Angry Planet - The next Great Game may be played for the North Pole

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Russia's aircraft carrier may be creaky, but its submarines are among the best in the business and they ply the currents beneath the Arctic at will - though not unchallenged. So, who's challenging Russia and what are the world's powers fighting over in the warming waters?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' news. And the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia said that with global warming, there would be more opportunities there, and that they were going to try and get free and unhindered access to the Atlantic

and Pacific oceans. And he mentioned riches of the continental shelf. Global warming is changing many aspects of geopolitics. Even though the ice hasn't melted yet, the Arctic is becoming a battleground because of climate change. So, which nations are facing off and what weapons are they pointing at each other? You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines.

Here are your hosts, Jason Fields and Matthew Galt. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields with Reuters. And I'm Matthew Galt with War is Boring. Ian Ballantyne is a former journalist and a current naval historian. He covered Allied naval operations both during Operation Desert Storm and the war in Afghanistan. These days, he writes books about naval history and edits warships magazine. He's here to walk us through the strategic importance. of Russia's favorite new northern territory, the Arctic.

So, other than a shrinking number of polar bears, what's in the Arctic that governments really want? What's in the Arctic that the Russian government really wants is mineral rights, and what they're doing is they're establishing their sovereignty over what they claim as an extension to their continental shelf, which stretches up into the Arctic, and actually they have claimed the North Pole, They've actually sent submarines down to plant the Russian flag under the North Pole, and they aim to claim that as theirs.

Is there any reason to take that kind of claim seriously from, you know, a legal standpoint? I mean, I'm not a legal expert, but if they're able to go up there and do what, you know, the British, my countrymen did centuries ago and just stick a flag in it, and so, well, we were there first, and this stretches all the way back, and as part of our continental shelf, I guess it'll be hard for other people to argue. against them, but certainly, I would say Canada, Norway, and Denmark are certainly going to have something to say about that. So they are basically looking to securing it by being first and being, I would say, the most brazen about making their claim. But they're not the only ones to operate submarines underneath the North Pole, right? I mean, the North Pole is under the North Pole, rather under the Arctic, under the Arctic ice, has been an operating area for submarines for a long, long time.

I mean, the Americans were the first to send a nuclear-powered submarine under the North Pole, actually under the North Pole, that would be the Northless in the late 50s. But actually, the Germans operated from submarine bases in northern Norway, and were up there in the ice. I think even going up off Siberia, which is very difficult for them in U-boats, diesel-electric submarines. And the British during World War II also would say, send submarines up there. And in fact,

raw Navy submarines operated from Pollyano Inlet in the Kola Peninsula for a while. So it's been a submarine operating area for a long time. But the Russians are obviously with their northern fleet based out of the Kola Peninsula

and operating from the White Sea. They're the guys that have got the most submarines up there and are probably exploiting it the most at the moment I would say and have been since the 80s. Ian, do you get a sense that this is actually about mineral rights, or is this kind of about, is this a strategic position for them and is kind of about power projection as well?

Yeah, I mean, it's about power projection, but if you turn the world map around and you look at the world from Moscow, then obviously, as we all know, the Russians fear invasion, because they've had it in World War I and obviously 1812 and World War II. So they look at the world from there. They see as Peter the Great, the emperor, the Tsar, who established the Russian nation. Navy for the first time in the early 18th century, they see limited access to the sea and encroaching potential enemies all around. So they, number one, want access to the open ocean. And then number two, I guess they want somewhere to put their ballistic missile

submarines so they don't have to go all the way into the Atlantic to potentially threaten America primarily. And then, of course, their economy is very reliant upon oil and gas. and they want to exploit that as well. So there's a lot of advantages and a lot of things at stake for them. Does the United States or any other country have strong competing interest, meaning is anybody else trying to exploit whatever resources there are up there? I don't think. I mean, obviously the U.S. Navy has operated up there for decades and continues to.

The Seawolf-class submarines, which are quite mysterious, vessels, have several times been set up in recent years to poke around under the ice and show the Russians that it's not just their environment. And I'm sure one or two raw Navy submarines have. But I don't think there's the same, apart from Canada, Greenland, which is, I think it's foreign policy

and defence policy is run by Denmark and also places like Iceland. They'll obviously be interested in Norway because they will have their own thoughts about exploiting the mineral resources. But the big player in terms of, of capability to counter any Russian movements would have to be the US Navy because it's the only Navy that has the critical mass and the capabilities.

So America will obviously see it of critical interest. And as the ice thaws, as the global warming picks up pace, and obviously the whole area is more open to navigation and trade, and that could go right round to Alaska. And for the Russians, they're very interested in trade. and taking merchant vessels and exploiting the opportunities on the route to the Far East, which they call the NSR, I believe, the Northern Sea Roots. So they're very keen on that. So there's trade routes, there's minerals, and then the strategic advantage for one side of the other as well.

So for Russian shipping, that would save literally thousands of miles to be able to go along their northern coast, right? Yeah. Yeah, well, for Chinese shipping. because obviously the Russians have a burgeoning strategic partnership with China. So, you know, I think you're talking about Chinese ships coming all the way over the top to Russia and to Europe as well. And, yeah, of course, Russian shipping too. They're building new atomic icebreakers,

which are going to start helping to clear that route ahead of merchant vessels from actually next year. And with 70% of Russian territory actually being in the north, then they're looking to the north, Siberia and north towards the pole, as it were, for expansion. And that's a stated objective of Vladimir Putin. You know, he's quite clear about that. Can I just go back to one thing you mentioned, out of curiosity, with the Seawolf-class submarine, you said that it's mysterious? In what way is that?

Well, it's a class of three submarines, which were built just at the end of the Cold War, and they're very big and very expensive, very powerful. And it was seen that they were just too big, expensive and powerful, so it stopped at, I think, three. They then switched to a cheaper, easier-to-manufacture version called the Virginia class, which is what the US Navy is bringing in to replace the Los Angeles class. And the Sea Wolf, there's not a lot of publicity about what they do,

and it's said that they've been fitted with all sorts of surveillance equipment and other scientific equipment. They disappear from months at a time, whether it's out into the Pacific or around the top, into the Arctic, and they carry out things like servicing at a North Pole or taking scientists to a thing called Ice-X, where there's all sorts of research goes on in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, where they research the ice and ice conditions. So those submarines are obviously special to the US Navy, and occasionally you see one appear in the United States.

Norway as happened a few years ago. And the last time it was seen, it was way under the other side of the North Pole. And it turns up. And so when something like that is made public, you have to think maybe that's a message to Russia that it can't just dominate the Arctic. So not a lot is known about what exactly they do, but it certainly must be important, I would say, to the U.S. Navy. And their attacks of Marines rather than being nuclear missile.

submarines. The U.S. Navy commonly calls them attack submarines. The raw Navy, we call them hunter killers, and they are armed torpedoes, missiles, land attack missiles. So they go out and primarily aim to hunt other submarines or fire missiles at land targets, conventionally tipped, conventionally armed cruise missiles. Ballistic missile submarines would be found under the Arctic, and they would primarily, I would reckon, be Russian, and they would go out, and they would go out, and hide under the ice from the Kodd Peninsula or other bases up there with the northern fleet of Russia. And they sit under the ice in Bastions. They call it the Bastien concept.

And they have a range with their missiles of several thousand miles. So they could sit under the ice, wait for the doomsday call, surface, break through the ice and launch their missiles. And they don't have to risk trying to break out into the Atlantic and be killed by the attack submarines of NATO. And that was the Cold War. And I guess that game is still ongoing there, and they're starting to ramp up again, I think, with a new tension between East and West. Right. So we're talking actually a solution to a geographical problem, which you alluded to earlier, which is that Russia has one or two warm water ports.

I mean, there's one in Crimea, which was so important, and probably one of the reasons why Crimea was invaded or annexed. and then there's on the Baltic as well. But it's very constricted. Yeah, I was lucky enough in, back in the day when I was allowed to leave my bunker and get away from my desk, I was lucky enough to visit Murmansk and Archangel and Sevastopol and also St. Petersburg in Cronstadt, which is the main naval base guarding St. Petersburg. So they have fleets not only in the north, but also the Baltic, as you said, and also the Black Sea and the Pacific.

And they are very keen to ensure that access remains. And you're right, the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula was down to Russia preserving its ability to project naval power in the Black Sea and also into the eastern Mediterranean, as we've seen in the past few months. And with the northern fleet, then Murmansk is the major fishing port,

commercial port, but if you go up the inlet there towards the sea, and it's many miles long, all along there are naval bases and submarine bases and in the White Sea as well. And, yeah, the warmer waters are restricted for the Russians, restricted in the Baltic for certain times of the year, and restricted in the north. And here my memory is going to find that my memory fails slightly with geography, but either Archangel or Mamanx doesn't freeze up. And that's the main thing that they want. I think it's probably Mamansk.

They want access to the sea. And they will do things to gain that access that perhaps European nations who have moved on to the post-imperial era won't do. And hence you saw the annexation of Crimea, which was given to Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union in the late 50s. So the Russians would see Crimea as being returned to Russia.

And certainly Sevastopol is the spiritual home of the Russian Navy very much. So they would never let that go. There's no way they'd let that go. And the Arctic provides a real solution, though, because if you're trying to get a nuclear missile submarine out

from Sebastopol, you have to go through some really narrow straits, and that's got to be a great place for a hunter-killer submarine to sit, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're not allowed to have nuclear submarines in the Black Sea. It's forbidden by international law. Oh, okay. And you can't, yeah, I mean, an interesting thing about the recent events is that the Russians have built half a dozen diesel electric submarines, improved kilo-class submarines, that they are going to base a Sevastopol that are all armed with the caliber cruise missile.

And at least one of those on the way from the build yard in St. Petersburg, where it was built, has passed by Syria and lobbed a load of cruise missiles into Syria to help the regime. and then proceeded through the Turkish Straits, which are governed by, safeguarded by Turkey under the Montreux Convention. And those submarines cannot then come back out again and do any more attacks on Syria. And it can only go out of the Black Sea to go and get a refit.

So there's very strict international rules governing submarines and, in fact, banning aircraft carriers, proper aircraft carriers, in the Black Sea. So the Russians have two options for nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. One is the north and the other is Vladivostok and Kamchatka in the Russian Far East. And the Baltic has never had any nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines in it. It's had diesel submarines that have had nuclear missiles. But I think you'll find that there's also rules governing the Baltic too.

So Russia has a lot of things to deal with and it decides. quite sensibly, I suppose, from its point of view, that really it's got to dominate the north where its biggest and most formidable fleet is, and that Pacific is also important, but I think the northern fleet is still the premier force. What kind of infrastructure are they building in the Arctic? Are they building any buildings, and what other kind of weapons systems are going up there, or do we know? You know, I run a naval magazine that has input from all sorts of very bright people

are a lot clearer than me. And they look at these things and they analyse them. And they've been, you know, we've had in various articles, or they've been telling me that, you know, there's a massive investment in air bases and other military infrastructure. There's more ground forces being put up into the Arctic, the Russian Arctic, the high north of Russia.

And they are definitely have underway a huge bid to upgrade the infrastructure. That would include the Navy as well. So there's, you know, It's massive. And of course, we don't know what's going on. It's a blank space on the map to certain extent. And that is all to make sure that they retain their basic military, naval dominance of there. So they are doing that. It's happening. Yeah, it's going on. It's been going on for a few years. It seems like what you're saying is they're largely unopposed, at least on the surface.

I mean, is there anything comparable, like in Hudson Bay or somewhere? else along the Canadian coast or anywhere else? Well, in terms of a military, sort of naval base. Yeah, naval base or any other kind of military installation. Well, I think the country that's doing the most to reorientate it is probably Norway. The Norwegians are certainly well aware of, because they're neighbors of Russia and they face them. They're well aware of things that are going on. And they have reorientated there, a few years ago, their strategic outlook, to a

towards the potential Russian threat. And in fact, they're ahead of any other nation in NATO when it comes down. In fact, ahead of the leaders of NATO in worrying about it. So they have established a major HQ up there. But the Norwegians don't have a huge amount of hardware or people. They do have visits from raw Navy and other NATO warships for anti-submarine warfare visits. The Canadians, you know, their Navy is small. you know, so it's one of the leading NATO navies,

but it's not a large navy, and the raw navy is not very large these days. I don't think there's any comparable physical presence in terms of military stuff or naval stuff, but the thing about the Russians is quite a bit of their equipment, is legacy equipment. And they're replacing it. They are replacing it now,

but they went through two decades of very little activity, whether in the air or at sea, and that is over, that period of 20 years, or let's say 91 to, let's say, the invasion of, sorry, the annexation of Crimea, I think maybe that was the period you could look at, where there wasn't a Russia that was quite so assertive, but that's changed, and they are now assertive,

and the new submarines, and I guess the new infantry units, the new aircraft, and all that are now emerging. And I don't think there's the same emphasis at all in the West on navies or the military. I don't think it compares. Because we're different, different, completely different kinds of countries with a different outlook on the world.

So that's the long answer to say, no, I don't think there's anything else that it's quite so concentrated in terms of a military presence in the Arctic. I don't think there is anything to rival what they're doing at all. But at the moment, it's kind of confined to their traditional areas.

And I think they move out towards the North Pole to claim that actually as sovereign Russian territory, as it were, is the thing that will really cause problems. Has the rest of the world already objected to Russia's claim? I mean, everybody else is on record? Yeah, they have, not in any kind of a muscular way, but yeah, they've certainly done that. And Canada has said that it's got competing rights and interest there, and so the other nations. Norway and Denmark have all said that, you know, we've got interest there as well.

So, but it will take time to go through consideration and any arbitration it comes up. I'm not a legal expert. It's not the side of it that I know a lot about. Certainly in terms of stating equal rights to it, I don't think those other nations are sitting back. But it's the Russians that are using their muscle to show off and say, look, we're in there first and we're big, you know, like that. Yeah. Yeah, and they really have muscle here in terms of submarines in a way that they don't, you know, we've talked on the show before about Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, which is something of a joke in a way,

and they have exactly one aircraft carrier. But, I mean, as far as submarines and submarine technology go, they have a lot of submarines, and they're supposed to be world class, right? Yeah, they are, and they're not far behind the curve, I would say, they're very close to the quality of the US Navy and the raw Navy in terms of nuclear submarines. But I wouldn't see anything. To be honest with you,

I wouldn't ever see any Russian warship of any kind as a joke at all, because they are big, they're beefy, they're well protected, they've got the will to use them. And their weaponry has always been very impressive. And I visited a cruiser, I think it was the Azov in Sevastopol,

in 91 just before the... end of the Soviet Union. And the ship herself looked like something out of World War II, but when they brought the missiles up, they were cutting edge of modern missiles. So the Russians will always have a big punch. And certainly their improved kilo-class submarines are excellent submarines and heavily armed.

And the amazing thing about the Russian Navy is that it doesn't hold back on getting a small warship and chucking a load of capability into it. So they've got new corvettes that can fire cruise missiles and their new destroyer, the Grigorovic, I think it was called, came through the Turkish Straits a week or two ago and that ship, not the Kuznetsov or the Peter Great nuclear-powered battle cruiser that was used to bombard Syria

and she fired cruise missiles. So they've got a whole range of news. stuff and I wouldn't ever underestimate what they could do with the old stuff either. Surface and submarine. Do we have any kind of sense of what climate change has done to the Arctic and if that's helped or hurt the Russian cause there? They definitely see it as an opportunity. I mean, we're talking a lot about the Russians, but the U.S. Navy and the American

Military Department of Defense has articulated its own new policy. as well a couple of years ago at the end of 2013. But the Russians do see it as an opportunity. And during a meeting of the top guys held aboard a warship in, I think, Kaliningrad, Putin and his top men said that they were announcing a new strategy that would take advantage of all of that. and the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia said that with global warming there would be more opportunities there and that they were going to try and get free and unhindered access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

and he mentioned riches of the continental shelf and said that they're going to develop those riches and preserve them for future generations so they're looking at what's going on and they're thinking we're going to be in there ahead of these other guys So that's definitely on their agenda. So last question, which is with all of this in consideration and all of the warships that are up there and the various strategic uses for the Arctic,

do you see Arctic as a particular potential flashpoint for conflict? I mean, I think sometimes we get over, mainly down to, I suppose sometimes media reporting and a lack of appreciation of quite, the scale of the Cold War, to be honest. I mean, it's nothing like the Cold War. The Cold War was truly, truly dangerous. And there were dozens of nuclear submarines from NATO and also the Soviet Union at sea, all in, not all, but many of them in close proximity. And it was a very, very dangerous time.

We just didn't know about it because it was happening out there. So there's no way that what we're seeing today compares in terms of what we call frontline risk of a collision or an exchange of fire. There's no way it compares to that at all. But certainly compared to what we've had over the past 20 years, the period of very little activity in terms of submarines and surface warships up there, I think we'll draw to a close and there will be a gradual increase. One of the main things that the Russians have always been worried about, and they're probably not so worried about that these days, was US Navy aircraft carriers going into the northern waters up there through the Greenland-Ireland-Uk

gap into the Greenland Sea and maybe around and then launching nuclear-arm strike jets. I don't think they see that as a problem so much now, but they've always been worried about that. And that was back in the 50s, and that was what they were really concerned about. So I don't think we're going to see anything quite as dangerous as that. I don't think we need to worry about seas in which there are so many submarines you could walk across the ocean on. I mean, there's going to be a few, and there's going to be some tense encounters, and it's been some evidence of that already, but I don't think it compares

yet or will do for a while to the Cold War. Well, Ian Valentine, thanks so much for joining us to talk this over. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Great. Thanks for having me, and it was good to talk it over with you. Thanks for listening to this week's show. Head to iTunes and tell us what you think. Your ratings are a big part of helping other people find the show. You can also find us on Twitter. We are at war underscore college. The show was created by me, Jason Fields, and Craig Headick. Matthew Galt co-hosts the show and finds our amazing guests. Our producer is Bethel Hoppe.