Back in 2016, a report to Congress by the U.S. Department of Defense appeared to call for American ships to challenge Canadian claims in the Arctic. The U.S. has had three active marine disputes with Canada in the Arctic, including over 21,000 square kilometres in the Beaufort Sea and two smaller areas of the Dixon Passage, between British Columbia and Alaska. In addition, in the past the U.S. Coast Guard has sent ice breakers through the Northwest Passage without seeking Canadian permission. Then came issues surrounding access to minerals and fossil fuels located on the Arctic sea floor, especially as climate change and melting sea ice were helping to open up these waters to year round navigation and maritime shipping. In 2017, this in turn led to President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jointly signing a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing in Arctic waters.
However, now enters Russia who we all know are very active in opening up their Arctic waters. In the past, Russia has made it clear it intends to control the so-called Northern Sea Route off its northern shore, a route that significantly shortens the shipping distance between China and Northern Europe. U.S. officials have complained that Russia is illegally demanding that other nations seek permission to pass and threatening to use military force to sink vessels that do not comply. Two years ago, Moscow brought its own war games barrelling through the Bering Sea, with Russian commanders testing weapons and demanding that American fishing boats operating in U.S. fishing waters get out of the way — an order the U.S. Coast Guard advised them to comply with at the time. In addition, Russia has repeatedly sent military aircraft to the edge of U.S. and Canadian airspace, leading U.S. and Canadian jets to scramble to intercept them and warn them away.
Russia is far ahead of both Canada and the U.S. in creating ice-breaking capacity and particularly in the building of large nuclear-powered icebreakers. Their nuclear propulsion systems allow them to smash through much thicker ice than conventionally powered vessels giving them a full winter capacity to push through the up to three-metre ice encountered at that certain times of the year. In 2019, the American government began pondering the construction of three heavy icebreakers and three medium-sized vessels. The Trump Administration ordered an overview of the nation’s icebreaker fleet, with an eye toward fielding a new, rejuvenated fleet by 2029. The current fleet of Canadian Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships, now under construction, will still have limited icebreaking capacity, and to date little progress has been made toward the actual construction of a planned heavy polar icebreaker. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, concerns over Russia’s military capability and intentions in our Arctic waters have grown. All signs indicate that Russia is reinvesting in its military capabilities and presence in the region.
Canada’s Defence Minister Anita Anand is pledging to modernize the alliance protecting Canada’s North particularly in terms of our Arctic sovereignty. Hopefully, the Russian threat may actually now lead to Canada and the U.S. to finally reaching agreement on the status of the critical Northwest Passage between the North Atlantic and the Beaufort Sea. However, some observers will argue that the European Artic waters — comprised of Norway, Denmark and Iceland — are more vulnerable to Russian shipping and military initiatives in the North. One has to remember that these countries are part of NATO, and we are then, of course, obligated to go to their defence in the event of any military incursion. Since the Russian threat is also an aerospace one, there is an urgent need to strengthen the current capabilities of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). First created during the Cold War to protect against a Soviet attack, NORAD is a joint military command between Canada and the U.S. that provides airspace surveillance. America’s strategic air command’s bombers fly over Canadian aerospace on a daily basis. However, the technology of NORAD’s north warning system was only last modernized in 1985, and requires an immediate modernization designed to counter imminent dangers of the day — long range bomber threats from the Soviet Union.
What all this means is that Canada and the U.S. had better get their acts together to protect their Arctic maritime and aerospace regions. The sooner the better!
