The Arctic Security Threat: An Alternative View

To create a more stable security environment in the Arctic, we must avoid the NATO-ization of the North.

Photo: Isaac Demeester

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Response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an important issue.

But it has subsumed the attention of governments along the trans-Atlantic axis, seemingly subordinating all other important questions of international peace and security. Outside the NATO Alliance, and even increasingly within it, and throughout large swathes of the rest of the world, the tragic situation in Ukraine is not the pressing question of the day.

Canada’s most dangerous medium-term national-security threat lies far from Ukraine. It is in the Arctic.

It does not derive from any looming Russian invasion of northern Canada, rather the spectre of a militarization of the Arctic well beyond the relatively modest military footprints that exist today, which have been driven largely by the imperative to bolster claims to sovereignty. In a more extreme form, that threat that would see the North turned into an armed camp, exposing Canada to tremendous risk on the frontlines of a potential battle zone, rather than sitting safely half a world away as is the case with Ukraine. 

In this threat scenario, Canada would not be a full participant, but rather an observer to events on its own doorstep. As a modern democracy with many other conflicting priorities for spending, the country could never realistically muster the massive spending required to build a military capacity large enough to forcibly keep all others out of the Arctic region.

The Russian decision to invade Ukraine should not be mechanically extrapolated to a grander strategy to invade other neighbours willy-nilly or to cross the Arctic. It is equally arguable that Ukraine is a special case in the Russian world view, intertwined with a thousand years of history and its European national security doctrine that can be traced back to the days of Tsarist empire. Ukraine is the vulnerable underbelly of Russia through which the Germans invaded twice last century.

But the pathway towards an arming of the Arctic is imaginable.

A thicket of international legal issues related to Arctic sovereignty creates a complicated backdrop. Canada has consistently claimed that all of the waters of the Arctic Archipelago are Canadian internal waters on the basis of historic title. This includes the Northwest Passage. To some degree, Canada’s best defense of these sovereignty claims lies in trying to ensure broad acquiescence in the international community, rather than an attempt to have the claims adjudicated in, for example, the International Court of Justice.

Few nations explicitly recognize the Canadian claims and arguments regarding the Northwest Passage, and some, most notably the United States, reject them outright. The United States considers it effectively an international strait, which has many implications. The Americans have reacted angrily to several Canadian decisions to extend national environmental protection and ship safety regulations into the Arctic. Climate change and the melting of polar ice will only serve to weaken Canadian claims. Ironically, the Arctic country most supportive of Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage is Russia, which has almost identically formulated claims over the Northern Sea Route.

At least two American vessels, the Manhattan in 1969 and the Polar Sea in 1985, as well as the Chinese research icebreaker Xuelong in 2017, have traversed the Passage, after having formally provided advance notification to the Canadian Government. But approval was not sought, nor were these crossings undertaken pursuant to a declared “right” of passage. It is impossible to know how many submarines pass undetected beneath the ice.

But it is only a matter of time before Canada will be seriously tested over passage through the Northwest Passage in a way unlike these past voyages.

Even though the United States has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it recognizes in practice the principles of the international convention. In that context, the United States Navy has maintained for decades a robust Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) program, totaling hundreds of individual actions, to project globally its security priority on freedom of navigation. This includes the right of passage through what it considers international straits. Most of the recent focus has been on the South China Sea.

However, we know from an expert panelist at a forum on Arctic security presented by the Canada International Council in December 2021 that U.S. Defense officials have discussed the plausibility of a FONOP through the Northwest Passage, but, so far, have held off when reminded of the claims of an ally. But FONOPS do not respect the allied status of the subject waters and, given that the Northwest Passage is considered an international strait by most major nations, eventually some nation will conduct a FONOP through the Northwest Passage.

American FONOPS are overwhelmingly conducted by U.S. Navy ships, which, while not without controversy, have set the precedent. UNCLOS is mute on whether vessels exercising such a right of passage can or cannot be military.

The first warship to pass through the Northwest Passage in exercise of freedom of navigation and its right of passage through a deemed international strait will plausibly belong to the U.S. Navy. Or it could be a Chinese Navy vessel. China operates under a rather opaque Arctic policy in terms of recognizing sovereignty over territorial waters, but explicitly desires to participate in ensuing “free navigation” through Arctic waters and, in that sense, perceives itself as an interested party in the Arctic. A Chinese FONOP will agitate the United States. If the U.S. Navy conducts a FONOP through the Northwest Passage, could the Russians be far behind despite the legal niceties of their own sovereignty claims? And so on.

A much-neglected aspect of freedom of navigation activity is that such a perceived right of passage through an international strait also includes overflight by aircraft, provided the aircraft observes the Rules of the Air established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). In an atmosphere of escalation, as with the ships, one must be prepared to imagine any kind of American, Russian, or Chinese military aircraft flying above the Northwest Passage, directly through Canadian sovereign airspace.

The threat is less Russian invasion than a build-up of military hardware and the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation, which so often can ignite open conflict by accident. In this sense, it is conceivable that at least an equal threat to Canadian security could be a future American inclination to militarize the Arctic. The Northwest Passage could conceivably become clogged with military vessels and aircraft conducting ostensibly legal (in their perception) FONOPS under UNCLOS.

To create a more stable security environment in the Arctic, several things should happen, separate from any upgrading of Canadian sovereignty infrastructure in the North and continental defense systems like NORAD.

We must principally avoid the NATO-ization of the Arctic. Should Finland and Sweden end up somehow joining NATO, every Arctic nation except Russia would be a Member State of NATO. But the security architecture of the Arctic should most effectively be a matter between the Arctic States directly in a regional context. No good will come from importing NATO into the Arctic region.

We need to reinvigorate the full Arctic Council as a diplomatic forum, where the strengths of countries like Canada and the Nordics, which are not Militarized Powers, are most effectively deployed. Additionally, there are many other transboundary challenges, some of which rise to the level of national security threats, like climate change, which need a potent regional forum. Let alone the shared cultural issues of the Indigenous North.

We should take up the Russian proposal to reconstitute the annual meetings of the Armed Forces chiefs of the Arctic states that were halted after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, or some other defense relations forum.

To accomplish much of this, we should halt the ritualized snubbing or expelling of Russian officials at meetings of international organizations. Despite the unacceptability of the invasion of Ukraine, there are many other serious issues of global peace and security, Russia remains a veto-wielding member of the Permanent Five of the United Nations Security Council, and there are other issues about which we need to talk to the Russians and in which countries like Canada themselves have a direct interest. This is not a question of being pro or anti-Russian, but realistic about the need to manage all threats and best protect national interests.

High on that list is the need for regional peace and stability in the Arctic, arguably the more pressing national security challenge for Canada.