The transformation of Arctic security
Russia’s war in Ukraine has transformed Arctic security: Its naval and air forces may soon take center stage in militarized confrontations over energy resources.
In a nutshell
- China and Russia dominate Arctic resources, limiting access for other nations
- Russia sees the Arctic as a theater where it can effectively confront the West
- In fear of escalation, NATO is turning a blind eye to Russian threats
Russia’s catastrophic war against Ukraine is causing a fundamental shift in the security situation in the Arctic. This is important for two reasons. One is that the region has considerable commercial value. As global warming causes Arctic ice cover to recede, opportunities have emerged for the exploration of hydrocarbon reserves and for developing shorter trade routes between Europe and Asia. Those opportunities are now concentrated in the hands of Russia and China, constraining access for others.
The other and more sinister reason to look at Arctic security derives from the ongoing degradation of Russian ground forces. Along with Russia’s staggering loss of life in the Ukraine war meatgrinder, it is also exhausting its substantial Soviet-era stockpile of military hardware. Equipment on the frontlines increasingly dates to the Stalin era, and the ability of the Russian defense industry to boost the production of replacements is meager at best.
The implication is that as the relationship between Russia and NATO deteriorates, the Kremlin will need to find modes of confrontation that do not rely on ground forces. This means that naval and air forces (including drones) will take center stage. The theater where Russia can best put such forces to use is in the Arctic and in the waters just south of this region.
Russia and China have transformed the Arctic arena
The geopolitics of the Arctic has undergone quite a transformation. First there was the post-Cold War commercial optimism and the new avenues of cooperation that global warming offered by melting ice paths. Later, this turned to confrontation as Russia embarked on a militarization of the Arctic. Now, a third phase is taking shape, where the Arctic is set to be the main frontier of standoff. This confrontation will differ from those we are used to, and will be marked by smoke and mirrors.
Beyond the prospects for developing a Northern Sea Route linking China with Europe, the early phase of commercial optimism was defined by the lure of hydrocarbon exploration. According to a United States Geological Survey assessment, the Arctic holds an estimated 13 percent (90 billion barrels) of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30 percent of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources.
Given that many of these opportunities are located in Russia’s Arctic regions, it was not surprising that Moscow was first to launch an ambitious program of building nuclear-powered ice breakers and cargo ships with the proper ice-class rating. Less obvious was that Beijing would also join the game.
When Russia started its buildup, China already had one icebreaker, the Xue Long (Snow Dragon). In 2012, it made a pioneering journey along the Northern Sea Route to reach Iceland. In 2013, Beijing won membership to the Arctic Council, as an observer, and in 2014 it launched a second icebreaker, the Xue Long II, that was able to navigate even more challenging ice conditions. In July this year, it added a third, the Jidi (Polar).
It was during this Sino-Russian buildup of Arctic resources that Russia initially invaded Ukraine, seizing and annexing Crimea in 2014. In response, the West imposed sanctions that blocked Western companies from exploiting resources in the Russian Arctic. By that time, Russia had already begun its program of militarization, reopening Arctic bases from the Cold War and building up special-purpose Arctic brigades. It had also resumed, in 2007, the Cold War practice of long-range bomber patrols over the Arctic.
By the time Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its military posture in the Arctic dwarfed that of NATO. Its bases inside the Arctic Circle outnumbered NATO’s by about a third, and in September 2022, China and Russia held a joint naval exercise in the Bering Sea to demonstrate Beijing’s growing presence in the region.
A telltale sign of how Arctic security is now also connected to Baltic security, and of how the Sino-Russian link is becoming more prominent, was provided in October 2023, when a Chinese vessel was blamed for sabotaging an undersea gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia. Beijing has recently admitted that its vessel was indeed at fault, claiming it was an accident. Moscow has made no such admission in any of the prior incidents it has been blamed for instigating.
Facts & figures
Arctic advantages and vulnerabilities
Given the substantial degradation of Russia’s military capabilities, the onward trajectory of its confrontation with NATO will be asymmetric. While in some cases it will have to play a clearly inferior hand, in others it will have trumps. Throughout, it will involve brinkmanship, based on a firm belief in Western self-deterrence.
Russian weaknesses: Hard security and natural gas
The most obvious case of Russian inferiority is in hard security. Its prior role as a major Arctic power was linked to its military presence on and around the Kola Peninsula, which is home to the Northern Fleet and its strategic nuclear submarines. Those assets are now under serious threat. While the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO raises the specter of a ground invasion and/or a missile and artillery barrage to neutralize the basing areas, the war in Ukraine has decimated the Russian Arctic brigades.
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A joint Nordic Air Command adds the prospect of regional NATO air superiority, and recent experience has shown that Russian bases around Murmansk are within reach of Ukrainian drones, which will soon be replaced by Ukrainian long-range cruise missiles. Given the paramount importance of the strategic missile boats to Russian nuclear deterrence, these are serious threats indeed.
A somewhat less obvious but still important area of Russian inferiority concerns the remnants of its exports of natural gas, meaning liquefied natural gas (LNG) from fields on the Yamal Peninsula. Although Russian LNG exports to Europe (still) incur no penalties, sanctions against shipping have forced Russia to rely on a “shadow fleet” of decrepit old tankers with shady owners and zero insurance. If NATO blocks that practice, it will mean the end of Russian LNG to Europe. Seeking to preempt this possibility, Russia may raise the stakes, assigning naval assets from the Baltic and Northern Fleets to provide armed escort.
One area where it is unclear who has the upper hand concerns close encounters in the air. In contrast to its ground forces, much of the Russian air force is still intact. Assets of strategic and tactical aviation have engaged in increasingly aggressive behavior, ranging from operating near civilian air traffic with transponders turned off to airspace violations and close encounters with NATO jets in the air. The obvious ambition is to push the limits, making NATO look too weak to respond.
Russian strengths: Fisheries and sabotage
In contrast, an area where Russia retains the upper hand is in its relations with Norway, which is the only European country that still allows Russian ships into its harbors. The reason is the core importance of their jointly owned fisheries in the north. If Norway were to suspend all relations it is likely that Russia would retaliate by destroying their common fish stocks. Norway is also faced with a challenge to the Svalbard archipelago, situated halfway between the North Pole and the Norwegian mainland. While the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920 gave Norway sovereignty over Svalbard, it is obligated to allow other nations to conduct non-military activities there. Given its strategic location, there is concern of clandestine Russian militarization. Russian trawlers have already cut underwater cables from Svalbard to the mainland – with impunity.
Russia also has an unquestionable advantage in the realm of sabotage against vital European infrastructure. This is where the Kremlin can make the most out of its core asset – Western insistence on playing by rules that Moscow treats with contempt. This gives Russia the option of committing the most egregious acts, in broad daylight, and responding to accusations with flat denials.
While there has been mounting concern over recent attacks against vital military production facilities in several NATO countries, and over anonymous drones making passes over strategic installations, the main threat scenarios are in the air and on the seabed.
Vessels belonging to the Russian shadow fleet are being allowed to pass through the sensitive Baltic Sea. Although Sweden and Denmark express legitimate concern about the risk of enormous environmental damage, and although they have lobbied for NATO to take action, nothing is happening. Fear of escalation causes the alliance to look away.
Special-purpose Russian vessels have long been observed conducting surveillance and mapping of the extensive European underwater infrastructure, ranging from pipelines and fiber optic cables to the offshore wind farms that are to provide a major share of European electricity. Again, fear of escalation allows the Russian vessels to continue their activities unimpeded.
The Russian practice of jamming GPS signals over the Baltic causes serious disturbance in civilian air traffic, and may yet lead to fatal accidents. Western governments have not even been willing to call a spade a spade, far less to retaliate.
Scenarios
Given the diverse nature of these threats, the outlook for Arctic and Baltic security is inevitably messy. It will have elements of traditional hard power, such as NATO mobilizing naval and air assets to counter Russian aggression, but this will be a sideshow. Given that NATO would inevitably defeat Russia in a shooting war, the outlook will revolve around brinkmanship.
As the Kremlin is bound to make up for its humiliation in Ukraine by ratcheting up its provocations against the West, it is possible to envision two very different scenarios: one where NATO decides to play tit-for-tat and another where it persists in looking the other way.
Unlikely: NATO steps up
The former is as easy to sketch out as it is unlikely to materialize. NATO could respond to Russian jamming by commencing a similar attack of its own against the Kaliningrad exclave, where Russia’s main electronic interference system has been located. It could respond to the threat against underwater infrastructure by clandestinely disabling one or several of the ships involved. It could respond to the threat from the shadow fleet by impounding one or several of the vessels, pending investigation of ownership. It could refuse Russian landing rights on Svalbard and shut down water and electricity to Russian installations on the island.
Above all, it could start playing hardball by simply shooting down one or several Russian jets engaged in military provocations. It could recall the incident in November 2015, when a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M attack aircraft that violated its airspace, without any consequences beyond bluster. A real clincher could be to threaten delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Given that any threat from Ukraine is credible indeed, NATO would only need to hint that it was going to allow those missiles to be used in strikes against the basing areas of the Russian Northern Fleet.
Given mounting evidence from the war in Ukraine that Russia advances when it senses weakness and backs off when it faces strength, even some of these measures would likely have a healthy effect in de-escalating tensions.
One reason why the above is unlikely to happen is the laudable refusal to start playing the game according to Russian rules, and another is the less laudable one of fearing escalation.
Most likely: Russia escalates
The most likely outcome is that Russian provocations will escalate, bringing mounting threats to civilian airliners, a risk of wide-scale environmental damage in the Baltic Sea, accelerating sabotage actions against underwater infrastructure, more mid-air confrontations between Russian and NATO aircraft and possibly even confrontations between Russian strategic missile boats and American fast-attack submarines.
The main problem with this scenario is that the longer NATO allows its credibility to erode by not responding, the harder it will become to eventually stand up for its principles.
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