Military Assets in the Arctic: A Russia-West Correlation of Forces
January 22, 2020
Mathieu Boulegue
For now, the risk of a standoff between Russia and NATO in the Arctic remains low. However, should military tension increase in the region, naval assets and overall military deployments would largely play in Moscow’s favor in the European Arctic and in Washington’s in the Pacific Arctic.1 In the European theatre NATO members and their partners Sweden and Finland have limited Arctic-capable military forces present and reinforcements would take a long time to arrive from the other side of the North Atlantic. Naval assets on both sides are generally ill-fitted for genuine ice conditions, which limits the scope and the nature of operations in the region. Moreover, the Kremlin would likely seek to remove military tension from European Arctic waters as quickly as possible toward the North Atlantic, which would increase pressure on NATO to defend the North Atlantic sea line of communication (SLOC) and ensure access to the Baltic Sea.
With climate change making the Arctic navigable for more weeks of the year, and with Russia-West relations remaining tense, the region is no longer an exceptional area of cooperation insulated from wider security issues. As a result, the eight coastal Arctic nations—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S.—will increasingly have to enforce military security alongside the enduring spirit of soft-security cooperation. As military “rules of the game†in the Arctic have not yet been properly defined, this situation holds the risk that miscalculation and tactical errors could escalate dangerously. Creating a military code of conduct for the Arctic, and including Russia, would be a way forward, especially because keeping the Arctic as a “low-tension†environment still is in the interest of Arctic nations. Meanwhile, NATO, Sweden and Finland can do a lot to wake up to the Arctic as a potential area of operation and catch up to recent Russian military deployments.
https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/military-assets-arctic-russia-west-correlation-forces
