Westerners tend to interpret Russia’s behavior in the Arctic as offensive, going back to 2007, when the country resumed air and naval patrols in the area and planted its flag under the North Pole.
Alexander Sergunin, a professor of international relations at Saint Petersburg State University, argues in The Wilson Quarterly that the reality is more nuanced. On balance, he writes, Moscow’s policy is pragmatic. (more…)
America is out of the environmental protection businesses; so says the haughty God-Emperor Donald Trump, whose word is apparently law.
Too bad even god-emperors cannot change facts. Too bad, especially, for the billions who are almost certain to be disrupted, displaced and decimated by the looming geopolitical effects of climate change.
That basic truth is denied heartily by many who have incentive to play games for short-term gain. These are old-school industrial concerns, for whom environmental regulation hammers a bottom line; alt-right, alt-truthers, for whom simple science is a threat to their incoherent worldview; and shattered working classes, seeking a simple scapegoat for the complicated story of their economic dissolution and disenfranchisement.
As written in Salon:
The executive order is another example of the Trump Administration’s ignoring basic facts in service of a right-wing ideology rooted mostly in a blind, irrational hatred of Obama.
Unfortunately for Trump, undoing Obama’s climate legacy will require more than the stroke of a pen.
The science of climate change is so basic, however, that it is shaping geopolitical forces on a global scale. Whether those forces will overcome the denialists remains to be seen.
Climate change will be the human event of the twenty-first century. It will be a shaping of our species unlike anything since the end of the last Ice Age. To presume that nation states, or their successors, will somehow carry on blithely in spite of it is naive in the extreme. (more…)
On Friday, Canada handed over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council to the United States in its far northern city of Iqaluit. During its two-year tenure, the physical and geopolitical landscape of the Arctic has changed once again with much focus taken away from the region and put on the tensions between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine.
Geopolitically, the Arctic remains important. For the United States, the key challenges are bringing the Arctic Council to the fore of international politics and balancing economic ambition and environmental sustainability.
Specifically, America needs to address its long-standing abstention from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. If the relevant issues of sovereignty can finally be resolved, it would be a significant show of intent by the Americans in respect to not only the Arctic but maritime disputes in general. Failure to do so would see continued exasperation and disunity among the Arctic Council nations.
The United States are also behind in creating concrete policy for the Arctic. Canada used its chairmanship to create a regional oil pollution preparedness and response agreement. The American administrators may expand on this considering Alaska’s proximity to Arctic resources, hopefully sidestepping any environmental landmines along the way. (more…)
Canada’s foreign minister, John Baird, made a remarkable claim this week: that Canada’s extended continental shelf should include the geographical North Pole.
The news came as an end of the year deadline for the country’s submission to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf loomed large over its policies toward the Arctic and its neighbors.
Canada has good reason to establish its influence in the Arctic, a region that is believed to hold as much as a quarter of the world’s remaining oil and natural gas resources. The country has always maintained a robust stance in the High North which ranks above all other priorities in its foreign policy. (more…)
The news from Kiruna, Sweden last week was certainly a game changer for the future of the Arctic region.
As the chairmanship of the Arctic Council forum was passed to Canada, China, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea were formally accepted into the “cold club” as observer members. A binding oil spill prevention agreement for the Arctic was also signed, highlighting the resources that are said to be found in the area. But the postponing of the accession of the European Union and the entry of China dominated proceedings following the ministerial meetings in the northern Swedish town.
The European Union’s bid to be an observer in the body was previously rejected in 2009 due to a dispute with Canada over its trade in seal products, illegal in Europe. The same issue likely prevented the European Union from entering the Arctic forum this year. (more…)
In September, the navies of thirteen nations gathered at the port of Turku in Finland for Exercise Northern Coasts 2010, a two week training event meant to “improve the interoperability between participating units and countries with main emphasis on maritime operations in confined and shallow waters,” according to the Finnish military. The event was tailored for “smaller naval units, such as fast patrol boats, corvettes, small frigates and Mine Counter-Measure Vessels,” Warships International Fleet Review reported. (more…)
