“When you look at a map, the Arctic, and especially the Alaska region, is the quickest way for our adversaries to reach us,” warned Blaise Frawley, deputy commander of NORAD, during of the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defense on Friday.
During this two-day conference, several experts sounded the alarm on Arctic security in an increasingly tense geopolitical context with Moscow. Militarily, the Arctic zone is of great strategic importance, with Russia sharing the region with the United States, Canada and northern Europeans.
The context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had important consequences for security and defense in the Arctic, experts have stressed. In December, Russia accelerated its development there, in particular to counterbalance the effects of Western sanctions.
Vladimir Putin had already, before this conflict, made the exploitation of Arctic resources and the Northern Sea Route a “strategic priority”.
Participating in a panel on regional security, Commander Frawley said Russia’s development in the region and its long-range bombing capabilities used in Ukraine – “keep him up at night”.
Geopolitical tensions and climate change
And with Sweden’s recent membership in NATO, all Arctic Council nations except Russia are members of the Alliance. “One cannot imagine for a moment that this does not influence Russia’s thinking on the Arctic,” he noted.
Commander Frawley says Russia has 40 nuclear-powered icebreakers, a vessel designed to clear frozen sea lanes. Moscow must continue to develop around ten over the next decade.
Together, Canada and the United States have five.
“We are planning to build five more collectively. So we would have 10 icebreakers, compared to 50 on their side. “That’s another big concern of ours,” admitted Mr. Frawley.
These geopolitical tensions, in addition to climate change which is creating new waterways in the region, must be taken seriously by Ottawa, insists the commander.
Last summer, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged the Arctic “is becoming more and more strategically important” as the ice melts. “Each of these northern countries has a very clear interest in ensuring the security and sovereignty of its territory,” he explained during the Nordic summit.
Shortcomings already known
This is not the first time that defense experts have sounded the alarm. A report from the Auditor General of Canada in 2022 found that the federal government had failed to address long-standing deficiencies that undermine its oversight of Canada’s Arctic waters.
Last year, a Senate committee also highlighted the “urgency” for the federal government of Canada to invest in security and defense capabilities in the region.
At the end of the first day of the Ottawa conference on Thursday, former Canadian ambassador to NATO Kerry Buck said that “cracks” in the unity of NATO members were inevitable despite a global context of more and more tense. Other experts noted that attempts at Russian interference were already having very real repercussions on Canadian citizens.