Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Arctic Heats Up: Global Competition in the High North

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

Subscribe to the IWI monthly newsletter by going to www.irregularwarfare.org! What are America’s interests in the Arctic? Are the traditional institutions that have governed interstate relations in the region equipped for an emerging period of intensified competition in the High North? And how is climate change affecting the strategic calculus of the United States, Russia, China, and other states? This episode tackles these questions and more as our guests—the Honorable Sherri Goodman, former deputy under secretary of defense for environmental security and current senior fellow at the Wilson Center, and Brigadier General Shawn Satterfield, commanding general of Special Operations Command North—join the podcast to examine the evolving relationship between climate change, Arctic security, and geopolitical competition. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

I always worry about Russia's nuclear operations because their safety record is so poor that you always have to worry that in a scenario where you've got natural system changes, that the operational side, let's say the military or other operational side, transport, might not be able to adapt sufficiently to manage through those changes. The displacement as a driver to stability just with native populations throughout all of the Arctic, that certainly, as we've seen throughout history, is a contributor to conflict. So the more instable an area is, the more likely a conflict could occur. So those chess pieces are moving into place. Welcome to Episode 69 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and my co-host

today is Jeff Faniff. Today's episode examines the effects of climate change on global competition in the Arctic. Our guests begin by describing America's interests in the Arctic and the traditional institutions that have governed interstate relations in the high north. They then explore the different ways that climate change is affecting the security of states like the U.S., Russia, and China. Finally, the show concludes with a discussion on tactical-level innovations that are improving U.S. access to austere environments and the steps that Washington and its allies can take to help manage increased competition in the Arctic. The Honorable Sherry Goodman currently serves as a senior fellow at the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program and Polar Institute.

as a senior fellow at the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program in Polar Institute. From 1993 to 2001, she served as the first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, and in January of 2021, she co-authored a report entitled Climate Change and Security in the Arctic, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. Brigadier General Sean Satterfield is the commanding general of Special Operations Command North, which contributes to the regional defense of North America. Over his 30-year-long career, General Satterfield has commanded special operations units at multiple echelons and has led U.S. and coalition soldiers in various theaters around the world. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton

Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with the Honorable Sherry Goodman and Brigadier General Sean Satterfield. Honorable Goodman, General Satterfield, thanks for joining us for episode 69 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. It's great to have you today. Great to be here. Thank you so much for hosting this. And it's certainly an honor to be here to talk about this important topic today.

So Sherry, you've been an experienced leader and senior executive in the fields of national security, climate change, and the environment. And in January of 2021, you co-authored a piece called Climate Change and Security in the Arctic. Admittedly, I don't know if the Arctic is a theater that our listeners spend a whole bunch of time thinking about. So could you start by broadly describing why the U.S. government cares and what Washington's interests are in the high North? Sure, Ben, happy to talk about that. So first of all, we should establish that the U.S. has long been an Arctic nation, you know, since Alaska became part of the United States more than 100 years ago. So we've always been an Arctic nation, although people working in Washington, D.C. don't always recognize that. And throughout the Cold War,

don't always recognize that. And throughout the Cold War, you know, the U.S. had military facilities and missiles pointed, of course, at the Soviet Union based in Alaska. And we thought about our security in Alaska as associated very much with that over-the-pole sort of defense of our territory from a Soviet nuclear threat. But now we're in a different era. I mean, we still face a Russian, North Korean or Chinese missile threat in that region. But we also have other changes occurring there that dramatically affect our security as a nation and how we position our military forces to protect Americans from those risks. And one of the dramatic changes in the Arctic in the last quarter century has been climate change. The temperatures are rising in the Arctic faster than anywhere else on the planet.

Three, sometimes four degrees higher than the rest of the planet. There have been extremes as high as 100 degrees in parts of the Arctic, in the Russian and Norwegian Arctic, unheard of several decades ago. And so Arctic sea ice is retreating. Long-term sea ice is retreating. Temperatures are rising. Permafrost is thawing and collapsing. And that's created a whole new ocean that's opened in our lifetime. And that means we have a whole new coastline, coastal area that we need to defend from a homeland security perspective. And also because the region is now more navigable than ever before, we see new opportunities for competition or potential contests over resources, energy, mineral, and other resources. And we can get further into those specifics as we go on in the discussion today. And Sean, from your perspective at Stock North, how do you think about American interests in the Arctic?

I would go back to kind of the start of where we have come from in the last 20 years. And really from a military aspect, at one time we had focused a lot in the Arctic. We saw that as very important to homeland defense and not just the North American Arctic, but also the European Arctic. And then after 9-11 and the events that occurred immediately following, much of our focus was distracted to focus really on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. And as a result, the skill sets that we have looked at in the Arctic have atrophied. And so our readiness and our capabilities along with that have atrophied. We just don't understand the

environment as much as we should or as much as we used to. The way we see the Arctic now is, as Sherry described, all the reasons behind the importance of it. We see it as a modern-day gold rush in the region with state actors. So most state actors, to include actors that are not Arctic nations, see the value in the opening of resources in the region. And from a military standpoint, we certainly want to protect our interests and ensure that the international set of norms, which we abide across the globe with, are also implemented and supported from a military standpoint in the Arctic. As the region becomes more and more contested and congested, the opportunities for misunderstanding and escalation and conflict can increase. And so we want to make sure that

we are there to make sure that doesn't happen and to support our interest in the region. So both of you discussed some of the major U.S. interests in the region, but I am curious to hear about who else is a major player in the high north, or maybe which stakeholders have interests there? Ostensibly, Moscow considers the Arctic to be of critical importance, if nothing else due to its proximity. But are there other actors competing for influence and resources in the region that we should know about? Well, Ben, certainly, you know, Russia has the longest Arctic coastline and the most geography in the Arctic. So it's the largest Arctic nation in size,

but it's certainly not the only one with aspirations or global ambitions. Now, Russia seeks, under President Putin, seeks to monetize the northern sea route that hugs Russia's long, shallow Arctic coastline and turn it into a toll road for transportation from ports in Asia, like Shanghai, across to Europe, major ports like Rotterdam. And it also seeks to monetize the vast energy and mineral resources available along its Arctic coast. To do that, it needs help from allies, its own allies, and it's gotten considerable help in the last decades from China. China itself released its first ever Arctic policy in 2018, declaring itself to be a near Arctic nation and an Arctic

stakeholder, laying out a strategy for a polar Silk Road, polar Silk Road, to complement its vast Belt and Road Initiative that it's using to build infrastructure and trade routes across Asia and Africa and even across even to South America. But now China also sees a polar Silk Road that in the future will allow it to use either the northern sea route along Russia's coastline or perhaps decades hence a central Arctic route when sea ice retreats so much from the central Arctic that that is accessible. Today it's not, but that's a future that China envisions and that one we have to be prepared for in the future, too.

At the same time, we've always had very important allies in the high north, Norway, Denmark, Iceland now and Sweden and Finland, who were always our allies. And now there are NATO allies as well. So we have a very critical and Canada, of course, on our North American continent. We have a very critical, and Canada, of course, on our North American continent. So now we have a critical mass of NATO members in the Arctic, and that creates a whole new security dynamic. I agree with the PRC, and they are certainly endeavoring to establish a foothold in the northern latitudes. They're consistently increasing their scientific, economic, and military activities, especially in the last five years. And they also work toward increasing influence through economic exploitation to gain access to vital natural resources in the region. They're really applying all instruments of national power to enhance its

influence in the region and expand initiatives such as the Polar Silk Road that Sherry spoke to. But it's not just the PRC and it's not just adversaries. There are also friendly nations, even allies. In fact, the United Kingdom just came out with an Arctic strategy recently, and they recognize the importance of the region as well. So I think that speaks to the area just becoming more congested. And I think many other sovereign countries see the ecotourism value in the future. So you may not even necessarily be an Arctic country or a near Arctic country to see the value of the ecotourism in the region and to put resources and assets and infrastructure in place to support that. What are the traditional institutions that have maintained stability in the Arctic? And how is the way we view change in the Arctic stressing those institutions, if so?

change in the Arctic, stressing those institutions, if so? Well, for 25 years, since 1996, we've had an Arctic Council that, while it's not a security organization like NATO, it does enable, historically, the Arctic nations, the Arctic eight coastal nations, plus many other observers and affiliated bodies, to address a variety of non-security Arctic interests from the environment to maritime issues, education, information, and a variety of other issues important to the people and the livelihoods and the health of the Arctic. Now, since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, the other Arctic seven nations have not allowed Russia to participate in the proceedings because of that aggression and Putin's war in the Arctic. So at the moment, those institutions are stressed. The Arctic Council was working with Arctic Seven now to

keep some of the work streams in the various subgroups and the working groups going because it's important, for example, scientific research and collaboration. We need to understand how environmental change is occurring in the Arctic, what that means for human systems, natural systems, what that means for our security. At the same time, it's hard to do that in some ways without Russia participating. There are also other international treaties that govern operations in the Arctic. You've got the Law of the Sea Agreement. And then you also have an important set of governing principles to the International Maritime Organization, IMO, which has increasingly put in rules of the road for shipping and maritime activities in the Arctic in order to both protect from ship accidents, for example, and also to protect

against environmental damage from navigation and other maritime activities. I think Sherry's really covered it well on the institution piece that has helped maintain stability. I'll speak a little bit to a non-institution piece, and it's really the human terrain aspect of it. From what I've seen in my travels in the North American Arctic and then in conversations with some of our allies and partners that are Arctic countries, there has been a spirit of cooperation at the local level across adversarial sovereign lines. For instance, Russia and the United States at the local level often collaborate and cooperate with whaling expeditions, for instance. And there are areas of cooperation that happens between local communities. Since the invasion of Ukraine in the last eight, nine months, I don't think that level of cooperation is something that we can count on from the human domain as much as we could post-invasion of Ukraine. Maybe I could just share a story that

underscores what Sean has just said about the loss of cooperation. In the 1990s, when I was serving as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, I led a program called Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation. And that program was created at the initiation of the Norwegian Secretary of Defense to help reduce contamination and liquid waste streams from Russian submarines that in the Kola Peninsula, close to the Norwegian border, that Norway was concerned would contaminate its fishing grounds. Because after the Cold War, Russia had let its military systems lapse, and there were about 100 sunken submarines in the Kola Peninsula, the condition of which was not well understood at the time.

So we launched a program with Russia called Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation and spent several decades. Most importantly, we helped the Russians build a cask that they could safely offload liquid waste streams from the decommissioned and sunken nuclear submarine so that they could be shipped inland to safer storage and wouldn't leak at sea and contaminating Norwegian or other fishing grounds. And it was a time of great trust building and cooperation and sharing common experiences. And unfortunately, those days have gone now and they've passed and we're in another era. But those experiences,

I wanted to score something that Sean said, are important because you can't surge trust, as we all know, and to avoid risks of miscalculation or escalation when you're operating in a remote region with many unknowns. The more that you're able to communicate, even if you don't see the world the same way, the safer people will be. And unfortunately, we're in an era where there's a lot we can't communicate and share with each other, and we're operating ever closer in very risky region. So Sherry, based on the conversation we just had and the risks you outlined, it does seem like climate change is leading to increased interaction between great powers in the Arctic as well as other stakeholders there. But before we get into

the specifics of military competition, I do just want to touch on a couple macro kind of system-wide issues. More specifically, your piece describes two distinct scenarios, right? One in which emissions are curbed and one in which they are not. Could you delve into each of those scenarios and the implications associated with each of them? Well, if you're in a military or national security career, you're used to using scenarios to play out what the future will look like. In the report you referred to, Ben, we use one scenario with more modest levels of warming. Now, let's be clear. We're looking at an Arctic of three to four degrees warming in the more moderate scenario, where you might still be able, under that scenario,

to put in place systems, human and natural systems, infrastructure, working with people in order to cope with the extent of the changes. I mean, let's face it, we already have many villages in Alaska today that have to be relocated because their coastal erosion and the sea level rise is vastly making them uninhabitable. A place like Newtok, Alaska, is already moving nine miles upriver. Now, in the more extreme scenario, we are likely to be unable to change our systems as fast as the Earth system changes occurring from the more rapidly warming climate. And we've already seen, for example, that Russia under Putin is very much a risk taker with his aggression against Ukraine,

his threatening of nuclear weapons use. And so with a Russian military that is perhaps unhinged, not as tethered to its leader under a situation where historically powerful, let's say, its leader under a situation where a historically powerful, let's say, northern fleet has to preserve itself. You could concoct a variety of scenarios that could create very dangerous situations of interaction, miscalculation. I always worry about Russia's nuclear operations because their safety record is so poor, from Chernobyl to the Kursk submarine, that you always have to worry that in a scenario where you've got uncontrolled natural system, that is the higher

warming natural system changes, that the operational side, let's say the military or other operational side, transport, might not be able to adapt sufficiently to manage through those changes. So those are the concerns and that will put in peril both the people of the Arctic, you know, because it's going to affect food systems. We just talked about whaling, the fishing, the hunting grounds, all of that is changing. And as the people who live in the Arctic, the indigenous communities begin to move, that creates all sorts of other risks, because let's face it, they are on the front lines of providing us domain awareness in the region. When you want to really know what's happening, you know, you go to the people that live there. They're an important human asset for us,

as well as they've lived there for, you there for thousands of years. So those are some of the concerns that we have in that more rapidly warming Samaria. I guess I would say from my standpoint, from the military lens, the displacement as a driver to stability, just not with only Alaska native populations, but native populations throughout all of the Arctic. That certainly, as we've seen throughout history, is a contributor to conflict. So the more unstable an area is, the more likely a conflict could occur. So those chess pieces are moving into place. And then the second piece of that, as I've had conversations with some of the local populations in the North American Arctic, the access to civilian infrastructure is just not going to be there. So something that we rely on, especially with SOF with a light, small footprint, we have to rely on civilian infrastructure oftentimes.

So we may need a heated hangar to pull maintenance for one of our helicopters, for instance. Well, if that heated hangar is not there, we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to maintain. We're not going to be able to get access to those regions. Just air runways, small airports, we're not going to have access like we used to. And then from the changing of the environment, as we see summers extending and the permafrost thawing, it's a lot easier to traverse cross-country with a snow machine on frozen tundra to get from point A to point B fairly quickly.

Well, if that's thawed and now it's all a musk egg, it's almost impossible to walk across and you're not getting any machine across. So being able to maneuver in the maneuver space there, I think is rapidly changing in ways that we don't have the technology yet to deal with it, or frankly, even understand what the impacts may be. So Sean, it sounds like you're talking about the prospects of civil-military interaction and new kinds of avenues of approach opening up in and around the Arctic, both on land and on sea. And that kind of addresses a question I wanted to get to, which is, how should we actually think about military competition materializing in the region?

You know, Sherry's article discusses the possibility of more gray zone operations occurring in the Arctic just due to increased commercial interests and other technological advances. But from your vantage point, how are you thinking about operations in the Arctic region? We look at it from the standpoint of three vectors in our northern approach. So here at SOC North, we see ourselves with the first one informing on Arctic capability requirements through specific activities, training, readiness development, and then being able to inform the wider audience and Department of Defense on the capability requirements to make sure that we are as ready as we can be to be on the playing

field in the Arctic. The second one is to demonstrate readiness to conduct SOF core activities. Oftentimes, SOF is the only element in DoD that can reach some of these environmentally challenging areas, and then being able to demonstrate that we are there, the intent of safeguarding and protecting our interest. Oftentimes by soft, just being on the playing field in a particular region demonstrates the importance of our country to that particular region. And so that's one of the key things that we take on is when we demonstrate our readiness in that particular region. And then preparing the environment to set conditions for a competition, crisis, and conflict.

Just understanding the environment, how it's changing, understanding the human terrain where we do or do not have access. And as Sherry mentioned, oftentimes the humans that live there are our best domain awareness assets, being able to speak to them and understand what is changing from an environmental standpoint or from another threat vector standpoint. To get more specifically into your question on the gray zone activities of what we see our adversaries potentially doing in the future. I think we've got some great playbook answers from what both Russia and China do routinely in the gray zone to try and thwart the international norms, whether it is a fishing fleet that is owned by the PRC or owned by China that goes into and

depletes the fishery stocks outside of any of the accepted norms as they've done elsewhere, or with Russia utilizing some of their mandated escort monetary provisions, you have to pay Russian resources to be escorted along the northern routes. Those are all gray zone activities that are absolutely against the international set of norms that we abide by. We've just seen a lot more risk-taking behavior in the region. So Russia's continued to be disruptive in the high north with our Nordic neighbors, with overflights, with prodding and trying to undermine norms, for example, around Svalbard, which is part of Norway, but has its own unique international

status that allows Russia, China, and others to have research stations there. And also we see China sort of having this dual use, sort of we're all about research, but we know that research is also about intelligence gathering. So we see Russian ships sometimes in the summer right off the coast of Alaska. So what are they doing there? And we also have now in place for the last few years an international agreement, a moratorium on fishing in the Central Arctic, which is good that we have that moratorium. So we're not raping and pillaging the Central Arctic right now for fish stocks that aren't really there. At the same time, the agreement does allow all the signatories to it, which includes the U.S., Russia, China, many others, to conduct research and observations

in and around that Central Arctic region. So it enables China, for example, to gain further knowledge about operating in the Arctic. So with all this stepped up activity comes this whole gray zone activity. You know, we used to think of it as, okay, the little green men that went into Crimea, But now it's a lot more than just land forces, right? And it can take a lot of other forms and it can be multi-platform, multi-domain and bring together a lot of different actors in different ways. And we've also seen how Russia, China and others use disinformation as part of their campaigns. And here you're talking about a region that's remote and difficult to operate in. And then you've got to also be able to combat sort of the lack of information

plus the disinformation. So it's increasingly complex for Sean and his soft forces to figure out how they best deter and defend American interests in that region. Well, let's dig in on that last point. So we've discussed how the inhospitable environment and infrastructure limitations make this region different and perhaps more difficult to operate in than other theaters. And that's made more complex by climate change's effects on Arctic ice and snow. So what are the U.S. and our allies doing to prepare for increased competition in the Arctic under these conditions? You know, from the military standpoint, I think being on the playing field, we talked about a little bit earlier. But more so than that, harnessing what I see as our secret sauce in the United States,

and it's leveraging like-minded governments that are values-driven, democratic-based countries to demonstrate interoperability in the region. So that's one thing that we're doing from the military standpoint. But just being on the playing field and getting into the Arctic on a routine basis, we're learning. Every time we go up there, we learn more and more. About 18 months ago, we had a military free fall special forces team that jumped in to the Arctic and the temperature was minus 80 to minus 100 at altitude when they jumped in. Hadn't spent a lot of time in the region at that particular temperature anyway in the last 20 years. Well, immediately upon exiting the aircraft, their face shields shattered.

So now, as an individual operator, you're dealing with preventing frostbite with exposed or nearly exposed skin, while also trying to make sure that you stay stable as you're floating down at altitude. So that was a significant issue. Once the special forces team got on the ground, 100% of their batteries were dead. So they were unable to communicate with each other and to hire. So it was really more of a survive mode versus a thrive mode. Back in late February, early March, we jumped another team in, and this happened to be a Navy SEAL platoon into the Arctic. Same temperature range. They had new off-the-shelf face shields that were designed for much colder temperatures.

The face shields were fine. for much colder temperatures, the face shields were fine. And then from an innovation standpoint, and I think this is one of the tenants that makes SOF as successful as they have been throughout our history, they were able to procure small coolers that they would put hunters' hand warmers in, place their batteries inside those coolers, placed those coolers inside their outer level of clothing, and they jumped out. Once they got on the ground, they plugged their batteries in and they kept the batteries inside their clothing with their radios. And the batteries performed almost equally to that at a much warmer temperature. So they learned from the lessons from the previous team 18 months later, and we're

learning from other Arctic nations on what they do in some of these instances. I had a conversation with some Danish soft and some of their elements that travel across Greenland in the coldest part of the year. They talked about how they utilized only dogs and only wooden sleds. And so I asked, like, well, why wouldn't you use a snow machine? Or why would you not use composite materials in your sleds? Their answer was, you can put X amount of weight on a snow machine and X amount of weight on a dog team. When the snow machine breaks, you're done. You can't go any further. If you break a dog, and we do, there's the rest of the pack that will at least get you

to the next point where you could be resupplied, refurbished. We can't replace composite materials in that region. We can find wood structures and wood to replace and make provisions on the scene on the ground and fix wooden sleds, but we cannot fix composite because we just don't have access to get more composite material to us. So something I hadn't even thought about, but having those conversations down at the component level, at the tactical level, I think there's a lot of lessons that are currently being used, techniques, tactics, and procedures that are being implemented to further develop. And I think that will also be a driver in the future from a dot mil PF standpoint of what do we need to look at procurement in the future to make sure that we can thrive

in that environment. So Sean, it sounds like units that operate in the Arctic constantly need to account for a ton of special considerations and tactically nuanced techniques and procedures just due to the incredibly austere nature of the climate there, right? So do you see innovation coming from just an iterative process of expeditions to the high north, or is it going to come from learning from other countries or natives there? I guess this problem set just seems so unique. I want to know how you're thinking about preparing soldiers for operating in such an inhospitable place. I think humbling ourselves and realizing that we don't have all the answers is key to that.

we don't have all the answers is key to that. So we talk about a bias for understanding instead of a bias for action. So the more we can understand on the front end, the better that we can get to actions later on. For instance, we just had an Arctic symposium we hosted here at SOC North. Over 70 different stakeholders, to include every Arctic nation except for Russia, participated in the collaborative discussions. Multiple members of academia were involved, industry involved. So we're bringing in many stakeholders to have a bias toward understanding of the environment to include especially the local populations that live for multiple generations in this particular environment. Sherry, other than military-to-military cooperation, what other types of transnational

cooperation should the U.S. pursue in the Arctic? Great question, Jeff. So one of the very important cooperative activities we have in the Arctic is with our Coast Guards. And there is a very active Arctic Coast Guard forum. It survived Russia's invasion of Crimea as still a forum where Russia was participating, but it has not included Russia since its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. But the value of that Coast Guard form is for the Coast Guard, which is in the front line of search and rescue, plus monitoring for illegal fishing, oil spill prevention. They conduct common activities together. They actually exercise under agreements reached through the Arctic Council on search and rescue and oil spill prevention. So that's a very important set of collaborative activities. Secondly, there is a long history of scientific collaboration across the Arctic that has included not only the Arctic nations, but many other countries that are interested in Arctic research.

Let me also mention the NATO, which is a military organization and now counts all of the Arctic seven nations as its members, did already a few years ago begin to look at how to operate in the Arctic and held its first Strategic Foresight Workshop in Oslo, Norway in 2019. I had the privilege of speaking at that. And so that was an opportunity for all then 29 members of NATO, most of whom were not Arctic nations, to understand what it means to operate in that region. So based on our conversation today, what are some policy implications or just implications in general that Beltway officials, academics, researchers, and practitioners should take away? And I'll ask that question to Sherry first. Thank you, Ben. And I'm going to start answering that question by adding my thoughts on a question I'm often asked with respect to the Arctic, which is, what keeps you up at night?

Okay, and I'm going to share that with you first as a way to get into my recommendations, because I did a scenario tabletop exercise as part of something called Arctic Futures 2050. The scenario was a Russian nuclear icebreaker colliding with the Chinese LNG liquid natural gas vessel that it's escorting through the Bering Strait, resulting in both the need for a search and rescue and a potential spill event in waters between Russia and the United States, which at its closest point is less than 50 miles apart. So these kinds of incidents keep me up at night. As I said earlier, I'm particularly concerned that Russia doesn't have a good nuclear safety record. So I get into the recommendations.

In the Cold War era, we really talked about when we thought that Russia was our primary nuclear threat and adversary, which, of course, it's not the only one today. We also have China. of China. But we spent a lot of time during that period of the Cold War doing things like confidence-building measures in order to better understand and reduce risks, better to understand what the other forces were doing to reduce risk of miscalculation or escalation. And despite the fact that we face an aggressive and revanchist Russia today, an ambitious China, you know, nothing is ever black or white. We need to understand when our military or maritime non-civilian forces are operating, we always want to reduce risk of an accident or something that could have broader geopolitical implications. And so finding ways in this increasingly competitive time and contested resources, when also the

existing institutions like the Arctic Council are stressed because they don't include Russia, that becomes kind of the broader security challenge. There's no really great answer right now, but just to be open to sort of alternative lines of communication that enable us through a variety of forces to sort of gather information. And then we also need additional vessels. The Coast Guard is building additional icebreakers because we've let that capability atrophy. We do need a deep water port in the region. That's underway. That's going to take some time. We're going to need more eyes and ears in the Arctic, in sort of Arctic domain awareness that includes a lot of capabilities. And then

we also need at the same time to be sensitive to and inclusive of the changes that are occurring in the indigenous communities, the Native Alaskan population and our other allied communities. And then we need to also now have a great opportunity, I would say, to up our NATO-Arctic game because we've got Finland and Sweden coming into NATO. And they're, of course, very adept at already operating in the region. And they're also very adept because they live next to Russia. They live in that neighborhood. They're able to operate with a great deal of nuance in the state of their

relations. There are things that the U.S. can also learn from in continuing to, as much as possible, reduce risk and ensure stability in this rapidly changing and contested region. I think it's really important for policymakers to understand the Arctic is one of our adversaries' closest approach to attack by air. Then you juxtapose that with the technology of hypersonics. The modernization of the NORAD infrastructure is extremely important. So I think from a policymaker standpoint, resourcing the modernization of the NORAD infrastructure to deal with some of our adversaries and some of the technological advances that they have had come up in the last 10 or 15 years. All of the services now have an Arctic strategy. I think the Army has moved out fairly quickly. As an example,

their multi-domain airborne infantry division now designating the 11th Infantry Division as a multi-domain division and some of the capabilities that they're bringing online in that particular region. But I don't know that all the services are resourcing their strategy at the same rate. I would say resourcing the services Arctic Strategies is something certainly for policymakers to think through and support. Certainly a huge supporter and a great partner with the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security that just really came online in the last four or five months. But fully resourcing the Ted Stevens Arctic Security Center going forward and other academic research and then the collaboration with academics to research what the effects are with the climate change and how we can be more predictable from a military standpoint on how that will drive

instability in some of the military and defense applications of that is something that I would offer for the academics. Well, Sean Satterfield, Sherry Goodman, thanks so much for joining us for episode 69 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. That was a fascinating conversation about Arctic security. Hey, thank you, everybody, and best wishes over the holiday season. Great to be with you, Sean. Thank you for what you do with our soft forces and our military every day, 365 days a year, 24-7. We're very deeply grateful. And I hope you and your families have some time to rest and recover over the holiday season. And thank you, Ben and

Jeff, for what you're both doing in your respective missions and what you do for our nation. Thank you again for joining us for episode 69 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Adam and I discuss India's experience with Maoist insurgencies. Following that, Ben and Kyle will discuss the impact of the recently released National Security Strategy on Irregular Warfare with Dr. Corey Shockey and Rear Admiral Keith Davids. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so. Corey Shockey and Rear Admiral Keith Davids. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We're a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and

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to the Irregular Warfare podcast. It really helps expose the show to new listeners. And one last note, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those at Princeton, West Point, or any agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.