Canada, on the Front Line of Looming Struggle for Control of the Arctic, Is Falling Short on Defense

One North Atlantic Treaty free-rider that might get relatively easy treatment from a Trump-Vance administration is Canada. It is North America’s key to defending the Arctic. Alaska cannot go it alone.Russia claims its continental shelf extends to the North Pole. China, a self-declared “near-Arctic” country, wants to create a “Polar Silk Road” through the Bering Strait. For decades, Canada followed the European model. We, Canadians, have a national health system. You, Americans, have an army.That little ditty grated on many Americans, most notably President Trump. He ruffled European feathers by insisting that each of the 32 member-nations meet a President George W. Bush-era goal: spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. Frontline nations facing Russia — think Poland and the Baltics — got it. Poland next year will spend 5 percent of its economic output on defense. However, Canada played for time. Eighteen years after the 2 percent minimum was set, nine countries fall short of the goal. Canada ranks in the bottom five, at 1.37 percent. Earlier this year, Trump threatened to “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” with NATO’s “delinquent” countries. Ottawa unveiled a budget to raise spending to 1.8 percent by 2030.More importantly for Washington, the new defense plan focuses heavily on defending the Arctic from Russian and Communist Chinese threats. It is labeled: “Our North, Strong and Free.”“The most urgent and important task we face is asserting Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic,” the new defense plan says, citing increasing Russian and Chinese operations in the North. President Trump’s concern over Chinese forays into the Arctic became clear in 2019 when he offered to buy Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. If Trump is reelected in November, it is unclear if that proposal will resurface.Of a more concrete nature, two weeks ago, at the NATO summit in Washington, America, Canada, and Finland announced a consortium to build icebreakers, the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE pact. These are keys for projecting power in the high North. At last count, NATO’s northern nations have 49 ice breakers. Norway has two, Sweden has six, America has seven, Finland has 10, and Canada has 24, with 24 planned. By contrast, China has eight and Russia has 81. Washington wants the northern NATO countries to match Russia and China by 2035. America has not built an Arctic-class icebreaker in 50 years.With the Arctic warming at three times the rate of the rest of the world, some scientists warn that the region could see ice-free summers by the end of this decade. Russia is aggressively developing its “Northern Sea Route.” This summer sea lane over the top of Russia can cut one week off shipping times to New York from Shanghai. For the Chinese communists, it eases reliance on a geostrategic chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, the main shipping channel between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. In 2021, transits of the Northern Sea Route hit 85, up from five in 2009.Transit lags on Canada’s Northwest passage, though. Last summer, 43 ships passed over the top of Canada. Most were cruise ships or yachts. Some of this low volume is due to geography. Canada’s “ice box” is clogged with islands that slow the summer ice melt. Meanwhile, Russia and Communist China actively exploit Russia’s Arctic. In 2022 and 2023, the navies of both nations conducted joint military exercises off the coast of Alaska. “Increasingly,” the Pentagon says, Communist China and Russia “are collaborating in the Arctic across multiple instruments of national power.” That’s in a report released Monday titled “Arctic Strategy 2024.” Even though China is “not an Arctic nation,” the report adds, Beijing “is attempting to leverage changing dynamics in the Arctic to pursue greater influence and access, take advantage of Arctic resources, and play a larger role in regional governance.” Introducing the report at Washington, the deputy defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks, told reporters that China is a “major funder of Russian energy exploration in the Arctic.” The once-in-five years review warns that Russia has re-opened “hundreds” of Soviet-era Arctic military and logistical bases.China has made 13 ice breaker research trips to the Arctic. Meanwhile, Washington has let much of its Cold War Arctic infrastructure decay. Ice breakers approach the ends of their useful lives. Onshore facilities suffer from coastal erosion and melting permafrost.Short on specifics, the 18-page “Strategy,” is signed by Secretary Austin and seems designed to alert the Pentagon that threats to North America’s Arctic are no longer problems for only the Coast Guard. The document calls for placing state of the art space-based and underwater sensor across the expanses of Arctic wilderness controlled by NATO nations — America, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.Investment should be continued in Pituffik Space Base, the American Space Force base in northwest Greenland, formerly known as Thule. Canada plans to buy early warning aircraft and up to 12 new submarines.As if to punctuate the report, two American Air Force Stratofortresses flew over Greenland last weekend, en route to Finland, a new NATO member. When the bombers approached the Barents Sea, Russia scrambled MiG-29 and MiG-31 fighter jets to “intercept” them. The American pilots maintained they were in international airspace — and stayed their course to Finland.Protesting the Pentagon Arctic report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at Moscow Tuesday that “Russian-Chinese cooperation in the Arctic zone can only contribute to an atmosphere of stability and predictability in the Arctic,” adding that cooperation between Moscow and Beijing “is never directed against third countries or groups of third countries.”At Beijing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said yesterday that, with the Pentagon document, “the United States distorts China’s Arctic policy and makes thoughtless remarks on China’s normal Arctic activities,” which she described as being “in accordance with international law.”In 2007, members of NATO were jolted when a Russian scientist, Artur Chilingarov, planted a flag on the seabed below the North Pole. In the same submarine mission, Mr. Chilingarov claimed that he documented the extension of Russia’s continental shelf to the North Pole.In the Russian Arctic, China has experimented with underwater drones and polar capable fighter planes. For China, a geostrategic game changer would be to be able to park a nuclear missile equipped submarine under the North Pole. This would give China a second-strike capability. “China’s Expanding Arctic Ambitions Challenge the U.S. and NATO,” a Newsweek investigation published Monday, indicates that China is conducting dual-use civilian-military research at its 50-scientist Yellow River Station, a seasonal study center on Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago. In 2021, the former secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, tweeted that Beijing’s 2018 claim that it was a “near-Arctic state” is “communist fiction.”In this environment, Canadian public opinion polls show greater support for defense spending — if it is dedicated to monitoring and defending Canada’s 550,000 square miles of Arctic land. “The Arctic Ocean by 2050 could very easily be the main point of passage between Europe and Asia,” Canada’s defense minister, Bill Blair, told the Foreign Policy Security Forum on the margins of the NATO summit at Washington. “What we are seeing among adversaries — Russia and China in particular — is a far more assertive approach into what we have always considered our Arctic.”Describing his plans to increase defense spending by 27 percent next year, he said: “I have no intention of Canada being a free-rider.”

Canada, on the Front Line of Looming Struggle for Control of the Arctic, Is Falling Short on Defense

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