norad’s role vital to North America and therefore to NATO,” he added, referring to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a US-Canadian organization.
Concern over new weapons tested on site
During their tour of the Canadian Arctic, the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited a site that is part of the radar surveillance and warning system that has been in place since the Cold War era, before attend military exercises.
Russia’s capabilities in the High North “pose a strategic challenge for the entire Alliance,” Jens Stoltenberg said, citing Russia’s large military deployment in the region. This includes opening military sites in the Arctic and using the Far North “as a test bed for the most advanced weapons, including hypersonic missiles,” he said.
An increasingly “accessible” region
The Secretary-General also expressed concern about China’s growing presence in the region in terms of shipping and resource exploration, but also about its plans to build the world’s largest icebreaker fleet. “Beijing and Moscow are committed to intensifying their operational cooperation in the Arctic. This is part of an increasingly close strategic partnership that challenges our values and our interests,” said the NATO Secretary General.
NATO, he added, must respond by strengthening its presence in the Far North and investing in new structures. He also noted that climate change poses new “security challenges” that require a fundamental rethinking of NATO’s posture in the Arctic. With climate change, “the region becomes more accessible, both for economic activities and for military activities,” he argued.
Source: BFM TV
