The Genesis Of The New Militarisation: Russia vs. The U.S.?#

The ongoing militarisation of the Arctic has been caused mostly by the phase of tensions between Russia and the U.S. triggered by the start of the Ukrainian Crisis in 2013-14, which in turn provoked a campaign by the “Collective West” to isolate Russia, which in turn pivoted to China (Washington’s designed adversary), marking the beginning of a new season of great power competition.

For Moscow, the Arctic region is not only a source of oil and gas, but also a new waterway between Europe and the Far East: as put by Alexey Fadeev, Professor at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University, the Northern Sea Route could soon become one of the main sources of revenues in the Arctic, together with oil and gas. This triggered the restoration of several military installations in the region and the construction of new ones, as well as the establishment of a new strategic command for the Arctic region in 2014, named OSK Sever. Many of the Russian Arctic military sites are located in the Kola Peninsula, at the Western gateway to the Northeast Passage, strategically located close to the border with Norway.

For Russia, the main aims of this build-up are the protection of its Arctic oil and gas fields and the enforcement of its claims on the Northeast Passage, which is probably also the main waterway not controlled by the U.S. or its allies. At the moment, the status of the Northeast Passage is under dispute: Russia considers some parts of it, which pass through internal archipelagos, as internal waters, but the U.S. and some European countries don’t recognise Russian claims, pushing for the classification of these parts as international straits.

This strategic implications are clear: the right to innocent passage, as defined by the Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), does not apply to internal waters, and if the straits of the Northeast Passage were classified as such, Russia would have the right of stopping the transit of foreign vessels through these waters, with a particular reference to military ships, and to leverage transit fees, which Moscow would not have if these straits were classified as international waters. So we can conclude that, at the moment, the militarisation of the Russian Arctic is essentially defensive.

For the U.S., on the other hand, the militarisation somehow recovers a strategic concern of the Cold War: the possibility of a nuclear strike through the Arctic. Like the Russian one, the U.S. strategic posture in the Arctic is mostly defensive; but, at the same time, it does not lack an offensive nature as well. Challenging the Russian claim on the Northeast Passage and its dominant position in the Arctic as a whole can hardly be defined as just defence. Likewise, it’s difficult not to see a trait-d’union between the increased U.S. interest in the Arctic and the growing convergence between Russia and China since 2014. This anti-hegemonic axis, which also implies an enhanced cooperation in the spheres of defence, logistics and the extraction of oil and gas in the Arctic, is rather concerning for Washington, and the 2019 DOD Arctic Strategy accused Russia and China of “challenging the rules-based order in the Arctic”.

Will this confrontation become nuclear? The gradual withdrawal from the strategic arms control regime established between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War (and, by a lesser extent, during the short-lived reset of the late-2000’s) may pave the basis of a military buildup clearly pointed against the counterpart; but, at the moment, both the U.S. and Russia are mostly adopting a policy of self-restraint, which implies the respect of many provisions of the aforementioned treaties even if they no longer have a legal obligation to do so.

At the moment, the U.S. are adopting a more aggressive posture in the Arctic, but Trump’s stated objectives are Greenland and Canada, rather than containing anything on the other side of the Arctic Ocean, and Russia, in particular, does not figure as a main strategic concern. Moreover, according to a draft of the new National Defence Strategy recently published by Politico, the Pentagon will now prioritise national stability and “the Western Hemisphere” (the American continent) over countering China or Russia, and this marks a 180-degree turn not only from the suprematism of many previous administrations, which paid a great importance on preserving American primacy against the growth and the resentment of what they called “revisionist powers”, but also from Trump’s first administration, mostly focused on China.

Is this the sign of a Copernican revolution in the U.S.’s strategical posture, which will outlive Trump? Perhaps. A return to suprematism is increasingly unsustainable, although the idea is not necessarily dead, and a multipolar world is now a reality (although not recognised by everybody). If this happens, the risk of a new confrontation between Moscow and Washington in the Arctic strengthened by nuclear threats should dramatically decrease.

Competition over resources and waterways will probably continue, as it naturally happens among great powers, and it’s currently unlikely that the dispute on the status of the Northeast Passage—as well as of the Northwest one, which is subject to a dispute akin to its Northeastern counterpart since it passes through the Canadian Archipelago—will be settled with an ad hoc convention like the 1936 Montreux one on the Turkish Straits, at least in the short and medium term; but at the moment it’s unlikely that it will get nuclear.

Northern Europe: The Real Hotspot#

The situation in Europe, at the border with Russia or nearby, is way tenser. The UK is a country which must be carefully observed. As explained in the previous analysis, Britain is not, strictly speaking, an Arctic country; but its northernmost territories extend into the “High North”, and militarising the North of Great Britain (and, by a lesser extent, keeping Northern Ireland) is important both to defend the Kingdom and to project power in the Arctic.

Britain was invaded through the North Sea twice, first by the Anglo-Saxons and then by the Vikings—see Danelaw and Kingdom of the Isles, and it risked to be invaded again through the same route during WWII, when Nazi Germany had turned Denmark and Norway into vassal states. Likewise, Scotland was a thorn in England’s back when it was an independent kingdom, since Edinburgh established a strong alliance with France—England’s main enemy on the Continent—in order to avoid being overrun by London. But, after the 1707 Act of Union, England—the Englishness of the British creation is hardly disputable—started to use Scotland’s Arctic outreach to project power into the Arctic region.

Given all this, and given the increasing strategic importance of the Arctic region and the GIUK Gap of which Britain is the southern terminus, the north of Britain is traditionally the most militarised region of the British Isles. The submarines equipped with Trident nuclear missiles are located in the HMNB Clyde, near Glasgow. The nearby town of Dunoon, during the Cold War, hosted a main US military base equipped with nuclear missiles; and, while the base is now closed, US soldiers are now moving back to Scotland. Moreover, Britain has increased its military cooperation with Nordic countries: all Nordic countries participate to the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Forces, and London may have played a main role in making Sweden and Finland join NATO.

This policy is aimed not only at strengthening its influence in Northern Europe, which could be included into a sort of British sphere of influence together with parts of the Intermarium Region, but also at countering the Arctic strategies of Russia and China. The British MOD opposes any recognition of some parts of the Northeast Passage as Russian internal waters, and this stance, as put by a senior lecturer of the University of St Andrews, “creates real incentives for NATO, the UK and partners to conduct freedom of navigation exercises to challenge this Russian attempt to establish a de facto claim to something that is very tenuous or illegal in international law”.

Will the Lion poke the Bear? Especially given the current tensions, implementing such an aggressive policy would inevitably cause tensions, potentially greater than those provoked by the 2021 Black Sea Incident, and the risk that these tensions would spiral out of control is rather high. But, at the moment, there are no plans to conduct such manoeuvres, and the document published by the UK Parliament quotes also a professor who states that “I do not think we can throw out their claim immediately”. Still, tensions are likely to stay high. Britain’s legal and military capabilities to challenge Russia’s claims are limited, and if in the future London is going to support Canada’s stance on the Northwest Passage—similar to Russia’s on the Northeast one—on the basis of their Commonwealth ties, this would inevitably raise accusations of double standards; but, for strategic reasons, London is still likely to play a key role in this.

But the focal point of the Arctic’s ongoing militarisation and potential nuclearisation, and where the risk of incidents or even wars is higher, is Northern Europe. This marks a main difference between the Cold War and the ongoing confrontation between Russia and the “Collective West”. During the former, Scandinavia was probably the quietest area along the Iron Curtain: Sweden and Finland, which bordered the USSR either by sea or by land, were neutral; Helsinki, in particular, had rather close economic and political relations with Moscow, and Norway, while a NATO member, had adopted a policy of self-restraint in order not to provoke its Eastern neighbour (it didn’t host nuclear weapons or permanent dislocations of foreign forces and it didn’t conduct military exercises near the Soviet border).

The only full-fledged NATO member was Denmark, but it didn’t border the Soviet Union anywhere (although it shares a maritime border with some former members of the Warsaw Pact). But, with the start of what someone dubbed “the New Cold War” (actually more similar to a Huntington-style clash of civilisations than to a conflict between ideologies like the previous one), the relations between Russia and Finland started to sour, and the launch of the Special Military Operation officially triggered Sweden and Finland’s adhesion to NATO.

Much was said about the actual reasons why Finland and Sweden joined NATO; and, since they cannot be explained with just fear and resentment (neither Turkey nor Georgia have adopted a similar course, after all…), we tried to analyse them on a previous article based on the last work of the prominent French demographer and political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Among the others, Todd noticed a cultural change towards militarism in both countries, in particular Sweden, which is now aiming to recover the dominium maris baltici it lost after the Great Northern War.

At this scope, Stockholm has launched a rearmament policy and ramped up its anti-Russian rhetorics, with its Defence Minister Pål Jonson even accusing Russia of planning to takeover Götland, a large island in the centre of the Baltic Sea. Likewise, there are plans to build a logistic centre in Enköping, near Stockholm, which would be able to host 70 people at peacetime and 160 at wartime. For Finland, on the other hand, militarisation means mostly “NATOisation”.

The Northern European Ground Forces Headquarters will be located in Mikkeli, around 200 km from the Russian border, while the Forward Land Forces (FLF) will be based in either Rovaniemi or Sodankylä in Lapland. The proximity of Finland to the Baltic Republics, whose fear and resentment towards Moscow is well-known, adds fuel to the fire, and we cannot exclude that the NATO Eastern Sentry operation, launched on 12th September and currently covering an area stemming from Estonia to Bulgaria, could be extended to Finland. Finally, Denmark is planning to send a regiment to the Island of Bornholm against Russia.

At the moment, no Nordic country is planning to host nuclear weapons; but tensions are high, communication between the parties is scarce, and the occasional incidents in the airspaces between Russia and some bordering NATO countries may spiral out of control, especially if there is a political will to go towards a direct confrontation. And, in this case, a nuclearisation of the region would not be out of the agenda.

Luckily, at the moment, this risk is relatively low. There are no ongoing territorial disputes between Russia and anyone of its Nordic neighbours (the only partial exception is Estonia, since the ratification of the border treaty recognising as Russian the previously-disputed territories of Ivangorod and Pechory-Petseri is pending), the role of Finnish irredentism in Helsinki’s political life is marginal, and the routine accusations against Russia of violating the airspace of some NATO country by the likes of Ursula Von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas are aimed mostly at preventing a possible deal between Trump and Putin over Ukraine and at stopping the U.S.’s growing disengagement from Europe (in the beginning of September, for instance, the Financial Times has published a leak according to which the Baltic Security Initiative, aimed at supporting the armed forces of the Baltic Countries, will no longer be funded) rather than at creating a casus belli for a greater war which (perhaps) even the Baltic States are not really willing to fight.

This, nevertheless, does not imply that there may not be a greater war in the future. Incidents may easily spiral out of control, especially if they imply the downing of a military aircraft, and justifying a European rearmament policy would be harder if Russia ceased to be perceived as a threat by the EU political elites in a contest where China is too far away and Islamist terrorism is not a looming threat at the moment. It should be mentioned that the European rearmament is partly due to the U.S.’s growing disengagement from Europe and the orientation of their industry for domestic needs—after the Pentagon blocked the sale of two Patriot antimissile systems to Denmark, for instance, Copenhagen opted for the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air defence system; but, if the Ukrainian crisis were settled, there is little doubt that the European rearmament would lose its main justification.

Conclusion#

The roots about the ongoing militarisation of the Arctic region are the same everywhere; but, when we talk about its possible nuclearisation, we should distinguish between a standoff between Russia and the U.S. across the Arctic on the one hand and one in Europe on the other. The U.S. and Russia can hit one another from their own territory (or, in the U.S.’s case, from Greenland and Canada) only with strategic nuclear missiles, which are weapons of last resort with little to no utility during a battle; but a nuclear standoff between Russia and any European state—including one which involves U.S. nuclear installations in Europe—may also take place with tactical nuclear weapons. And, at the moment, the main risk is not so much the return to a situation akin to the Cold War one, but rather the deflagration of an incident into a larger war.

A settlement of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict would greatly reduce this risk, since the other looming issues—including the one on the status of the Passages—are unlikely to produce a greater war or a nuclear standoff; but, at the moment, it’s rather difficult to say when this will happen. The good news, on the other hand, is that the Arctic is unlikely to be used again as a main testing ground for nuclear weapons, at list on a scale akin to the one seen during the Cold War: the greater ecological consciousness and the economic scope of the region as a main waterway and as a location of raw material deposits limit this usage.