Sea Control - Sea Control 244 - Establishing an Arctic Security Institution with Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan and Troy Bouffard

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

Links1. "Establishing an Arctic Security Institution," by Troy Bouffard and Elizabeth Buchanan, The Strategy Bridge March 3, 2020.  

Hey folks, Sherrod here. I've talked about our feed. I'm going to keep talking about it. There are two existing Sea Control feeds out there. The current feed, the one that you want to be listening to, is labeled simply Sea Control. It includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. That's Sea Control, Simsex Flagship Podcast. That's where you want to be. Please subscribe, rate, and review. This episode features John Frerichs as host. He is joined by Troy Buffard and Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan.

and they're going to be discussing NATO, NORAD, Russia, NORTHCOM, and establishing an Arctic security institution. Please check out everything going on over at the main website as well, simsec.org. We've just released our next call for submissions for Project Trident, so if you're interested in contributing to discussion on the law of naval warfare, submissions are due May 17th. For more information, check out the website, simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Guten Tag, shipmates, and welcome back. Today, we will discuss an article called Establishing an Arctic Security Institution, Essentials from NORAD and NATO, with the two co-authors, Troy Buford and Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan. The article was published in Strategy Bridge on 3 March 2020 and will be linked in the show notes on the CIMSEC website. I was excited when I recently came across this article as it proposes an alternative look at how different organizations can come together to enable security in the Arctic and discusses several different elements of maritime security in the region. At this point, I'll remind the listeners that all opinions

expressed are our own and not reflective of any institutions with which we might otherwise be associated, to include the Australian Defense College, the Australian War College, or the U.S. Department of Defense. With that, we'll jump into the first question. Troy and Elizabeth, how did you guys come together to write this article for StrategyBridge? So I'm up here in Fairbanks, Alaska. I work with the University of Alaska Fairbanks as full-time faculty and the director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience. And a while ago on social media and doing the kind of work we do with arctic security and defense organizations and nato it didn't take long for liz and i to cross paths and then i found her work to be on point and

fascinating and needed to reach out and connect with her and especially with her russian expertise became important in my own work as soon as we connected we realized we had a lot of very similar ideas and passions and things we enjoy analyzing and writing about and it didn't take long before we were coming up with ideas and palming away at the keyboard oh thanks troy um yeah ditto that so basically we've connected and found that we i think think along the same broader lines when it comes to arctic security but um i think the key thing for us is is that you know we're not afraid to say that we see the arctic through sort of a hardcore realist lens and i think a lot of people um whether that's in you know political circles academic circles

these days are sort of looking for institutions and looking for the power of you know neoliberal institution i think in the zone and i yes i just like how you know we we shoot straight when it comes to the arctic and i think it's really needed now i appreciate that answer and uh probably unbeknownst to both of you, I've followed you both independently from some of the work you guys have both done for UCOM. So it's been fascinating to kind of see you guys both come together specific to this article. Why has there been such a significant increase in interest within the Arctic? I feel like there's new strategies published almost weekly. The Army just recently came out with an additional Arctic strategy. So what is generating all this interest?

Clearly, I think we've got a situation where, you know, mankind's discovered maps, right? No, seriously, I think the main sort of things we've got in mass media, you know, energy and security, fisheries, shipping routes, these are the kind of draw cards of this new great game that's going on. But if we peel back these kind of forces very quickly, if you bother to kind of dig into the issue and and you know ask the right questions you'll find that most of these commons and these kind of allures of the region they're they're not in sort of uncontested spaces this isn't really you know a great game that we should be expecting and the second thing is about you know injecting

some reality into this dialogue you know there's a lot of assumptions here about the commercial viability of these fisheries of these energy resources sort of up around the north pole and indeed of the shipping routes. So we have to be asking the right questions when we think about, you know, a convergence on the Arctic. In my work, I'm starting to see the kind of interest drawing from a different area. I think domestic politics globally has just become so nationalist

to the point that the Arctic has become kind of engulfed by nationalist sentiment. And I think, you know, naturally you've got that as a chest-beating exercise abroad. you've also got it as a chance to bolster public opinion at home by finding the other finding the enemy again and just for you know the u.s case i'm seeing it as you know yeah it's a frontier in which russia is present in which china has started to you know indicate its interest are they going to both you know join together and come over the north pole well you know you'd hope not i don't

think so personally um but i do see domestic politics on a whole in the u.s in scandinavia being really weaponized i think to you know facilitate funds into into bigger defense budgets for for the arctic um but i guess the flow and effect of that is that it internationalizes the arctic issue so you've got you know little old me in australia picking up on on what's really going on quite a far away away from where i'm sitting it's been really neat to get such a valuable outside perspective too. Being in an Arctic nation, it can be somewhat difficult to think about things in global terms and keeping a solid understanding of the Arctic when it comes to world views. And what I noticed over many years is for the United States, this was a very slow

process. The interest in the Arctic increased over the years. But for the most part, around the circumpolar north a lot of us spent a lot of time dealing with a lot of the problems of misunderstanding the arctic so when russia had planted the flag at the bottom of the north pole and then usgs the united states geological survey published the report about the estimates of oil and gas in the arctic and on top of that you had a significant increase in decreasing sea ice all of these things converged at the same time and the Arctic became a very exciting place to think about but at that same time mostly a lot of the media handling of the topics were largely based on myths so a lot of us spent a lot of time just myth busting for about first five to ten

years and we're finally at a good point now where we can actually think forward right because a lot of the myths have been been tamped down and got the proper understanding of how things actually work in the arctic and it's been it's nice because now we can think about thinking about you know the future instead of always always looking back and that's been really helpful so this was an opportune time to think about what seemed to be an eventuality there there needs to be a place to talk about arctic security hard security military matters that didn't exist just kind of where we're at now. So we jumped on this a while ago, and it's picking up speed. Yeah, thanks, Troy. And speaking of the kind of the militarizations, I sat through one of your

classes, online classes, you discussed the framework of the Arctic Council, kind of non-militarization oriented, focused towards the governance of some of those issues. No major war has been fought in the Arctic, to my knowledge. So why are two major defensive institutions increasingly looking towards the arctic and are we almost increasing the likelihood of military interaction within that within that region but in terms of the military interest in the arctic as a sphere i just want to draw your eye completely away from sort of the northern hemisphere but the australian interest in in a peaceful arctic um kind of cuts both ways for us and this is where our interest um certainly comes from so obviously we don't want any any form of conflict there it's

something that through perhaps the ANSYS alliance, you know, we could get drawn into. But on the flip side, you know, Australia's got security concerns if the Arctic becomes, you know, a functioning global transport route, right? So we've got, you know, we're signatory to the Svalbard Treaty. That's our first interest in terms of a geo sort of strategic concern. But most of our, in a domestic sense, most of our critical mineral mining firms are invested heavily in Scandinavia throughout the

Arctic. And of course, there are serious kind of commercial security issues for our entire region here in Asia, specifically Singapore. If global shipping routes change, and if we're not using the Suez Canal, if we're cutting through, you know, the Northern Sea route, will that become viable? What does that mean for our economies down here in Asia? Particularly from an Australian point of view we just overtook middle east as the world's largest lng exporter right how long will that last for that's you know the bedrock of our economic security but if china if south korea if japan can get cheaper and quicker lng supplies from russia via the northern sea route you know there's a commercial consideration there that they might opt for that and that matters for our

national security you know speaking of the the two institutes so why liz and i chose to focus on NORAD and NATO was an interesting choice because we realized that these two institutes probably will have limited, if any, role whatsoever in what will eventually be an Arctic Security Forum. But what was important was to understand that these were the two defense-related organizations that could really help to provide the kind of information and experience and knowledge from which to draw from in order to think about how to put an arctic security forum together and why especially when you think about you know the different pieces that involve not only public diplomacy but also military diplomacy so it seemed like the right place to start even knowing that

you know NORAD's role when it comes to the arctic is based more or less on traditional North American national defense-related type roles. And so their carryover from the Cold War, and NORAD has that kind of experience and what it can bring into informing how an Arctic Security Forum could and should develop is important from that regard. And for NATO, clearly regarded as the most successful alliance in history, there's a lot to learn from that. And it was really easy to focus on NATO and bring in some of the knowledge about how a successful institute can run.

And they don't even have to be part of everything. And the NATO question, the role of NATO in the Arctic is still a very lively question at this point. So we thought it was an interesting start that way, despite what role they might have in the future. It seemed to work out. Great answers both. I want to explore NORAD a little bit more. When I first start thinking about NORAD, my immediate thought is the Santa tracker that they do every year that my kids love watching. Santa makes his way across the world. For those unfamiliar with NORAD, can you explain kind of the role that NORAD plays, particularly within the maritime domain, for anyone who has yet to read your article? So the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, is the binational command responsible for providing North American continental defense. And then the maritime world, one of the primary roles that NORAD has is a global maritime warning mission.

So it has the visibility on the world's waters and collects the information and has a coding system for distributing information to responsible agencies that may need to deal with either a threat or an emergency situation. So this is a really important role that NORAD provides there. Right now, they're doing an exercise, in fact, involving units deployed all over the place. They also manage Operation Noble Eagle. So one, that's an important post 9-11 mission that protects the airspace, what's known as the National Capital Regions, NCRs. That's highly effective. So that's a little bit of a basics about NORAD. I prefer to leave the kind of nuts and bolts of NORAD to people like yourselves who've actually been on the ground up there in the cold.

but I really just wanted to add a comment or two with regard to the kind of why we chose the two institutions back you know everything that Troy laid down was you know correct but I think wasn't you know the key reason we kind of picked them was because of the problem set they posed right so both NORAD and NATO are key institutions in you know North Atlantic security affairs but they are ones in which Russia is not at the table by the very kind of creation of these institutions and bodies. And the problem kind of arises when we're trying to kind of force these structures to deal with the looming current, you know, having a look at its security issues, military security issues in the Arctic, but the largest stakeholder for the region, legitimized by international law,

you know is not part of the discussion by the creation of the organizations so it's a real tension that I think we we kind of jumped on and wanted to unpack do you expand these institutions do you create a new one this is including discussions about what the Arctic Council can and can't do but this is a year ago Troy and I were having this discussion and it's great to see there's an aptitude in the same questions and the same kind of pieces that are out there at the moment on this question of military security institutions in the Arctic. But I mean, you'd hope in a year that we've been able to kind of move the discussion along, shift the dial to come up with, you know, more of a concrete idea of just what this would look like in practice. So I think

that's where sort of Troy and I are kind of moving to now in terms of our work at the moment. It's a fascinating perspective, particularly pointing out the clear lack of Russia at the table within those two organizations. With Russia coming to chair or be the head of the Arctic Council this summer, do you think that will catalyze NATO to develop a clearer or better strategy or operational approach within the Arctic? I would be surprised if that happened. NATO is very aware of the pressures involving them developing, maybe establishing a role in the arctic one thing to understand about nato 30 members it's a very political organization even as an alliance and it has a global alliance mission set and its potential role in the arctic

is still undetermined there's a lot of advocacy in both ways for or against nato having anything to do with the arctic including writing a strategy which has caught the attention of the russians Current senior Arctic official, Gortunov, has stated in public that they'd rather not even see NATO publish an Arctic strategy. It would change their views about NATO and the region from Russia's perspective. So they're sending signals and strategically communicating about what it wants to see as far as NATO's involvement in the Arctic, which is basically very limited. and obviously that's not not happening um you know with trident juncture and other activities clearly nato will have some kind of role of presence in the arctic to what extent who knows but these are the kind of things too that arctic security forums can help manage as far as tensions

and um and move past these things because if there's no talk there's no way to deal with this stuff yeah absolutely i mean this is some work that i undertook after my phd i went over to the nato defense college in rome managed to do some work on the gr uk gap and basically i guess the point with nato in the arctic is i think internally they frame it as the high north frankly again echoing what troy said absolutely it's a political beast to move along it's not only a military body right we forget it's also a political one and the politics will win out on this i doubt there would be any formal kind of arctic strategy tabled not least during russia's arctic council chairmanship i think the last week or so as well have actually hardened my thoughts on that and it's actually to

do with a geopolitical shift in my region here in asia pacific informing the kind of changes in the Arctic. And that's the kind of warm welcome that India has given the Quad. And I think that that was unexpected from Russia. I knew that they knew they were interested in the concept of the Quad. But, you know, the warm embrace has definitely ruffled feathers. And so any ideas that we had thought about Russia offsetting Chinese over-reliance in the Arctic by bringing in India, bringing in other states, I think, you know, that's frozen in situ a little bit. And that's a worry because perhaps Russia has been forced somewhat into a closer corner with China. And that's, you know, something that I don't think any stakeholder in the Arctic actually wants to

see eventuate. How do you deal with that? Right. But in terms of the background with NATO in the Arctic, you know, I don't think it's fair to say, will NATO table an Arctic strategy? Will they realize, you know, they need to be there because they've had a strategy, they've been there. This isn't a new sphere for NATO. So, you know, Cold War, World War II era, that was a specific theatre, more calibrated to the High North concept, of course. We know the GI-UK gap was the central kind of linchpin here. You've got, you know, forward presence through Norway, Greenland, Iceland.

UK Royal Navy was absolutely focused to the northern flank. It was a key wartime replenishment route across the North Atlantic. You know, it definitely mattered. so this was you know tailored to the North Atlantic to the Barents Sea focus and we have seen that kind of return in the last few months as Troy outlined I do think that will be the extent of it looking ahead in the short to medium perhaps even long term so the European Arctic frankly was always kind of NATO militarized to some extent I think that's a fair kind of assessment but I think you know as with anything with the with the collapse of the union you know they had a shift

in threat perception right moscow might have been downtrodden and broken but you know the moment's nuclear forces always remained there that was always going to be a frontier of value troy's already spoken about the internal issues within nato itself but i think there is some collective agreement in brussels around you know do we want to take on russia do you want to poke the bear. And that's not a ideologically charged, you know, we'll roll over and let Russia do what they want to. That's accepting there is a legitimate stake here by way of geography, that NATO's own commitment to international rules and, you know, norms needs to also, you know, play ball and acknowledge. I think there will be a bit of a branding shift in NATO about, you know,

perhaps the high north and the North Atlantic sphere is going to be enough. Let's not talk about going into the Arctic, but I don't think it's a case that NATO has no interest in the Arctic. I mean, that's fundamentally wrong. It just has to balance how to, you know, execute the strategy, if indeed it does table a strategy. But the climate threat is no longer, you know, an untraditional security issue.

It's front and centre. and I've seen Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg shift, you know, on this. I interviewed him here when he was in Canberra in 2019 and, you know, I asked him, I tabled the question, I said, what's the alliance doing about climate change? And, you know, for him that was a, he dodged the question a little bit, but, you know, he said, we can't deal with everything

but it is definitely a threat multiplier so we do need to consider that. And now, you know, just in the last week, climate change is front and center of his speeches which is great but you know the stakeholders throughout nato these members have economic military investments in the high north and they expect return on their investment so it need it does need to act i think the focus of nato kind of in a long-winded a long-winded way of saying what nato will and won't do in the high north i think we'll see a new maritime concept specifically i do think the high north will be

kind of explanation box somewhere and this will be alone a huge signal right and maybe that's enough but operationally you know the area is above the Tropic of Cancer so they need to be able to actually execute you know what what the members have signed up for and I absolutely see Barents Sea presence which we've already got maintaining throughout you know next 10 years at least. Do I expect a phone-up through the Northern Sea Route, not least near the Russian section? No. Perhaps more soft power initiatives like Centre for Excellences through Norway and Canada on the Arctic security. So a bit of a soft touch, I think, from NATO. That's a great perspective, Elizabeth, and a very detailed approach to understand kind of

the multiple different elements and facets of why NATO is interested in the Arctic. After your article was published, NATO did publish the concept for the deterrence and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area called the DDA. In addition to the NATO warfighting capstone concept, when you look at some of the assumptions based on reading these, I think there's an assumed approach that the Arctic will remain kind of a key point for NATO with regards to focus of security. Will these have an increased deterrent effect against Russia within the Arctic? I would expect so, in so much as, especially with the new administration in the United States, there's a good focus on stabilizing our critical areas and regions, like the Transatlantic Alliance and security is getting a good amount of focused attention right now and efforts. And that is, you know, on that side of the United States and the North Atlantic and its role when it comes to Arctic security will pay benefits if you can stabilize the transatlantic alliance and deal with the northern Atlantic issues like the GIU-K gap. The second fleets stood back up, and the third joint force command for NATO, co-located at Norfolk, Virginia.

These will enable, I think, and empower the defense organizations' alliances' efforts to stabilize and establish in a way that they can move into the Arctic, I think, with better effects. Any strategy NATO tables is going to be a signal, right, to Moscow? I think it's all going to come down to kind of the return to the heart-mell doctrine that NATO once had, which was this real focus on deterrence and dialogue in step. Obviously, since 2014, Ukraine-Crimea, the dialogue component has completely fallen to the wayside. I think there's a few conversations ongoing right now in Brussels

as we speak as to how much has NATO gained in trying to cut lines of conversation, How much value can be retained if we open up avenues for dialogue in step with, you know, tabling these new sort of plans to be present in the region? In your conclusion, you mentioned the Arctic Coast Guard Forum as a functioning Arctic security organization, which includes active Russian participation. Can you expand a little bit on this organization? Yeah, right now, operationally, when we think about the Arctic in terms of operations, the Arctic Coast Guard Forum is about the only thing that's working well right now when it involves a collection of all eight Arctic nations, especially with Russia. But this makes a lot of sense. The Coast Guards and Coast Guard-like agencies, they have to deal with an enormous amount of potential security or emergency situations.

At any given time in the maritime world, if you're looking at just automated identification system trackers that are out there, there's at least, what, 200,000 vessels out in the oceans at any given time, 24-7, 365. and each one of those represents a potential security or emergency situation so the Coast Guards have no choice but to work together and share information about that kind of movement that kind of activity and presence in the maritime domain. They have put together a forum that is a natural extension of the North Atlantic and the North Pacific similar previous agencies and have just established right now the only means of communicating and learning about operations in the Arctic collaboratively that include Russia. And they have to be careful about what they do.

The defense organizations are often trying to gain access to some of the Arctic Coast Guard forums, events, and some of their activities. The forum has had to kind of politely decline these things It's because of the need to keep a clear separation from the hard security side when this forum and the Coast Guard directorates of each nation have a completely different mandate. And the reason they're so successful is because they can keep separate from these highly charged, hard security, national security type political issues. And we're fortunate that they've been able to do what they do. I always use the Coast Guard Forum angle to really underscore the realities of what's going on in the ground in the Arctic. You know, there's no hot air. This is a forum that understands its institutional boundaries, which I think matters.

And, you know, picks the small battles, knows its purpose and delivers upon that, tries as hard as it can to remain kind of apolitical in an extremely political space. you know, it's definitely an example for where we should be going, Troy, with the discussion as to what a security, military security body would look like in the Arctic. I think there's definitely kind of a blueprint component there. It's definitely good to hear that there is an organization that's facilitating those conversations within that domain. Going back to your recommendation with regards to the integration or the development establishment of an Arctic security institution, what do you think would be the ideal relationship or level of integration between NATO and NORAD to truly enable an Arctic security institution that does

provide or increase security within this region? I think it needs to have two key components. The first is clear lines of communication, right? So we're going back to basics of how we get us and the other on the same page for mutual kind of benefits at keeping the region, you know, free of conflict open and running for our own kind of national economic purposes right but that comes down to sharing insight you know it doesn't necessarily mean that the institutions need to have a common end goal but at least have enough of these kind of points along the way that they can collaborate on work together but it's also about having an idea of common solutions and how how you get to this solution because you've got different ethnicities you've got different national interests

you've got different alliances all kind of feeding into the back there and the second thing whatever in the institution or the body you know that's going to take the brunt of the military security issues in the arctic needs to have is this idea it really needs to commit you know to the presence this is going to be a long-term thing it's not until you defeat russia till russia collapses or you know the the u.s has to pivot away elsewhere you know this is a long-term frontier the arctic's the next you know 40 to 50 years we need to start thinking in much more of a longer term bandwidth here and it could go very differently right the future might move one year across the cooperative sort of conflict spectrum insanely and then you know move back

the other way and i gave the example before about you know the the russia india relationship and how that was set to be preordained for offsetting china in the arctic but we've seen elsewhere there's some ruptures and you know that might that might also feed into the future of the relationship out there in the arctic so i think it's about you know learning lessons from what nato's done in the past in terms of the region took its eye off the ball kind of didn't think in the long term and you know don't move on from any arctic or high north focus if that's your area of operation you know stick to it and you know focus on focus on long-term planning I think they could also help to manage expectations when the Arctic Security Forum, whatever that turns out to be, can rely on the fact that NORAD and NATO and other organizations even will be able to maintain and continue to deal with some security issues that might actually cause problems for the Arctic Security Forum.

So it would be kind of a nice division of labor there and expectations on where security issues could be managed and discussed, perhaps. And that kind of history and experience with NATO and NORAD are going to just help inform this. And this could help to ensure that whatever this forum might be, it's either the Northern Chiefs of Defense, the CHODS, or the continuation kind of of the previous Arctic Security Forces Roundtable. You know, they can maybe get to get to work and not have to worry about dealing with sensitive military hard security issues that could be handled elsewhere. and that should help the organization from the start have a path to success and that can keep things from getting maybe too competitive or you know distract from the purpose of trying to do the things that the forum is meant to do which is create a safe place for dialogue and help manage you know smaller issues expectations how to interact in the arctic and who knows maybe this

could lead to even better things like cooperating and more observation more invitations to events and at the end of the day this is kind of what people are looking for now because the activity is increasing and the expectations haven't been set right so we need a place to do this and this is why we wrote what we did was look you know there's a lot of experience in these two two significant defense organizations let's learn from those because you know the previous chiefs of defense efforts and the arctic security forces roundtable when they were active you know from 2014 and prior the arctic was a lot different so it's really kind of interesting to think about like you can't just really turn on these organizations and get back to business the

way it used to be the arctic's a lot different at this point and things are happening so it'd be nice if it can be set up for success right from the start the interest is there hopefully NATO and NORAD can kind of provide some of that advice, a little bit of support for how to deal with issues. I really appreciate the frame that you guys have put, and I'm excited to see, you know, as this security cooperation does move forward, the development of this Arctic security institution, because I think it is valuable and it's required based on the importance and the value of the Arctic, based on the issues you guys have discussed. Finally, as all the guests come to the program with different views and backgrounds, I ask you to help me expand my

own perspective as I wrestle with the topic. There's a lot of different definitions for maritime security out there, but I would ask each of you, how would you define maritime security? I just think it's a fundamental kind of building block to national security. So I come back to a domestic inward frame, whether you're a state that's lacking sea lines of communication or or is surrounded entirely by them, which is the case of little me in Australia. But I think it's just so fundamental to build strategy, whether national security strategy or your foreign policy, from a position of understanding the opportunities and the threats

that are posed by your maritime positioning. So it's not sexy, it's not fancy, it's not AI, it's not cyber, but I think it's an aspect of national security that fundamentally matters and we often kind of forget it. Not a good point. I agree with Liz, for sure. It's an especially important domain. Maritime domain awareness is still the key issue in the Arctic, and achieving that is just a high-latitude communications issue, among other things.

As far as defining maritime security, I think it's important to keep that foundational understanding of the fact that you know it's 70 plus percent of this planet where that is involves 90 plus percent of our economic activity and maritime security as a commons the maritime domain is different from the other commons right aerospace and uh and land in that to have command of the commons of those three the other two aerospace you kind of you have to be in conflict for that to occur whereas in the maritime world man of the commons is a it's a daily responsibility right because of the importance of the economic activity so you know global shipping

enterprise and the umbrella of security that keeps that stable and takes you know kind of the whole world to help in and chip out chip in on these kind of issues is that's critical to understand that's potentially going to be moving into the arctic to what extent everyone is still studying but it's a very difficult system people just take it for granted that the maritime world is generally you know stable and well protected and criminal activity is is pretty limited in that, you know, even with piracy, it's off limits. It's not an area where criminal activities are readily acceptable. And if you do conduct criminal activities in the maritime world, there's no place for you to hide. This is not something that's tolerated anywhere in the world. So how that

works and then how it's going to work in the Arctic. We have centuries of experience and history to look at for this. So maritime security, it's something, you know, that's going to be an issue too with the united states on our freedom of navigation concerns so it's the area also that kind of needs the most robust help in that we have no real surface presence in in the arctic so underwater yeah and you know aerospace uh domain plenty of experience and presence there but clearly our biggest challenge one of our biggest challenges is we got to be there we got to have presence and we don't have that capability right now with persistence maritime security i think is just so easily you know branded as oh you know that's dealt with by international law unclosed

right you know there's no issues that can't be dealt with through international law as troy's so eloquently outlined absolutely there's so much gray zone activity that's the old school kind of grey zone theatre. So that's what Troy and I done with this article. We've said, obviously, we need to have some kind of military security forum or body or institution that can really work with all of these different dynamics at play in the Arctic and bridge the concerns, borrow from lessons from NORAD and NATO, not replicate them, because that simply won't work given the Russia factor primarily. But, you know, I guess the end point for Troy and I in this research we've got going on is what applicability can this forum in the Arctic

sense have elsewhere in other maritime kind of commons? And I'm definitely personally looking to Antarctica in a post-treaty scenario, which I think is increasingly likely every day. It would be great to have an existing kind of blueprint for a military strategic community and dialogue that's functioning that gets people who don't agree to the table. Now, both great responses, and I appreciate both of your contributions to the maritime security aspect that you've discussed. Appreciation for coming on the podcast today and discussing your article. To the listeners, highly recommend that you check out their article as it provides an alternative option to security relationships within the Arctic. I think it's an area that will be highly competitive for decades to come and is inherently maritime in nature.

Thank you for listening. Until next time, guten tag. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © transcript Emily Beynon