As with numerous energy transportation projects in the Caspian Sea Basin, the Caucasus, the Black Sea region and the Balkans, Iraq and Africa, for the West oil and gas extraction and transit is a winner-take-all game dictated by the drive to master others and share with none.
The recent US Geological Survey study suggests that the Arctic Ocean may contain not only one-third of the world's undiscovered natural gas but almost two-thirds as much oil as Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer, is conventionally estimated to possess: 160 billion barrels to somewhere in the neighborhood of 260 billion barrels.
That Russia might gain access to the lion's share of both is not something that the US and its NATO allies will permit. The latter have fought three wars since 1999 for lesser stakes. Iraq, for example, has an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil.
Last month Russian President Dmitry Medvedev approved his nation's National Security Strategy until 2020 document which says that "the main threat to Russia's national security is the policy pursued by certain leading states, which is aimed at attaining military superiority over Russia, in the first place in strategic nuclear forces.
"The threats to military security are the policy by a number of leading foreign states, aimed at attaining dominant superiority in the military sphere, in the first place in strategic nuclear forces, by developing high-precision, information and other high-tech means of warfare, strategic armaments with non-nuclear ordnance, the unilateral formation of the global missile defense system and militarization of outer space, which is capable of bringing about a new spiral of the arms race, as well as the development of nuclear, chemical and biological technologies, the production of weapons of mass destruction or their components and delivery vehicles." [30]
The strategy also, in the words of the Times of London, "identified the intensifying battle for ownership of vast untapped oil and gas fields around its borders as a source of potential military conflict within a decade."
"The United States, Norway, Canada and Denmark are challenging Russia's claim to a section of the Arctic shelf, the size of Western Europe, which is believed to contain billions of tonnes of oil and gas." [31]
In a foreign ministers session of the Arctic Council in late April Russia again warned against plans to militarize the Arctic. Its plea fell on deaf ears in the West.
On May 28 the Norwegian ambassador to NATO took his British, Danish, German, Estonian and Romanian counterparts on a "High North study trip" near the Arctic Circle where the Norwegian foreign minister "emphasised the importance of NATO attention to security issues of the High North." [32]
Three days earlier the same nation's State Secretary, Espen Barth Eide, addressed the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Oslo and said, "Russia has shown an increased willingness to engage in political rhetoric and even use of military force....NATO has a very important role to play and Norway has argued the case for a long time. The Alliance is at the core of the security and defence strategies of all but one Arctic Ocean state.
"NATO already has a certain presence and plays a role in the High North today, primarily through the Integrated Air Defence System, including fighters on alert and AWACS surveillance flights. Some exercise activity under the NATO flag also takes place in Norway and Iceland....We would like to see NATO raise its profile in the High North." [33]
Canada: West's Front Line, Battering Ram And Sacrificial Offering
As tensions mount in the Arctic, especially should they develop into a crisis and the military option be employed, Norway will play its appointed role as a loyal NATO cohort, as will its neighbors Denmark, Finland and Sweden, the last two rapidly becoming NATO states in every manner but formally.
Yet the battle will be joined where three of the four NATO states with Arctic territorial claims - the United States, Canada and Denmark - base them, in the northernmost part of the Western Hemisphere.
And having by far the largest border with the Arctic and the most sizeable portion of its territory, Canada is the shock brigade to be used in any planned provocation and open confrontation.
Nine days ago it was reported that "Canada's mapping of the Arctic is pushing into territory claimed by Russia in the high-stakes drive by countries to establish clear title to the polar region and its seabed riches.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
