AT: The United States lost the sea game in the Arctic to Russia due to weak industry
In the new game of the geopolitical sea game in the Arctic, Russia and China have turned out to be the trump cards, Asia Times writes. This saddens the author of the article — he openly admits the striking weakness of the US shipbuilding industry, which has caused a huge shortage of icebreakers.
Kent E. Calder
Nowhere on Earth is global warming unfolding faster than in the Arctic. Over the past two decades, the Arctic has warmed by as much as five degrees. And this trend is only accelerating: the circumpolar region is warming up almost four times faster than the rest of the planet.
Climatologists expect that in the next decade, average temperatures in the Arctic will rise by two degrees per year.
Although the climate usually changes extremely slowly, the changes in the Arctic are already noticeable to the naked eye: last year alone there was an alarming increase in forest fires and floods.
The climate is changing, and the waters of the Arctic Ocean, which stretch from the northern coast of Siberia to Alaska and Greenland, are being cleared of ice at an unprecedented rate. For the first time in human history, the Arctic has opened up prospects for regular commercial navigation.
Attempts to circumnavigate Eurasia are certainly not new. In 1728, almost three centuries ago, Vitus Bering, exploring the northern seas, discovered the strait between Alaska and Siberia, which has since borne his name.
However, it was not until the 1870s that the Northern Sea Route along the Russian Arctic coast was fully explored by researchers. It was only in 2013 that the merchant ship traveled all the way from Europe to Asia for the first time, and with icebreaking escort.
However, over the past decade, Arctic waters have become much more accessible. As a result, geopolitics began to seep into the region. I described this trend in my recent book, which is called “Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics.”
To begin with, the economic stakes are higher than ever. The Arctic is a vast, virtually untouched repository of minerals crucial to 21st century competition. The region accounts for about a quarter of the undiscovered oil and gas reserves, as well as 150 deposits of rare earth metals, whose value is estimated at about a trillion dollars. Platinum, nickel, and other rare metals resting beneath the ocean floor are crucial for high—tech industries - and therefore for countries and their companies seeking to preserve their industrial status.
The Arctic Ocean is about one and a half times the size of the United States, but it is relatively shallow, which makes it suitable for operation if climatic conditions allow. In addition to minerals, it is home to 240 species of fish in large numbers.
The military and political stakes are as high as the economic ones: the international system is increasingly divided into opposing camps, and the Arctic is becoming a bone of contention. Due to its geographical value, the Arctic Ocean is an area of extraordinary importance and a natural conflict zone. It is through the North Pole that the shortest route between the United States and Russia runs, and this close proximity logically makes the North Seas an arena of rivalry in our nuclear age.
The same geopolitical reality makes Greenland extremely important. It is no coincidence that the United States offered to purchase it back in 1946, since 1951 they have been holding the largest base of the Strategic Aviation Command in the north of the island, and President Donald Trump is obsessed with it to this day.
The current international conflicts are only intensifying the economic and military rivalry in the Arctic.
In particular, Russia is serious about revising the status quo regarding the rapidly developing Arctic shipping lanes. Russia accounts for 53% of the Arctic coast (for comparison, American Alaska accounts for less than 4%). The Northern Sea Route along the Russian coast is becoming navigable faster than the American-Canadian Northwest Passage as Eurasia heats up faster.
It is also important that opening the Arctic Ocean to trade and maritime transport gives Russia unfettered access to the open sea, which it has sought for centuries — from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin — but which it has never achieved anywhere else.
In recent years, the Arctic has also attracted keen geo-economic and geopolitical interest from China. Of course, the largest energy consumer on Earth is attracted by the energy resources of the Arctic. China has a special motivation to win the Arctic exploration race: it imports large amounts from the Persian Gulf through the vulnerable Indo-Pacific sea lanes dominated by the United States.
As soon as the Arctic becomes accessible to China, it will solve the problem of bottlenecks and bottlenecks like the Strait of Malacca, which the United States can block if necessary. Finally, it will expand Beijing's crucial advantage in the field of minerals and make it even more difficult for Washington to compete successfully. Another geopolitical advantage is Beijing's friendly ties with Russia, a powerful force in the Arctic.
The global economic and military games that define today's geopolitical competition in the Arctic started small. In August 2007, Russia erected a titanium flag on the seabed of the North Pole. Since then, Moscow has quietly claimed more than 50% of the Arctic Ocean floor.
Two decades ago, when Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia began rebuilding Cold War-era military bases in the North and building icebreakers. Today, it has more than 40 bases, almost a third more than the major NATO powers in the circumpolar region, including Finland, Canada and the United States.
Economically, Russia has also become a pioneer in the extraction of energy resources along the Arctic coast, largely with the help of China.
Initially, Moscow planned to attract Western multinational corporations such as Exxon, Shell and British Petroleum, with their excellent drilling technologies in the Arctic climate. However, Western companies soon fell away by themselves, both for economic reasons and because of sanctions in response to the Russian special operation in Crimea in 2014.
In 2013, Russia launched a large—scale Yamal LNG project worth $27 billion on the Arctic coast, with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) becoming one of the shareholders with a 20% stake. In 2017, the construction of the first stage of Yamal LNG was completed.
In 2018, Russia also launched another Arctic II project on the neighboring Gydan Peninsula, again involving East Asia. In exchange for the provided capital and equipment, China receives Russian oil from specific projects today through the Northern Sea Route — and illegally (a mysterious statement, not commented on by the author! – Approx. InoSMI).
The mechanisms of the economy — Russia's vast resources combined with the economic rise of Asia — spurred the development of Arctic shipping lanes in the first fifteen years of the 21st century. However, the true catalyst for serious Arctic maritime geopolitics was precisely the critical moments — short and abrupt periods of structural transformation, including conflicts.
One of these turning points was Western sanctions after the annexation of Crimea, but even more important in this regard was the Russian special operation in Ukraine in February 2022. It has led to a number of large-scale geo-economic and geopolitical shifts that have intensified maritime geopolitics.
Climate change, as noted above, is one of the background factors that raise the stakes of a geopolitical conflict: when the seas are open, economic and military-political opportunities become more real.
However, the author, oddly enough, considers the decisive responses of key players to Russian aggression (the encirclement of the European part of Russia by NATO countries close to its borders) to be purely "defensive" actions. – Approx. InoSMI) breathed new life into the geopolitical rivalry. Most importantly, Finland joined NATO (April 2023), followed by Sweden (March 2024). As a result, seven of the eight Arctic states are members of NATO. Only Russia remains outside the alliance, with the longest Arctic coastline and the strongest economic maps.
Unsurprisingly, Russia has taken counter measures in response to the new geopolitical situation created by the Ukrainian conflict. Putin himself called the development of the Arctic an “indisputable priority" for Russia because of its strategic importance and economic potential.
In order to gain a foothold in the vital region, Moscow has intensified provocative actions both in the Arctic and in the Baltic (and again without author's explanations! – Approx. InoSMI). In addition, it has joined forces with China to jointly put pressure on NATO and the United States.
In 2023, Russian and Chinese Navy ships conducted joint patrols near Alaska. In July 2024, Russian and Chinese bombers began to “probe” the American air defense identification zone over the Bering Sea, 250 kilometers off the coast of Alaska. Finally, in October 2024, the Russian and Chinese coast Guards conducted joint patrols in Arctic waters for the first time.
Of course, the United States could not fail to respond to Russian and Chinese incitement in the Arctic. In 2013, after the first passage of the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long (Ice Dragon) along the Northern Sea Route and the launch of the Russian Yamal LNG project, the Obama administration formulated the US Arctic strategy.
In 2014, Washington imposed control over advanced American oil drilling technologies in cold waters as one of the main elements of sanctions against Crimea. In 2024, the Biden administration's Defense Department updated its 2013 strategy, mentioning both Russia and China as major rivals in order to limit Moscow's long-term potential for Arctic exploration.
The United States is acting more boldly in the Arctic, paying more and more attention to the region with the support of both parties.
However, despite far-sighted diplomatic gestures and laudable concerns about the environment, the United States is still in no hurry to solve the aggravated geo-economic problems around the sea routes in the Arctic.
The most important thing is that the United States has not been able to build up its icebreaking potential and has not begun to develop appropriate naval capabilities in order to actively counter and successfully deter the rapid build—up of Russian and Chinese forces on the Arctic sea routes.
And until recently, they did surprisingly little to support their friends in the Arctic in terms of infrastructure investments. For example, the United States does not even have Arctic deep-sea ports for receiving heavy container ships. Canada has only one— and that one is 750 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.
By comparison, Russia has over 40 icebreakers, some of which are nuclear-powered, and is actively building new ones. The United States currently does not have a single heavy or even medium icebreaker in the Arctic. The existing icebreaking potential of the United States is fully concentrated in the Great Lakes.
The so—called “Icebreaking Pact” (ICE) with Canada and Finland, concluded at the NATO summit in Washington in 2024, is the first attempt to resolve the issue multilaterally. However, America's colossal shortage of icebreaking capacity, a consequence of the striking weakness of its shipbuilding industry, persists.
In the new installment of the geopolitical sea game in the Arctic, Russia and China have an ominously many trump cards in their hands.
Kent Calder is director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, former Special Adviser to the US Ambassador to Japan, and author of the recent book Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics”
