Center for a New American Security

For those of you who have not been following the national security or defense journals recently, the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings published in its February 2012 edition a great article by U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Commandant Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr. on the Arctic, paving the way – I hope – for a national level discussion on U.S. interests and goals in the High North.

“The Arctic region—the Barents, Beaufort, and Chukchi seas and the Arctic Ocean—is the emerging maritime frontier, vital to our national interests, economy and security,” Admiral Papp writes. “The difference [between the Arctic and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans] is that in the rest of the maritime domain, we have an established presence of shore-based forces, small boats, cutters, and aircraft supported by permanent infrastructure and significant operating experience. Although the Coast Guard has operated in southern Alaska, the Gulf of Alaska, and Bering Sea for much of our history, in the higher latitudes we have little infrastructure and limited operating experience, other than icebreaking.”

Admiral Papp describes the U.S. Coast Guard’s responsibilities in the Arctic and, by doing so, lays out how the Coast Guard should be prepared to lead. “Our first challenge is simply to better understand the Arctic operating environment and its risks, including knowing which Coast Guard capabilities and operations will be needed to meet our mission requirements,” Admiral Papp states. This includes addressing the lack of USCG infrastructure that can support shore-based operations, as well as “ensuring that Coast Guard men and women have the policy, doctrine, and training to operate safely and effectively in the northern Arctic region.” In addition, the Coast Guard is “working closely with other key federal partners to lead the interagency effort in the Arctic,” leveraging its experience with “speaking the interagency language” and success with engaging the range of public and private stakeholders active in the Arctic, from local tribes to corporate adventurers.

Last Friday I pointed out that the U.S. Coast Guard Healy helped the Russian tanker Renda deliver 1.3 million gallons of fuel to Nome, Alaska.

It may sound like a normal mission for the Coast Guard, but I’m assured there’s nothing normal about traveling through the ice-covered Arctic in the middle of winter. I think there is a tendency to forget that icebreakers perform a crucial mission in the Arctic, during relatively ice-free summers or in the dead of winter. In this particular instance, the Coast Guard was helping assure delivery of fuel to the Alaskan town. According to a U.S. Coast Guard news release, “The [fuel] delivery was necessary due to an early winter storm that prevented a scheduled fuel resupply to the city [Nome].”

In a meeting I had last week, an official painted a vivid picture for me about the importance of an icebreaker and what this niche capability actually gives the United States. The USCG Healy began escorting the Renda out of Nome on January 20, 2012 for the nearly 400 mile journey across the frozen Bering Sea. According to this official, as the Healy was breaking through the ice, the Bering Sea continued to freeze over, extending its frozen reach. I thought this was an interesting point and one that certainty points to the importance of icebreakers in helping commercial vessels plow through the ice, if for nothing else but to avoid a Sisyphusian-like situation that traps commercial vessels in an endless sea of ice.  On Monday, after 10 days of icebreaking, both the Healy and Renda reached ice-free waters and have parted ways. The Healy has returned to its homeport, Seattle.

Icebreakers perform a critical function. U.S. policymakers need to have an honest conversation about what the U.S. mission needs to be in the Arctic and then decide what resources it needs to support that mission. Having an understanding about the role U.S. icebreakers perform in the Arctic should help get the conversation going.

Photo: The Healy breaks through ice on its journey to Nome, Alaska. Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Last Thursday the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) hosted a panel on “Offshore Oil & Gas in the Arctic: The Next Five Years.”   The event was focused on planned lease sales by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for the Chuckchi and Beaufort Seas in the coming five years.   BOEM is one of three new agencies created within the Department of Interior to replace the former Minerals Management Service.  BOEM is responsible for developing and managing the nation’s offshore energy resources, including the leasing of oil and gas blocks on the outer continental shelf.  In November 2011, BOEM published its Draft 2012-2017 Oil and Gas Leasing Program requesting comments from the public.  Read the notice here.  The comment period closes February 8, 2012.  Though the ELI program focused on the Arctic - the area likely to draw the most intense comments - the draft covers all proposed U.S. offshore lease sales through 2017.   The proposed lease sale dates off Alaska’s coast are 2013 for the Cook Inlet, 2015 for the Beaufort Sea and 2016 for the Chukchi Sea.  You can view the draft in its entirety as well several other related documents here. 

Among the key thoughts I took away were that the later dates for the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas locations reflect a desire to continue to study the region as well as to afford the opportunity to learn from the drilling slated to occur in these areas in 2012.  These leases present significant challenges such as the remoteness of the locations, the lack of supporting infrastructure close by and challenges in conducting spill response in this harsh environment.  However, the leases are located in much shallower water than the deepwater drilling currently occurring in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Over the last several weeks, my colleagues and I have been trying to make the case for a national-level dialogue on the Arctic (see CDR Gilreath’s post from Wednesday and my National Journal piece from the first week in January). Our call for a national dialogue is in part driven by the need to build awareness among a larger audience about what the United States is currently doing in the Arctic, and then to have a conversation about what our national objectives are in the High North. Simply put, what do we want to achieve there? How much of a presence do we want to have? Are we willing to forfeit our leadership role to Canada, Russia or other Arctic (or non-Arctic?) states?

This photo – I think – helps get the conversation going. In this photo taken on January 16, 2012 in Nome, Alaska, a fuel tanker docks after being escorted through the ice by the U.S. Coast Guard Healy (the only operational polar icebreaker in the fleet), so that it can deliver more than 1.3 million gallons of fuel to the local community. Is this a priority mission for the Coast Guard, and, if so, is it resourced to continue executing this mission? Let’s have that conversation. 

Last week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released its report, “A New Security Architecture for the Arctic: An American Perspective."  The report provides concise summaries of the existing governance regimes for the Arctic and touches on many of the reasons the United States and other nations should care about the Arctic.  It reprises the role of the Law of the Sea Convention, Arctic Council and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  The authors also argue for creation of an Arctic Coast Guard Forum to address security concerns with membership comprised of the eight Arctic Council countries, plus other countries willing to contribute resources to the region. 

Two of the key takeaways for me were the emphasis on the failure of the United States to create a comprehensive “large scale economic development plan for the region” and the lack of existing military assets suited to operate in this complex environment to protect, enforce and ensure our interests.  From my perspective, the lack of a serious national discussion and investment in Arctic resources, coupled with the continued failure to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, signals to other nations that we are willing to forfeit our leadership role in the Arctic.  The longer we wait to engage in a national dialogue and set a firm course to implement a strategy, the more options we foreclose in the future.  As we delay implementation and investment, others gain leverage through the development of critical infrastructure or assets needed to exploit resources in the region, including shipping ports to take advantage of potentially shorter trade routes, ice breakers to keep open sea lanes or allow development of oil and gas fields and patrol vessels to protect fish stocks. 

Ideally, we should enter critical international negotiations over governance, use and protection of resources within the Arctic from a position of strength rather than weakness.  That is not to suggest that partnerships are bad, or that the United States must have enough government assets to go it alone.  Partnerships can be incredibly productive when they are mutually beneficial.  Partnerships that are completely one sided in nature have little appeal and are difficult to sustain.  Perhaps if we could afford to continue to build assets and infrastructure with nominal concern for costs we could make up for the lack of a comprehensive development strategy through sheer numbers of assets or breadth of capabilities.   Yet in a time of financial austerity it would seem far better to invest in assets or partnerships that support a well developed national strategy.

A new post by Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins in The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report blog paints a great picture of how economic opportunities in the Arctic may redraw geopolitical relationships.

Erickson and Collins write that “Denmark has made a strategic decision to prioritize its economic relationship with China and is now becoming the key gateway for Beijing’s commercial and strategic entrée into the Arctic,” including being an advocate for China to have permanent membership on the eight-seat Arctic Council. In particular, Denmark seeks to use Greenland’s mineral wealth (including coveted materials like rare earths, uranium and iron ore) as a means of fostering stronger economic ties with China (Erickson and Collins note that exports have been steadily increasing between both countries over the last several years).

While both may gain in the near term (Greenland in particular will benefit from Chinese investments in infrastructure that the island is thin on, including more power lines and power stations), it is not hard to see that China benefits more from this new arrangement over the long term. As Erickson and Collins describe, “From Beijing’s perspective, having Chinese companies buy several billion dollars per year worth of pharmaceuticals and machinery and doing container shipping business with Maersk is well worth it to gain access to Arctic negotiating tables and Greenland’s minerals.”

Building off my 2012 policy wish list, here is a post I wrote for the National Journal’s Energy and Environment blog on why the Arctic should be a policy priority for the president and congress in 2012: “Time for Serious Attention to the Arctic.”

This year, the Natural Security blog will feature more posts on the items you read on this year’s wish list. To kick off the New Year, next week CNAS will host an event on the South China Sea where we will formally launch our new report, Cooperation from Strength: The United States, China and the South China Sea. (RSVP to the event here.) The event will feature Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert, CNAS Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program Patrick Cronin, CNAS Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan, former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig, and Ambassador Chan Heng Chee, Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to the United States.  

The report includes a chapter on the role of natural resources in the South China Sea that focuses on more than just the region’s energy resources. It includes an examination of the broad resource and environmental trends affecting the region, from energy to fisheries, from minerals to climate change.   

On December 1, 2011, the Government Accountability Office released a new report on the Coast Guard’s Arctic capability that is worth reading in full. The report cautions that “the most significant issue facing the Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet is the growing obsolescence of these vessels and the resulting capability gap caused by their increasingly limited operations.”

It is particularly interesting to read the report in the context of the budget debate taking place on Capitol Hill. The authors of the report rightly acknowledge that expanding the capability necessary to accomplish the Coast Guard’s Arctic missions is particularly challenged by budget constraints and uncertainty about how much the Department of Homeland Security’s budget may decrease. According to the study:

Senior Coast Guard officials, based in Alaska, reported that resources for Arctic operations had already been reduced and were inadequate to meet existing mission requirements in Alaska, let alone expanded Arctic operations. These officials also reported a more than 50 percent year-to-year reduction between 2005 and 2009 in the number of large cutters available for operations in their region. Officials also expressed concern that the replacement of the 12 older high-endurance cutters with 8 new cutters may exacerbate this challenge. Given the reductions that have already taken place, as well as the anticipated decrease in DHS’s annual budget, the long-term budget outlook for Coast Guard Arctic operations is uncertain. The challenge of addressing Arctic resource requirements in a flat or declining budget environment is further underscored by recent budget requests that have identified the Coast Guard’s top priority as the recapitalization of cutters, aircraft, communications, and infrastructure—particularly with regard to its Deepwater program. Recent budget requests also have not included funding for Arctic priorities, aside from the annual operating costs associated with existing icebreakers.

Tomorrow, the House Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation will hold a hearing on “Protecting U.S. Sovereignty: Coast Guard Operations in the Arctic.”  (Available for viewing by webcast.)

According to a background memo provide by the subcommittee, the purpose of the hearing is in part to examine if the Coast Guard has the ability to execute its statutory missions in the Arctic. Capabilities, including Coast Guard icebreakers, are obviously an important element in evaluating if the Coast Guard is setup to fulfill its missions in the High North, so I’m hopeful to see some discussion about the lack of U.S. icebreaking capabilities, and how that affects the Coast Guard. I wrote a post exploring this issue last week that I think is worth revisiting. Here’s hoping it tees up some of the questions we’ll hear asked by the members tomorrow.

Last Monday, Businessweek published an excerpt from a new book by David Fairhall, Cold Front: Conflict Ahead in Arctic Waters. Besides the provocative title (which, by focusing on conflict does not help further our understanding about the challenges and opportunities that lie in the Arctic), the book looks rather interesting.

In the excerpt from Businessweek, Fairhall describes in brief the history of polar icebreakers, including their evolution to nuclear propulsion in Russia. “Today, a dozen countries operate icebreakers. Canada needs them in large numbers to cope with winter, not only in the Arctic but also in the St. Lawrence River and Hudson Bay. Scandinavians use them to keep Baltic ports clear,” Fairhall writes. “The U.S. has strategic and scientific interests in both the Arctic and Antarctica, for which it has three polar-class vessels.”

Yet where it gets interesting – at least from a national security perspective – is the gap between U.S. and Russian icebreaking capabilities. As Fairhall explains, “Still, no one disputes the predominance that Russia achieved by adapting nuclear propulsion to icebreaking. These vessels need a great deal of power and the ability sometimes to remain at sea for long periods without refueling -- both things that a nuclear reactor can deliver.”