It is not perhaps coincidental that the 19 May meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took place in Reykjavik on the occasion of the meeting of the Arctic Council, an eight-country [Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, United States] grouping formed in 1996 to further cooperation on the Arctic region. In his opening remarks, Secretary Blinken listed “Arctic issues” along with arms control and climate as items for discussion.
This is a welcome development, for, truth be told, the United States is playing catch-up in the Arctic—which is critical by dint of strategic location, natural resource assets [by some estimates more than $30 trillion in untapped gas and oil reserves], and concern over melting polar ice cap due to warming global climate. Russia—and, more recently, China—have taken the lead in Arctic exploration. Russia’s LNG2 plant has been built for extraction of liquefied natural gas, and Russian gas giant Rosneft, with Chinese investment, has brought another facility, Rospan, on line. To balance the equation, Russia has also led the way in funding research on the impact of climate change in the Arctic. One of the presumed positive effects is the opening of a new Northern sea route—Russian icebreakers plow Arctic waters, and China is keenly interested in future development of a “northern silk road” trade route that would cut by about a half the distance from China to Europe via the Suez Canal.
The catching up includes relations with other member nations of the Arctic Council. For instance, in 2006 I met in Reykjavik with the then President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. The meeting took place just after the United States had summarily closed its Naval Air Station Keflavik, clearly to the surprise and chagrin of the Icelandic government [our interests post-9/11 having moved south]. Since then, it seems that our interest in the region has been reactive rather than proactive. We have been critical of Russian military buildup in the Arctic, for example, but otherwise there is little attention to it [as opposed to regular coverage in the Russian media.] In this regard, it is notable that 53% of the Arctic coastline is Russian, and two million inhabitants [50%] of the region are Russian, so Russia does have a special investment.
Now, our interest is piqued. Secretary Blinken was one of the signatories of this week’s 2021 Joint Declaration to “promote responsible governance in the [Arctic] region”. Recalling that the founding Ottawa Declaration of 1996 stipulated that the Arctic Council shall “not deal with matters related to national security”, let us hope that our new engagement does not just become another exercise in questioning Russian interests.