I'd like to thank the members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to come before you to discuss one of the critical elements of Canadian security.
I would begin by pointing out that there is a tendency to view the Arctic as somehow a separate, peaceful component that does not have a bearing on overall Canadian security. This is completely wrong. The Arctic is as much a part of Canadian security as one can imagine any other component is, and for that matter the geopolitics of the Arctic have always been there. I remind the committee members that the reason the Americans in all probability got to buy Alaska from the Russians had everything to do with the first Crimean War, which is something that we often forget, to our peril.
What does the committee need to aware of in the changing elements of geopolitics of the north? We have the rhetoric of co-operation and, indeed, from the period of the end of the Cold War to the current period, we have seen tremendous co-operation between the Arctic states. Canada, the United States, and Norway spent billions helping the Russians decommission the preceding Soviet nuclear-powered submarine fleet, first through the AMEC program and subsequently through the G-8 program. There was significant co-operation in that period, and it will be remembered as a golden era.
We are now seeing at least three major geopolitical trends that are integrating Arctic security interests into all the larger interests. What are these three trends?
The first, and the one that most people pay the most attention to, is the development of new resources and resource opportunities in the Arctic. With the recognition of the impacts of climate change, people become aware that the Arctic does offer things such as transportation routes for cruise ships of a very large size. This is only one that people put at the forefront.
The second major component that has changed is the interest of other states in the Arctic. Back in 1998, anyone who suggested that China would be interested in the Arctic would have been laughed out of the room. The idea of the Arctic and China just simply wasn't going to be corrected. In 1999 we had the first visit of a Chinese vessel into Canadian waters when the Xue Long visited at Tuktoyaktuk. This has continued on a steady progression. The Saudis are also very interested in the Arctic. They have said openly that part of their rationale for allowing oil prices to collapse was to drive out both the shale producers and the Arctic producers. In other words, it's the outside interests.
But the biggest factor that I would bring to the attention of the committee that you have to bring forward into your considerations is the fact that there is a growing strategic imperative on both the part of Russia and the United States that is increasingly going to conflict. That will ultimately spill into the Arctic. Let me be clear. It is not about fighting over the extended continental shelf, fighting over diamond mines or oil or gas resources; it's about the necessity of both Russia and the United States pursuing core strategic requirements that will require us to be very cognizant of what is happening in this context.
What are some of these major factors?
First and foremost for Russia is the maintenance of nuclear stability or what we in the west refer to as “nuclear deterrence”. We tend to be focused on the realities of dealing with insurgencies and other aspects of conflict in Afghanistan and Syria and elsewhere. But the Russians have never wavered, from Yeltsin onward, that their core strategic requirement is nuclear stability. To maintain nuclear stability, they have put most of their funds in the rebuilding of the northern fleet. We have seen that they've had major failures in being able to do so, but they have stayed the course in rebuilding their nuclear missiles, nuclear-powered subs, and their attack subs, and are now in a very vigorous phase of rebuilding these forces. This also ties into why we have seen the Russians also rearming many of their northern bases. Publicly, they state that they are doing this in the context of an opening northern sea route, and that is part of the answer. But the other part is to provide protection of their northern fleet as part of their nuclear stability.
The second component of what the Russians have always told us they see as a major threat--and this is in all their documentation--is the expansion of NATO.
How does that spill over into the Arctic?
Yesterday, it was announced that, for the first time since polls have been maintained, a majority of Swedes are now in favour of joining NATO. One of the core issues that Canada will be facing is that if the two Arctic neutrals, Sweden and Finland, decide to join NATO—and there are growing indications, at least in the open literature, that they are moving towards this procedure—then we could see a major change in how the geopolitics of the Arctic will then transpire.
The third element we see within the American context is, of course, the interaction with the American ballistic missile defence system. Let's move to the Americans, for a moment, and see how this spills into the Arctic.
Two of their major elements have direct ramifications, as Dr. Fergusson has already made clear. A major element of the ABM system is their base in Fort Greely, Alaska. They currently have 26 interceptors. They're putting in another 14. This is where they have the bulk. Of course, they are looking to place them elsewhere. Now, this is not about defending the Arctic; this is about defending a North Korean launch, but the Russians, according to the literature, are starting to see it as something different.
The second factor for the Americans is their acceptance of an expansion of NATO. They were the ones who were pushing for an expansion of Georgia, which, of course, had ramifications in the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, and we suspect that the Americans are in favour of the Finns and the Swedes joining NATO. We see these factors all coming together.
Where does that leave Canada?
With regard to the two major defence alliances we have had, Dr. Fergusson has already very capably laid out the issue in terms of ABM and what it means for NORAD.
For Canada, the major security ramifications we have for NATO are coming up very quickly. Should Sweden and/or Finland ask to join NATO, we as a member will be participating in that decision. That will have ramifications. If we say no, we run the risk of encouraging Russian aggressive behaviour. If we say yes, there will be ramifications for us with regard to the type of co-operation that we have been able to build in other forums, such as the Arctic Council. There are real decisions; we can't sit on the sideline in this particular context.
What happens in the future with regard to our considerations for Arctic security?
First and foremost, it is not about who owns the North Pole or who gets to say where the continental shelf goes. These are all important issues from a foreign policy perspective, but they are not the core issues from a security perspective.
Rather, what is happening is that the Arctic will increasingly be one of the central geopolitical realities of the international system. Russia and the United States have core security issues. We can expect that China will increasingly start to have core strategic interests. We saw for the first time last September a Chinese naval task force coming into the Aleutian Islands. We've never seen that before.
The question for Canada, and the question that you have to face, looking into both the short term and medium term, is how does Canada then allocate the resources necessary to ensure that our northern security—not sovereignty, but security—is properly protected, given the fact that the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese, regardless of how nice we may wish to think things are, will actually be seeing the area.
Thank you very much.