Border Strife Heating Up Arctic

[unhappycamper]

Border Strife Heating Up Arctic
Military.com | By Christian Lowe | November 21, 2007

It's probably one of the coldest places on Earth, but over the past year, international tensions there are heating up. And if you think Iraq and Afghanistan are where all the action is these days, think again.

With the cracking ice and warming atmosphere, strategic efforts are intensifying over land and sea rights in the northern Arctic, with Canada and Russia elbowing in on waters that had previously been locked in an icy grip.

That's led the Coast Guard to rethink its strategy in northern Alaska, pushing them to the outer edges of civilization to keep a watchful eye on the growing traffic of commercial and military ships plying the Arctic Circle.

"We see mounting evidence of much more commercial marine traffic in the Arctic because of the ice cap coming down later and leaving sooner with more of the Arctic open to normal navigation," said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Arthur Brooks, commander of the 17th Coast Guard district and the Joint Forces Component Commander for maritime forces in Alaska.

"My own impression right now ... is that I'm not prepared to respond to a major vessel casualty or some large problem if it were to occur off the north slope," Brooks said in a Nov. 15 interview with Military.com.

And it's not just increased shipping traffic Brooks is worried about. This summer, Russia planted a flag on the sea floor near the North Pole, calling the area sovereign territory and staking a claim to turf that had once been locked under year-round polar ice. Brooks added that Canada has increased its fleet of ships with ice-hardened hulls and intends to claim the Northwest Passage - which is increasingly ice-free - as its territorial waters. That claim is counter to the United States' view that the Passage is international seaspace.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,156722,00.html

[mrfixit]

1. Canada...intends to claim the Northwest Passage...

Considering that the Northwest Passage is ALREADY part of Canada (and ALWAYS HAS BEEN), ratified in International Boundary Agreements, I somehow doubt that this is some kind of new and implied threat...