Europe's Arctic adventure - 'It was the Red Army that liberated the north, you know.'
Russian ships in Kirkenes harbour. Locals say they get along with the Russians, but politicians are divided on the Kremlin's intentions in the Arctic (Photo: Leigh Phillips)
LEIGH PHILLIPS
11.11.2008 @ 19:06 CET
In a four-part series, the EUobserver heads to the Arctic - the very top of Europe - and speaks to oil company executives, environmentalists, government ministers, bio-chemists, engineers, geo-politics experts and the bright young things that are heading to the region ahead of the new ‘Cold Rush' - the bonanza of resource development that is just beginning to take off in this stark, fragile region. In the third part, we speak to geo-politics experts, entrepreneurs and the Norwegian foreign minister and deputy defence minister to get to the truth behind the headlines about the 'scramble for the Arctic' and concerns about a growing militarisation of the region
EUOBSERVER / TROMSO - PART THREE - The Norwegian Barents Secretariat, a resource centre that supports Norwegian-Russian co-operation in the Barents Sea region, is keen to downplay worries about Russia in the Arctic. Atle Staalesen, a fluent Russian speaker and russophile who also advises the secretariat and edits the BarentsObserver, says the region is in fact very stable:
"Norwegian, Finnish and Russian relations here are pretty unproblematic. For European security, it's important not to isolate Russia, which is part of the European family."
"You have to remember that we view Russia very differently up here," he says. "It was the Russians who liberated Finnmark [Norway's extreme northeast province] in 1944."
Atle thinks the headlines from last August were overblown in fretting how a Russian submarine crew had planted a rust-proof titanium flag on the floor of the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,240-mile stretch of seabed that Moscow claims as theirs. He says European, Norwegian and Russian relations are very far from any war footing.
"At a recent meeting of Norwegian and Russian chief diplomats, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said: 'The further north you get, the better east-west relations get.'"
Last Tuesday (28 October), BarentsObserver described a high-level meeting between Norway, Iceland, Russia and the EU in St Petersburg "A pleasant break from war-rhetoric."
"It is not often that we find solutions on every question on the agenda where everyone agrees," Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said after the "Northern Dimension" meeting - a regional co-operation framework that until now focussed mainly on joint health and environment partnerships. The ministers at the meeting agreed to extend this co-operation to the realms of transport and logistics.
Alf Hakon Hoel, a political scientist back at the Polar Institute in Tromso, agrees that tensions between the circumpolar neighbours has been exaggerated.
"[The Russian seabed flag] has no legal weight whatsoever. It's just a show," he says, "It's not true that there is any 'race for the arctic.' It's all a very orderly and legally based process."
There have been more marine boundaries settled here than anywhere in the rest of the world, he adds. In total, there have been eight bilateral boundary issues. Three remain unresolved, between Canada and Russia, between Canada and the US, and between Norway and Russia. "And they all appear to be playing by the rules."
"There are no wars here - unlike other areas where there are ongoing boundary disputes. The last war in the Arctic was in 1938 between Finland and the USSR."
Indeed, the tale of how everyone up north is getting along just swell is repeated by the Socialist foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store. There seem to be a set of talking points that almost everyone sticks to: a) The Russians are not a threat; b) International relations in the north are actually friendlier than most other places in the world; c) There is absolutely no scramble for the Arctic.
Mr Store, who, when he sits down to speak to the EUobserver in the palatial foreign ministry after a speech to parliament on EU-Norway affairs, calls himself "a very active opponent of the analysis that there is some sort of race for the Arctic."
"Such conclusions are far too easy," he says. "We don't identify Russian only as a source of problems, but also as a source of opportunities. Norwegian objectives are not in conflict with Russian objectives in the Arctic."
The minister repeats the story about the Bolsheviks saving northern Norway from the Nazis one hears over and over again. "Relations with Russia have always been more relaxed up north. It was the Red Army that liberated northern Norway after all," he says. During a visit to the University of Tromo, Jarle Aarbakke, the rector, had said something similar about the Soviet liberation of the north as well.
However, Mr Store's colleague, deputy defense minister Espen Barth Eide, is much more frank about Norwegian anxiety about Russian designs on the Arctic and in particular the lightning expansion of military operations in the north over the last few years.
"NATO is worried about [the flag planting]," he says, adding: "There is rapidly increasing NATO interest in the high north."
He says the August conflict over South Ossetia and Abkhazia only buttressed this thinking.
"Georgia illustrates something bigger than what we've seen coming," he says. "We used to think after the Cold War, this was the end of history, with everybody moving towards a liberal market economy, but we're now seeing the return to geopolitical competition."
As a result, Norway has been circulating a paper amongst NATO members that argues for a refocus more towards the immediate vicinity of the alliance - the high north and the Baltic and Black Seas
"Norway wasn't surprised by Georgia. We predicted war would happen. The problem in NATO member states was that competence about Russia was shut down after the Cold War. They turned everyone into arabists or whatever. Meanwhile we kept [our Russian competence] alive."
"There is no conflict yet," he said, explaining that Arctic relations have so far proceeded through agreement. "On the other hand, it's just begun. You should always prepare for such developments. By doing so, you can prevent them from occurring.
"We do not want to contribute to a militarisation of issues that could better be dealt with by other means," he says, but then goes on to describe how there were more Russian military flights along the Norwegian coast "simulating attacks" in 2007 alone than from 1990 to 2000. "It's almost weekly behaviour."
At the same time, he remains quite sanguine about Russia's actions. "It's great power posturing ...it's not a preparation of anything."
Nonetheless, as Russia upgrades its Arctic-oriented forces, Norway is upgrading its high north military facilities too. Last year, there was a 2.7 percent increase to the country's defence budget, an increase "already from a pretty high level," he says.
His country also intends to launch more military exercises in the north. He says that Finland and Sweden, who are not members of the Atlantic alliance, want to participate in NATO exercises in the Arctic.
Norway has also established high level dialogue with China and Japan over the Arctic, he explains, adding that the country may soon begin joint military engagement with Tokyo focussing on Arctic concerns. "We're almost neighbours. There's just one country in-between. They are at one end of the inlet [to the Arctic Ocean] and we're at the other."
The chair of North Energy, Johan Petter Barlindhaug, also thinks the flag planting was a harbinger of things to come, but he also worries about the belligerent rhetoric of Canada's Conservative prime minister and the commercial tensions between the UK and Norway.
"Look, [Artur] Chilingarov [the Russian explorer who planted the flag on the seabed] said: 'The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass'." A few days later, Moscow sent strategic bomber flights over the Arctic Ocean for the first time since the Cold War.
Shortly afterward, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the development of a new deep-water port and cold-weather training centre for the Northwest Passage along with new Arctic navy patrol ships. Last October, he said in a speech in northern Manitoba: "As the world beats a path to our Arctic doorstep, our government is working hard to ensure Canada's ready to greet them when they arrive.
"Harper's said a number of times: 'use it or lose it'," points out Mr Barlindhaug.
"It may be that it is just rhetoric between the US and Russia, and rhetoric in the [joint commission-Council] EU document [on climate change and security], but rhetoric forms politics."
Mr Barlindhaug was referring to the a seven-page paper issued jointly by the European Commission and the EU's chief diplomat, Javier Solana, in the spring, mapping out the latest thinking from Brussels on the security implications of climate change.
The document underlined the risks and opportunities presented by the melting Arctic, alongside concerns about increased numbers of migrants, territorial disputes, water shortages in Israel and decreases in crop yields in the broader Middle East, and argued that the EU should boost its civil and military capacities to respond to "serious security risks" resulting from catastrophic climate change.
"When Canada talks about threats to national security, when the EU starts talking about security risks, when the highest Russian military command says they have to be prepared for military conflict up north - it forms politics."
"I don't think Russia is actually a serious military threat, and the EU, the US and Canada are using this as an excuse to build up military capacity, but it's in the interest of Norway that we are not up there alone."
Mr Barlindhaug says the UK is also getting pushy with Norway over taxation issues. Under the Svalbard Treaty, signed in 1920, there are no taxes on the Norwegian archipelago in the far north. "It's a kind of tax haven like Andorra - and all companies that set themselves up there have to be treated equally. There can't be preference for Norwegian companies."
However, on the Norwegian shelf, the government naturally favours domestic firms, and there is a 70 percent tax on oil and gas.
"The Brits want the regime on the shelf to be in accordance with the Svalbard Treaty," he says - in other words - low or no taxes, "and other nations are lining up behind them."
"The UK sent a memo to other embassies in Oslo saying they were prepared to provoke Norway in this zone. It's not a calm atmosphere."
In the fourth and final part of the EUobserver's look at the politics and business of the melting Arctic out on Wednesday, we listen to the worries environmentalists have about oil and gas drilling in the region, and find that cargo ships filled with soybeans are as much if not more of a threat than oil spills.
Part One - 'The new cold rush for resources'
Part Two - 'Little Murmansk'
