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 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.

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.”

Yesterday, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) released two reports based on the findings from the joint investigation team tasked with determining the causes of the BP oil spill last year.

The first report from the USCG builds off the agency’s findings reported earlier this year on the overall response to the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico - it is worth a read. But for those with time constraints, the more interesting findings about the causes of the BP oil spill are in the BOEMRE report.  Here are just a couple of the initial findings from this lengthy report that pertain specifically to BP:

In the days leading up to April 20, BP made a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added incremental risk, and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job. These decisions included:

• The use of only one cement barrier. BP did not set any additional cement or mechanical barriers in the well, even though various well conditions created difficulties for the production casing cement job.

• The location of the production casing. BP decided to set production casing in a location in the well that created additional risk of hydrocarbon influx.

Military activity is on the rise in the Arctic. The Canadian military, for example, is bolstering its presence in the region, in part to offset Russian influence and to prepare for the opening of the Arctic Circle to resource exploitation and commercial travel.  In fact, this week, the Canadian military is conducting the largest military exercise to-date – Operation NANOOK – with some 1,000 troops, air and naval assets and unmanned drones. “All of this is very much about enlarging the footprint and the permanent and seasonal presence we have in the North," Canadian Defense Minister Peter McKay said last month in Afghanistan. “Members of the Canadian Forces say military capabilities are growing and becoming more complex in the North – a key component of reasserting claim to the region,” The Toronto Sun reported last week. “The Canadian military is not looking at what the issues are today but what are the threats and hazards that Canadians could see, governments could see, not only today, but in the future, to see what capabilities we could need to address those threats and hazards,” said Canadian Lt.-Gen. Walter Semianiw, commander of Operation NANOOK. 

Russia has also taken steps to bolster its military presence in the Arctic. In July, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced that Russia would protect its territorial claims in the High North with an Arctic military force. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a similar pronouncement in July: “We are open for a dialogue with our foreign partners and with all our neighbors in the Arctic region, but of course we will defend our own geopolitical interests firmly and consistently." According to published reports, “Moscow plans to build at least six more icebreakers and spend $33 billion to construct a year-round port on the Arctic shores.” 

It appears that DOD updated its Unified Command Plan to assign NORTHCOM the lead on the Arctic just in time. The pace of Arctic-area activity by the United States, Russia and Canada seems to have spiked over the past week.  

Yesterday, President Obama signed an Executive Order on “Interagency Working Group on Coordination of Domestic Energy Development and Permitting in Alaska” in order to:

…establish an interagency working group to coordinate the efforts of Federal agencies responsible for overseeing the safe and responsible development of onshore and offshore energy resources and associated infrastructure in Alaska and to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil…To formalize and promote ongoing interagency coordination, this order establishes a high-level, interagency working group that will facilitate coordinated and efficient domestic energy development and permitting in Alaska.

The mainstream media coverage of this EO provides plentiful quotes from energy industry and environmental group representatives. But it did not slip past my eyes that the Department of Defense is first in the list of required agencies in this interagency working group.

At the same time, NOAA launched its Fairweather survey vessel to map the sea floor in a piece of the U.S. Arctic territory off the northwest coast of Alaska, updating water depth measurements in this area for the first time since the 1800s. The Canadian Coast Guard vessel Louis St-Laurent and the U.S. Coast Guard's Healy are also conducting joint survey work further out at sea  to more thoroughly map the continental shelf. The Russian icebreaking vessel Akademik Fyodorov is doing the same.

All this mapping ties directly to the rising tensions in the Arctic that made headlines in the past week: Russia recently announced plans to position two brigades in a few of its Arctic towns, followed by an announcement from Canada that it would hold an elaborate, month-long exercise in the Arctic involving around 1,000 military personnel. Following this news, Russia announced plans this week to submit a new map of its Arctic seabed claims next year, and Canada plans to do the same by the end of 2013 as each seek to maintain and expand their territorial claims in the Arctic.

On a related note, does anyone else see these as *really* good dates by which the Senate should ratify UNCLOS?

Photo of the Healy courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

One of the reasons we host the Natural Security blog is to have a venue to quickly share material that’s related to our work. And, of course, the purpose of the Natural Security program is to identify and assess how natural resource trends (e.g., consumption and scarcity), as well as climate change and biodiversity, influence U.S. national security and foreign policy. With that in mind, here is an emerging Natural Security trend that is worth keeping on the radar.

Yesterday, The Telegraph reported that Denmark is preparing to submit evidence to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf by 2014 that would lay claim to the continental shelf extending from Greenland, to include “five areas around the Faeroe Islands and Greenland, including the North Pole itself.” Denmark, of course, is not the first country to lay claim to the North Pole: Russia sent a mini-submarine to plant a flag on the North Pole in 2007, stirring concerns among Arctic nations, including the United States and Canada. But as Denmark prepares to make formal claims over the North Pole, it is a reminder that competition in the Arctic won’t just be with countries like Russia that we have had longstanding trepidations with. In fact, competition in the Arctic will likely be the testing ground for our relationships with long-time allies like Denmark – a NATO ally that has weathered international challenges with the United States for more than half a century – over how well we can cooperate together in a changing international environment as natural resources (including minerals, energy resources and fisheries) become more accessible in the High North as production in other parts of the world plateaus (or declines).