The newspaper photograph of the Seawolf-class nuclear fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut breaking through Arctic Ocean ice was a sobering reminder — the top of the world is rapidly becoming less isolated and geopolitically more complex.
In March, the USS Connecticut was joined by the USS Hartford and the Royal Navy’s HMS Trenchant for Ice Exercise 2018. Ice-hardened submarines can breach up to nine feet of sea ice.
There is nothing new about world powers wanting to transit the Arctic Ocean. The U.S. Navy has been doing it for 70 years by submarine, making the first crossing in the Cold War year of 1958. The Navy solved the problem of operating in the frozen Arctic Ocean by going under the ice.
This was not an option for the early explores seeking a Northwest Passage that skirted the coast of Greenland, wove through the Canadian archipelago, and then sailed along the Canadian and Alaskan coastline to the Bering Strait. For both the Europeans and Russians the goal was the same, to establish a trade route over the top of North America from Europe to East Asia, Atlantic to Pacific Ocean.
While important accomplishments in the history of Arctic exploration, these adventurous expeditions didn’t translate into commercially viable trade routes. Sea ice made these routes impractical for commerce.
And then something unimaginable to the early explores happened — sea ice is melting at record levels and summer shipping with icebreaker support on the Northern Sea Route is becoming a reality. The Arctic Ocean is predicted to be ice free in the summer 2040, according to the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program. With the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet due to climate change, the extent of sea ice reached a record low in 2017 and was just shy of a record in 2018.
The advantages of shipping via the Northern Sea Route in diminished ice or ice-free conditions are considerable. In commercial shipping, time and distance are money. Until recently the fastest route from Europe to East Asia was through Egyptian-controlled Suez Canal. By comparison, the Northern Sea Route is 4,200 miles, and up to 10 days shorter in transit time, than the southern Suez Canal route.
Maritime history was made in summer 2009 when the German freighter MV Beluga Foresight made a complete commercial transit of the Northern Sea Route, sailing north over the top from Korea to Europe, with a savings of $300,000.
The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Development estimates that two thirds of the shipping traffic that now passes through the Suez Canal will be rerouted to the Northern Sea Route. Sea ice, the millennia-old impediment that was preventing the commercially viable use of that route, reached a record summer low in 2017.
The Arctic Ocean is open for business, and like it or not, in our fossil fuel-dependent world there is plenty of business to be conducted. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13 percent of undiscovered oil is found in the Arctic, with 84 percent located offshore in the Arctic Ocean. By 2050, Russia projects that Arctic oil will represent 20 percent to 30 percent of its national production.
And, the massive supply of natural gas is located largely in Russian territory — Vladimir Putin and the Russian government are wasting no time in taking advantage of the strategic and commercial opportunities offered by the “New Arctic.” In December 2017, Putin signed legislation nationalizing the Northern Sea Route, banning foreign shipments of oil, gas and coal not extracted on Russian territory.
While many segments of the Russian economy are sagging, in part due to Western sanctions, Arctic oil and gas production are economically and strategically a bright spot. The Northern Sea Route falls within Russia’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Russia is betting heavily on the viability of its Arctic oil and gas industry and the growing strategic and geopolitical importance of an ice-fee Arctic Ocean.
Having in excess of 40 icebreakers with 15 more in planning, 17 Arctic ports and six military bases along its Arctic coastline, Russia is consolidating its claim to the Northern Sea Route and the region’s vast resources along its 15,000-mile Arctic coastline.
The expansion of China’s global ambitions is also playing out in the Arctic where they have no actual sovereign territory. Within the Arctic, China is focused on collaboratively developing shipping lanes, commercial fisheries, oil and gas and mineral production, tourism and scientific exploration.
Where does the United States stand as the geopolitics of the Arctic are reordered? It’s a mixed picture. Although it is not well recognized in our national consciousness, the U.S. is in fact an Arctic nation with Alaska adjoining the Arctic Ocean along its northern coastline. Alaska’s Cape Prince of Wales forms the western side of the strategic Bering Strait, through which any trans-Arctic Ocean traffic must navigate.
The U.S. is a member of the Arctic Council that also includes the seven other Arctic nations, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. China was granted observer status in 2013. Of this group, the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Iceland, and Norway are NATO members.
The challenge facing the U.S. leadership role in the Arctic is the development of policies and resources that address the “New Arctic” where ice is a diminishing factor and international interest and commerce are rapidly expanding. The list of issues facing the U.S regarding Arctic governance is interlinked and complex. They include the increase of marine traffic; compliance with the U.S. exclusive economic zone; the ability to respond to maritime disasters and rescue; pollution control; the challenges of addressing oil spills and industrial accidents in freezing conditions; wildlife and ecosystem protection; fisheries management; an expanding cruise ship tourism economy; the future of rural maritime, native and subsistence communities; and the role of U.S. Navy surface operations on an ocean in which it has not previously operated.
What ties all these questions together is an Arctic where the extent of sea ice is diminishing, and a white ocean is becoming a blue ocean.
Tom Litwin, of Whately, is a conservation biologist and former director of the Clark Science Center at Smith College in Northampton. He is recently retired from the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Farmington, Connecticut, where he served as the vice president for education, and continues as a visiting scholar.