Latest news with #SvalbardTreaty
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Confrontation in the Arctic is not inevitable, argues Kieran Mulvaney
This guest essay is one of three we have published to mark the centenary of the Svalbard Treaty coming into force on August 14th 1925. The others are by John Bolton and Mikhail Komin. Illustration: Dan Williams FOR MORE than four centuries, wave after wave of explorers experienced failure as they searched for an east-west maritime passage through the ice-choked Arctic. Despite those defeats, interest in such passages never fully waned—and it is once more on the rise as climate change alters the parameters of the equation. The Arctic is, by some estimates, warming at close to four times the rate of the rest of the planet, and maximum sea-ice extent is declining by an average of 12% per decade. As a result, shipping companies and governments are paying renewed attention to potentially ice-free seaways that could shorten the journey between Rotterdam and Yokohama by up to 12 days and 11,000 kilometres, compared to going via the Suez Canal. At the same time, the prospect of Chinese or Russian vessels enjoying unencumbered travel through the region has Western military planners on edge. Such sentiments have been stoked by Donald Trump, who, after complaining about 'Russian boats and…Chinese boats, gunships all over the place' in the region, has declared that America needs Greenland 'very badly'. The two main seaways under consideration are the Northwest Passage through the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the Northeast Passage to the north of Scandinavia and Russia (which refers to the segment in its waters as the Northern Sea Route). The latter was first transited in 1879, the former a quarter of a century later. The Northwest Passage had seen only 11 transits up to 1969 and 68 by the end of the 20th century; that has since soared to 430. The Northern Sea Route, meanwhile, saw about 38m tonnes of cargo in 2024, up steeply from the 1.4m tonnes that crossed it in 2013. However, the vision of Arctic shipping is clouded by the uncertain legal status of the two seaways. Canada and Russia assert that their respective passages are national waters under their strict control, while America insists they are international. Although the differences have so far largely been filed under 'agree to disagree', tensions have occasionally flared up, including between America and its northern neighbour. Uncertainty over the passages' status and leeriness over possible national control over future Arctic shipping lanes has helped reignite interest in a notion first raised in the early 1500s: a potential Transpolar Passage across the Arctic Ocean basin, via the North Pole and entirely through international waters. Partly in response, the so-called Arctic rim nations—America, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark (on behalf of Greenland)—have all staked territorial claims to some of the Arctic Ocean basin. In 2007 Russia went as far as to drop a flag to the seabed beneath the North Pole. Much of the interest in the region remains merely that. Virtually no cargo is yet transported through the Northwest Passage, which is narrow and shallow in many places and mostly devoid of infrastructure. A Transpolar Route remains purely hypothetical. The Northern Sea Route is, thanks in part to Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia, used mostly for domestic cargo. The undersea resources that may be awaiting retrieval are largely found in Arctic rim countries' territorial waters. As for China, its interest in the region is genuine—it has invested heavily in icebreakers, and now has more than America—but its Arctic aspirations merited merely a passing mention in its most recent five-year plan. China's interest in Arctic shipping and other opportunities in the region is undoubtedly growing. Add in the prospect of retreating ice allowing access to an Arctic seafloor that may contain 90bn barrels of oil, and an increasing Russian military and industrial presence along the Northern Sea Route, and the ingredients are in place for rising tension. In 2019 Mike Pompeo, then America's secretary of state, declared that the Arctic 'has become an arena of global power and competition'. A US Army strategy document published since then makes the case for 'regaining Arctic dominance'. China, for its part, 'cannot rule out the possibility of using force' in the coming 'scramble for new strategic spaces' such as the Arctic, according to internal military texts. Few if any of these proclamations and policies provide a clear rationale for increased regional tension. There is just an assumption that, as sea ice melts, such tension is inevitable. It is hard to escape a sense of military and foreign-policy establishments finding their comfort zone: linking a potential future challenge (in this case, a melting Arctic) with a possible security threat, and focusing on the more familiar threat at the expense of the more intractable challenge. There are more productive ways to reduce Arctic tensions. In 2010 Russia and Norway agreed on a maritime border in the Barents Sea after decades of disagreement, and even since the former's invasion of Ukraine have continued working together on fisheries quotas in the region. In 2022 a five-decade territorial dispute over an island between Canada and Greenland ended when the two countries channelled Solomon and agreed to divide it roughly down the middle. Can such co-operation become a blueprint for an increasingly iceless Arctic? Or, given the stakes, is confrontation inevitable? One thing is clear: should Arctic nations talk themselves into regional conflict, it would be a geopolitical failing of the highest order. Kieran Mulvaney is the author of 'Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World' (2025).
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
The far north has become NATO's soft underbelly, writes John Bolton
This guest essay is one of three we have published to mark the centenary of the Svalbard Treaty coming into force on August 14th 1925. The others are by Mikhail Komin and Kieran Mulvaney . ALTHOUGH LONG a factor in American strategic thinking, the Arctic now receives far more attention in Washington than in decades. Several forces are at play: increased use of Arctic maritime passages for military and commercial purposes; Russia's historical focus on its northern territories, now magnified by its aggression against Ukraine; and, most salient geopolitically, China's undisguised aim to be an Arctic power, using the developing Beijing-Moscow axis. America and its allies have yet to cope adequately with these challenges. In the second world war, Greenland was critical to North Atlantic convoy routes, hosting significant American deployments. The Pentagon clearly understood the Arctic's cold-war role, building the 'DEW [distant-early-warning] Line' across Alaska, Canada and Greenland to detect nuclear-equipped Soviet bombers or ballistic missiles heading to the continental United States. Responding to the Sputnik satellite, in 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower sent the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, under the Arctic ice cap from the Bering Strait to the Atlantic, in the first submerged transit of the North Pole. Unfortunately, cold-war victory led to geostrategic complacency, not just in Washington, but across NATO and bilateral American alliances with the likes of Japan and South Korea. This complacency is disappearing as the race for Arctic hegemony picks up, but the West has much to do, and quickly, to counter the rising threats from China and Russia. The prize is potentially vast. Opportunities to exploit the fabled Northwest Passage across Canada, or its counterpart across Russia's northern coast, are enormous. Greater access to Far North natural-resource deposits, both at sea and ashore, are also generating a lot of attention. Updating the jocular insight of General Hastings Ismay, NATO's first secretary-general, is a good starting point for the West's Arctic grand strategy: 'Keep the Chinese out, the Americans in, and the Russians down.' The alliance's soft underbelly is now probably the Far North, not the Mediterranean. NATO has four front-line Arctic Ocean littoral states (Norway, Denmark, Canada and America) facing off with Russia, although the full mix of Arctic players and threats is far more extensive. President Donald Trump remains sceptical of NATO and, indeed, the very concept of collective-defence alliances. Nonetheless, America is a front-line Arctic power, as Alaska's congressional delegation relentlessly reminds Mr Trump, and the region's importance to his presidency's legacy should be obvious. Unfortunately, American military resources are currently wholly inadequate to the task, with insufficient Navy and Coast Guard vessels worldwide, let alone those required for Arctic (and Antarctic) operations, such as specialised icebreakers. NATO's admission of Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024 helped plug some of the gaps in the alliance's Arctic naval capabilities. William Seward, Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state, looks ever more prescient. Had he not led the United States to purchase Alaska from Russia in 1867, and Russia had remained a North American power, the cold war might never have ended. He also tried to purchase Greenland from Denmark in 1868. Had he succeeded, today's circumstances might have been easier. Mr Trump did not discover Greenland in 2019—when he first mooted buying it—but he has seriously complicated addressing how the huge island and its tiny population can once again be fully integrated into NATO defences. The 1951 US-Danish Defence of Greenland treaty is a workable basis for guarding against the thrusting Chinese and Russians, while allowing Greenland's political status to evolve. America had as many as 17 military facilities there during the cold war, and today's focus hopefully precludes China and Russia from acting covertly against NATO's security interests. Norway's Svalbard islands graphically embody the alliance's dilemmas. John Longyear, an American businessman, initially exploited their coal deposits in the early 20th century (more evidence of how ahistorical today's American isolationists are). However, allowable under the 1925 treaty confirming Norwegian sovereignty, Svalbard also features Russian mining operations about 30 miles from its major habitation, appropriately named Longyearbyen. A European intelligence official said recently that 'Svalbard has to be near the top of a list of where Russia might try something.' This is not fantasy. China poses an analogous threat to Taiwanese islands like Kinmen and Matsu, just off the mainland, which it could readily seize without invading Taiwan outright. These are inviting targets, testing allied resolve in the Far East and the Far North. Can Svalbard's treaty-based demilitarisation be preserved? As I discovered during my own visit there in April, the islands provide NATO's adversaries excellent locations for naval or air bases. Among NATO's Arctic Ocean members, Canada is the hole in the doughnut. Persistent Canadian underspending on defence during Justin Trudeau's several governments remains uncorrected. Helpfully, however, relations between America's and Canada's armed forces are otherwise quite good, including through long-term development of national missile defences for both countries. It is Canada's politicians who have failed. Moreover, disagreements between Canada and America over whether various aspects of the Northwest Passage are international waterways or Canadian territorial waters must also be resolved. One approach would be to agree that passage by NATO-member warships would be freely permitted in fulfilling their alliance obligations. These are merely preliminary considerations. Formidable issues remain, including the need for massive increase in NATO defence expenditures, not just for the Arctic but worldwide. Cold-war victory didn't 'end history' in the Arctic any more than anywhere else. And, critically, isolationism can play no part in strategising about a region so close and vital to American national-security interests. Time to pick up the pace. John Bolton was America's ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006 and its national security adviser from 2018 to 2019.
Economist
6 days ago
- General
- Economist
Confrontation in the Arctic is not inevitable, argues Kieran Mulvaney
This guest essay is one of three we have published to mark the centenary of the Svalbard Treaty coming into force on August 14th 1925. The others are by and Mikhail Komin.
Economist
6 days ago
- General
- Economist
Confrontation in the high north is not inevitable, argues Kieran Mulvaney
This guest essay is one of three we have published to mark the centenary of the Svalbard Treaty coming into force on August 14th 1925. The others are by and Mikhail Komin.
Bloomberg
29-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Controversial Arctic Parcel of Land May Sell for € 300 Million
A parcel of private land on Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard has attracted a group of buyers that is willing to pay the € 300-million-euro ($341 million) asking price—if the Norwegian government won't overrule the deal on geopolitical concerns. The consortium includes both Norwegian and international investors who 'take a long-term view to protect this area from environmental changes,'' Birgit Liodden, one of the minority shareholders selling the land and a well-known climate activist, said in an interview Friday. Investors include nationals of NATO member states and countries that have signed the Svalbard Treaty, she said, adding the parties have not been in dialogue with the Norwegian government concerning the sale. The Sore Fagerfjord property —14,830-acre plot of land approximately 40 miles away from the island group's main town of Longyearbyen —was put on the market last May. The government subsequently said that any negotiations or agreements on the sale have to be cleared by the state in advance due to national security interests. The Norwegian trade ministry reiterated the stance to Bloomberg on Friday.
