The Russians and Canadians have ramped up their military presence in the region as well, and Norway has carried out yearly military exercises -- "Arctic Cold Response" -- involving up to 16,000 troops, many of them NATO units.
Outside Looking In
But you don't have to be next to the ice to want to be a player. China may be a thousand miles from the nearest ice floe, but as the second largest economy in the world, it has no intention of being left out in the cold. This past summer the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon made the Northern Sea Passage run, and Beijing has elbowed its way into being a Permanent Observer on the Arctic Council. Formed in 1996, the council consists of the border states, plus the indigenous people that populate the vast frozen area. Japan and South Korea are also observers.
And herein lies the problem.
Tensions are currently high in East and South Asia because of issues deliberately left unresolved by the 1952 Treaty of San Francisco that ended World War II. As Canadian researcher Kimie Hara recently discovered, the U.S. designed the Treaty to have a certain amount of "manageable instability" built into it by leaving certain territorial issues unresolved. The tensions that those issues generate make it easier for the United States to maintain a robust military presence in the region. Thus, China and Japan are involved in a dangerous dispute over the uninhibited islands in the East China Sea -- called the Diaoyus by China and the Senkakus by Japan -- because the 1952 Treaty did not designate which country had sovereignty. If it comes to a military confrontation, the United States is bound by treaty to support Japan.
Similar tensions exist between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands, between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles islands, and between China, Vietnam, and Taiwan over the Spratly and Paracel islands. Brunei and Malaysa also have claims that overlap with China's. Any ships traversing the East and South China seas on the way north will find themselves in the middle of several nasty territorial disputes.
In theory, the economic potential of the Arctic routes should pressure the various parties to reach an amicable resolution of their differences, but things are complicated these days.
Russia has indicated it would like to resolve the Northern Territories/Kuriles issue, and initial talks appeared to be making progress. But then in July, Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea, and negotiations have gone into the freezer.
Moscow just signed off on a $400-billion oil and gas deal with Beijing and is looking to increase trade with China as a way to ease the impact of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. At least for the present, China and Russia are allies and trade partners, and both would like to see a diminished role for the U.S. in Asia. That wish, of course, runs counter to Washington's growing military footprint in the region -- the so-called "Asia pivot."
The tensions have even generated some good old-fashioned paranoia. When a Chinese tycoon tried to buy land in northern Norway, one local newspaper claimed it was a plot, calling the entrepreneur "a straw man for the Chinese Communist Party."
Breaking the Ice
The Arctic may be cold, but the politics surrounding it are pretty hot.
At the same time, the international tools to resolve such disputes currently exist. The first step is a commitment to put international law -- such as the Law of the Seas Convention -- over national interests.
The Chinese have a good case for sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyus, and Japan has solid grounds for reclaiming most of the Southern Kuriles. Korea would likely prevail in the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and China would have to back off some of its extravagant claims in the South China Sea.
For all the potential for conflict, there is a solid basis for cooperation in the Arctic. Russia and Norway have divided up the Barents Sea, and Russia, Norway, the United States, and the United Kingdom are cooperating on nuclear waste problems in the Kola Peninsula and Arkhangelsk. There are common environmental issues. The Arctic is a delicate place, easy to damage, slow to heal.
As Aqqaluk Lynge, chair of the indigenous Inuit Circumpolar Council says, "We do not want a return to the Cold War."
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