Russia's Arctic Expansionism: How Should the U.S. Respond?

[Free Vulcan]

With the NATO’s Warsaw summit less than a month ahead (July 8 and 9, 2016), the U.S. must formulate a long-term strategy for counteracting Russia’s Arctic military expansion that has been taking place for the last half a century. The rich but unclaimed territory of the Arctic has been an area of U.S.-Russian frictions and incidents that, in a post-Cold War period, can escalate to the level of open conflict. The polar region holds a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources, with American waters covering about 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to create jobs, revenues, and heat for more than 30 years.

It becomes more and more obvious that, in the current geopolitical situation, Putin is not going anywhere. After all, he is now in his juvenile low 60s, and he’s been around since 1999, as an on/off-off/on prime minister and president (and the charade will go on and on). On the other hand, Trump has a very good chance of becoming the next U.S. president for the following four, or possibly eight, years. Let us not forget that Putin has outlasted Clinton, at the end of his second mandate, Bush, Jr., after his two mandates, and Obama, after his two mandates. So, now we may very well prognosticate how the U.S.-Russia relationship will look like in the next, say, 10 years or so. The reason

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/russias_arctic_expansionism_how_should_the_us_respond.html#ixzz4Bl73sjc1
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Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/russias_arctic_expansionism_how_should_the_us_respond.html

[WAC]

Well given Russia's land mass 'bordering' much of the Arctic it should be no surprise they've been there for years developing and enlarging their interests in the area.....Demographics matter.

[WAC]

The Nordic countries have always had a Habit of overreacting to current events and we have bases there now. They know that Poland banged the table hard enough to get Obama to push for more Nato bases there....but it's really because the revenue flows when we have military bases in their countries.

At any rate....

Here's the New 'nuke' ice breaker for Russia to be delivered in 2017...US only has 'diesel' ice breakers and far fewer....
 Huge arctic gap between Russia and US ice breakers.... But that now looks to change in the future perhaps.



Here's an interesting layout....regarding Commerce....nations will need icebreakers to ensure that the Arctic waterways
are open year round. Russia is clearly far and away ahead of the US in capabilities.

[WAC]

Concerns are the Northern Sea Route for Commerce which would most surely cut down the time of traveling through the Suez Canal.

[WAC]

[WAC]

Update:

Just about 12 hours ago Russia floated out it's second Nuclear Ice Breaker......looks like they're on a roll now.


The Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg has floated out the hull of what will become the world’s largest and most powerful twin-reactor icebreaker. The icebreaker will have two water distillers, each capable of processing 70 tonnes of water.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnQ3-dabgu4