The Next “Cold” War?

Havi Mirell





Four kilometers under the Arctic Sea, a new “Cold War” is slowly unfolding. Beginning in August 2007, when a Russian minisubmarine expedition called Arktika 2007 symbolically planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed, the Arctic land grab has become a major battle between Russia and other Arctic circumpolar countries, namely Canada, the United States, Greenland (an autonomous Danish dependency) and Norway.

Reactions to Russia’s 2007 flag stunt were vitriolic: “This isn’t the 15th century. You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say, ‘We’re claiming this territory’” fumed then Canadian minister of foreign affairs Peter MacKay. But why the sudden interest in the Arctic?

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, up to 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 million barrels of natural gas liquids could be located in the Arctic. These figures, if accurate, they represent approximately 25 percent of current global oil reserves. And with geoscientists’ warnings about melting ice caps and the possibility of an ice-free Arctic in the summer, the Arctic could emerge as a key global transport hub in upcoming decades.

Anticipating international territorial conflict, the Russian Geographical Society held a two-day International Arctic Forum under the motto “The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue” on the 22nd and 23rd of September, 2010. More than 300 participants representing 15 countries attended the Moscow Forum to discuss the effects of climate change and anthropogenic activity, the supply of natural resources, and the challenges and prospects of sustainable development in the region.

Despite the forum’s emphasis on open dialogue and negotiated settlements (including Prime Minister Putin’s call for the region to be “a zone of peace and cooperation”) , a race for the Arctic is still on. A team of Russian scientists recently began a year-long expedition on an ice floe in the high arctic, their main objective to determine the extent of the Russian continental shelf. The Russians are planning to spend approximately $64 million on such arctic research in the next three years.

In response to Russia’s ongoing expeditions, the U.S. and Canada have agreed to put aside their conflict over navigation rights off the Canadian coast to stand up against Russia. In fact, NATO (of which the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands and Norway are all members) recently claimed a role in the Arctic when Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced at a seminar in Reykjavik, Iceland in January 2009 that “Clearly, the High North is a region that is of strategic interest to the Alliance.” Since the seminar, NATO has conducted several fictitious war games focusing on the Arctic region, such as “Cold Response 2010.” Additionally, Canada hosted its largest security drill in the Arctic, Operation Nanoon, in August 2010, in which the U.S. and Denmark took part.

Under intense scrutiny are the Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges, two extensive undersea mountain chains stretching across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Ellesmere Island and from Greenland to the central Arctic Ocean respectively.





Russia claims that the ridges are an extension of the Eurasian continent, while the Canadians and Danish insist that they are natural extensions of the North American continent.

What prevents the territorial conflict in the Arctic from becoming the next Cold War? Thus far, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has kept competing nations at bay. This convention, signed in 1982, established as a diplomatic framework for solving questions concerning navigation, archipelagic status and transit regimes, exclusive economic zones, continental shelf jurisdiction, deep seabed mining, the exploitation regime and more,. Under UNCLOS, coastal states are given the rights to “exploit, develop, manage and conserve all resources…to be found in the waters, on the ocean floor and in the subsoil of an area extending 200 nautical miles from its shore.” Thus, the establishment of exclusive economic zones (EEZ) creates an incentive for countries to claim offshore islets and even underwater mountain ranges. Furthermore, countries with continental shelves longer than 200 nautical miles can petition the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to gain the rights to exploit their shelf beyond the limit of their formal EEZs. This provision is at the heart of the Arctic dispute: what is the limit of Russia’s continental shelf?

Also limiting overt conflict is the Ilulissat Declaration, signed in May 2008 by the five circumpolar nations during the Arctic Ocean Conference. One of the central goals of the Declaration was the blockage of any “new comprehensive international legal regime to govern the Arctic Ocean.” Signatory countries also pledged to respect the “orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims.”

Yet, if the Russians manage to convince the CLCS that the Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges are extensions of the Eurasian continent, they will have claim to the non-living resources of the “seabed and subsoil,” including petroleum. If the Russian claim is legitimated, secondary issues will emerge, including fishery management, environmental regulation, and control over trade route access. Success with the CLCS would expand Russia’s effective economic territory by 1.2 million square kilometers and would allow for the development of huge oil and gas fields in the triangle between Chukotka Peninsula, Murmansk and the North Pole.

The Russian government made a previous submission to the CLCS in 2001, which was rejected because of insufficient scientific evidence. However, with the recent surge in scientific exploration funds, the adjusted Russian claim, expected by 2013, has a much better chance of success. If Russia does gain access to much of the Arctic seabed, its clout in global energy markets could be significantly enhanced.

Trouble with White Russians

Last fall, while traveling from Warsaw to Brest, I had to make a prolonged stop at the Polish-Belorussian border, where I was given an entry form in Cyrillic and forced to wait as the train wheels were changed to accommodate the Soviet-era gauges still used in Belarus. As I waited, I looked from the entry form to the customs tally and it dawned on me how isolated Belarus remains nearly twenty years after its independence. The Belorussians preserve mementos of a bygone era on their trains and in virtually every other aspect of their lives. Belarus still celebrates the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, something even the Russians have forsaken. Soviet symbols are everywhere – some shockingly recent – and the state-run newspaper is still called Sovietskaya Belorussiya. In a country that maintains the highest number of police per capita in Europe, the state intelligence bureau still chillingly retains its Communist moniker, the KGB. (Time)

On December 19th, the citizens of what has been dubbed “Europe’s last dictatorship” will go to the polling booths and choose their next president: Alexander Lukashenko or Alexander Lukashenko. With a stable economy and disorganized opposition, it is certain that Lukashenko will win his fourth term in office.

Lukashenko, a former military officer whose self-professed idol is Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, first came to power in 1994 in an election widely considered free and fair. His law-and-order stance was widely popular in Belarus, then witnessing post-independent disenchantment and nostalgia for the certitudes of the Soviet Union. In a run-off, Lukashenko won eighty percent of the vote – an overwhelming mandate that enabled him to slowly dismantle the democratic system that put him in power.

Once Lukashenko was in office, the brief economic reforms the Belarusians enjoyed in the early 90s were replaced by a Soviet-style planned economy. Although Lukashenko’s personality cult is negligible compared to that of former Turmen dictator Saparmurat Niyazov (“Turkmenbashi”), it is still illegal in Belarus to criticize him. Lukashenko, moreover, won a referendum in 2004 that would allow him – and only him – to run for unlimited number of presidential terms. In this half-Kafkaesque, half-Orwellian state, the Orthodox Church pledges allegiance to Lukashenko as well as Moscow patriarchy and the president appoints everyone from ministers to village store managers. Over the past few years, many opposition leaders and journalists have “committed suicide” under mysterious circumstances, or simply disappeared.

Mr. Lukashenko has been a devoted Russophile; as a Belorussian apparatchik, he was the only deputy to vote against the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the Belorussian Soviet. He later entertained a vision for a pan-Slavonic state encompassing not only Belarus and Russia but extending from the Adriatic to the Bering Strait -- and with himself as president. During the Balkan wars in the late 90s, he suggested that Yugoslavia join the Union State, a loose confederation between Russia and Belarus.

Because of these credentials, Lukashenko enjoyed immense popularity in Russia in the 1990s. He unsuccessfully maneuvered for the top position at the Kremlin as the former Russian President Boris Yeltsin floundered. Although far-right elements in Russia perennially consider Lukashenko as a potential presidential candidate, he seems an anachronistic caricature in Putin’s Russia. With his ambition hampered, Lukashenko came to view the subsequent occupants of the Kremlin as adversaries, even though Belarus increasingly depends on Russia for much of its trade.

Vladimir Putin might be the main reason Mr. Lukashenko seems to be slowly turning against Moscow. In 2009, the Belarussian government ignored a Russian gas price increase and underpaid the bill; when Russian cut gas supplies to Belarus, Lukashenko countered by a cut of his own, preventing transit shipments of Russian gas to the EU. Other signs as well indicate that Moscow is slowly losing control of its protégée: Lukashenko refused to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and also offered shelter to Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the deposed leader of Kyrgyzstan, a figure loathed by Moscow. Lukashenko delayed a customs union among Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, an agreement much wanted by Russia, and threatened to deny Russia a lucrative contract to build the first nuclear power plant in Belarus.

In October 2010, on his video blog, President Dmitri Medvedev spoke out on the issue: “The Belarusian leadership has always been characterized by a desire to create an external enemy image in the public consciousness. The United States, Europe, and the Western countries acted as such 'enemies' earlier. Now Russia is declared the enemy." Moscow also fought back by banning Belarusian exports, and then by hypocritically denouncing the lack of media-freedom and democracy in Belarus. The upcoming presidential elections may provide Russia’s biggest weapon: its state-controlled media has been airing documentaries critical of Alexander Lukashenko, and it has been speculated that Moscow might fund Andrei Sannikov, a Belarussian opposition leader skeptical of the West.

The elections also come at a crucial time for the international community, which recently abandoned its isolationism towards Belarus. When Russia cancelled its $500 million aid to Belarus in 2009 , the IMF stepped in with an additional $1 billion loan. Later that year, Belarus was included in the EU's Eastern Partnership Initiative, aimed at strengthening economic and political ties between Europe and six former Soviet states. Lukashenko's travel ban to Europe was also lifted. In return, Lukashenko released a large group of political prisoners.

For the last fifteen years, Belarus served as a Russian buffer state; Russia maintains electronic warning stations and radar systems in the country, as well as a nuclear submarine control center. Russia would benefit from a friendly leader in Belarus, and thus previously supported Lukashenko, despite allegations by the West that he engaged in vote rigging in the last presidential elections in 2006.

In the coming election, however, Russia may be forced to make the unpalatable choice between Lukashenko and any of his less mercurial but also less-Russophilic opponents. It is likely that Russia may merely threaten Mr. Lukashenko rather than actually transfer their support. Although it is unlikely, it would also be a bold personal move for Mr. Medvedev to refuse to recognize the election results. But the Russian leadership has always considered Belarus to be in its own backyard, and it will do everything to prevent any unfavorable outcomes there, even if it means creating yet another volatile political situation in the region.