When U.S. fighter jets intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers in the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over Alaska last July, the unprecedented move brought this increasingly assertive and expanding partnership into the spotlight. And while Beijing and Moscow have been working for more than a decade to establish a strategic foothold in the region, Washington and Brussels have only recently begun to realize the threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First it must be emphasized how important the Arctic could be for Russia in terms of maintaining a potentially threatening nuclear posture against the US. In a potential nuclear conflict, Moscow could likely launch long-range ballistic missiles from underwater bases near the Kola Peninsula through the poorly controlled airspace over Greenland. Due to low visibility in the Arctic, US forces would not have had time to properly prepare to detect and counter the strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia has been building up its forces in the Arctic since the time of its invasion of Crimea in 2014. In this perspective, melting sea ice presents enormous opportunities and challenges for the country. On the one hand, the economic importance of Russia’s Arctic coastline is increasing due to the strong commercial use of the now viable shipping route, allowing Moscow to benefit from providing shorter routes for merchant ships carrying cargo between Asia and Europe. But more movement also means that Russia’s control of its vast Arctic coastline, which stretches from the Barents Sea in the west to the Bering Strait in the east, is now more under threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having deployed a dense network of air defense, air support and ground forces at Northern Fleet bases, Russia aims to have full control of navigation on the Kola Peninsula to protect its strategic naval force stationed there and keep open all time the fleet’s access to the Atlantic. It has also invested heavily in developing precision-guided missiles that will be able to threaten distant targets without having to deploy traditional naval or air forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, to maintain and operate a strategic submarine force near Alaska without depending on the Northern Fleet’s shipbuilding facilities at the other end of Eurasia, Russia has built new submarine shelters and repair and maintenance facilities south of the Bering Strait, near Vladivostok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The role of China<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, in the context of regional political and military cooperation with Moscow, China has strengthened the connection of the polar Silk Road with the Russian Arctic, investing in infrastructure, while by strengthening Russia’s ability to threaten the US from the North, distracts Western allies from the Indo-Pacific region to some extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chinese satellites, unmanned submarines and research vessels enable Beijing to closely monitor shipping routes and map the Arctic seabed, while also studying the movements of sea ice and air masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russian and Chinese companies are promoting partnerships to build infrastructure and container ships that can sail the Arctic route year-round, which will also enable Moscow to monitor and control all activity along the Arctic coastline and better protect Russian strategic submarines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the big picture, combined Russian-Chinese sea, space and Internet capabilities in the frozen Arctic field seriously threaten the sparse infrastructure that NATO maintains in the region. Countering them requires the cooperation of NATO allies in the region, but the British defense industry is currently simply struggling to meet the UK’s obligations under the AUKUS agreement with the US and Australia, Finland and Sweden focus on security of the Baltic Sea and Iceland relies on the US for its defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only NATO allies adjacent to the Arctic that currently share this security burden significantly are Canada, Norway and Denmark. Although these countries have committed to expanding their stocks of icebreakers, submarines, unmanned vessels and communications and data infrastructure, they are also quite small states, with often conflicting demands for their defense contribution: Denmark has major defense responsibilities in Baltic Sea and must safeguard the defense priorities of Greenland and the Faroe Islands in order to maintain its influence on decisions that directly affect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canada has already committed much of its defense budget to renewing its weapons systems, and Oslo has announced the acquisition of five warships and five submarines, without yet committing large sums to vessels that could counter submarines in the western Arctic . It is a big gamble for NATO to formulate an effective Arctic defense plan in the next decade that will act as a deterrent to Russia and China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When U.S. fighter jets intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers in the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over Alaska last July, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,836,3],"tags":[954,6029,403,161,58,70,184],"class_list":["post-20761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america-geopolitical-issues","category-asia-geopolitical","category-geopolitical","tag-arctic","tag-bering-strait","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-russia","tag-usa","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20763,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20761\/revisions\/20763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}