Explanation of advantages— Science Diplomacy

2. Russia intends to use military force – a credible counterbalance averts resource war

Howard 10

Roger Howard, Author, journalist and analyst writing on international relations and intelligence issues. His books include 'Operation Damocles: Israel's Secret War Against Hitler's Scientists' (2013), 'The Arctic Gold Rush' (2009),'The Oil Hunters' (2008), 'Iran Oil' (2006) and 'Iran in Crisis?'(2004). He has written for organisations such as Chatham House, RUSI, Jane's and IISS, 7/1/10, (“The Arctic Gold Rush: The New Race for Tomorrow's Natural Resources (2010)”)//AW

In December 2008, the Kremlin also published the draft text of a new national security document that seemed to confirm the worst fears of many people. In one passage on the future of the world's energy resources, the draft text points out that:

International policy will focus on the access to the energy sources of the world, including the Middle East, Barents Sea, the Arctic Region, Caspian Sea and Central Asia. The struggle for the hydrocarbon resources can be developed to the military confrontation as well, which can result with violation of balance on the Russia’s borders with the allies and increasing of the nuclear countries.

Did the Kremlin mean that other countries might want to use military force to seize energy reserves and that Russia should be prepared for such an eventuality? Or were the Russians saying that they might be taking such an aggressive approach themselves? For some people such an eventuality seemed all the more likely when, three months later, Moscow announced plans to create army units in its Arctic territories that would ‘guarantee military security in different military-political situations‘. The formation of this new military force was incorporated in a new strategy document that declared the Arctic to be Russia’s most important arena for ‘international and military security’ in its relations with other countries. The document also called for the creation of a new intelligence network to provide ‘effective control of economic, military, and (ecological) activity’ in the region. 13 The ‘freezing temperature’ units would have special ammunition, weaponry and transport and be readily deployable across the vast region. There are several different ways in which a ‘resource war in the region could conceivably break out. The most extreme, and far-fetched, is simply when one country invades territory that indisputably belongs to another under international law, usually searching for an excuse under the terms of the United Nations Charter to justify its act of aggression. 14 So if, in the future, a country enjoys overwhelming military superiority over its rival, whose natural resources it is perhaps desperate to seize, then it is plausible to argue that the Arctic could perhaps be the setting for this form of ‘resource war’. Fortunately, wars rarely break out in this way for the simple reason that very few would-be aggressors have enjoyed the military superiority to start them. It is much more usual for countries to work together and counterbalance the overwhelming power of another state. As one eminent commentator has written is necessary to ‘acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and great-power expansion has become largely obsolete.’ Instead, warfare has in many cases ‘truly become an option of last resort’.15 What is much more likely is that one country could use military force to seize disputed territory, or rather disputed territory whose precise legal status is unresolved. It is in this category that whole swathes of the Arctic region fall, in several quite distinct ways. First, there are some areas where the claims of rival countries overlap, such as in the Beaufort and Barents Seas, or in a small section of territory, lying close to the North Pole, that Russia, Denmark and Canada could all claim as part of their respective continental shelves. 16 Second, there are other regions that only one country can claim but which, if its legal efforts fail, would then make a tempting target for another state. For example, Canada is trying to prove that its continental shelf extends beyond its 200-mile economic zone, but if it fails to provide enough evidence then another state, such as Russia or the United States, could conceivably send warships and icebreakers to claim any section of these waters for itself. Third, there are areas that are claimed only by one country, which could use military force when its legal and geological efforts are thwarted. If Russia should fail to demonstrate that its continental shelf extends as far north as the mission of Chilingarov and Sagalevich was designed to prove, then it could conceivably disregard international law, declare that the region forms part of its own territory and threaten to use force to back-up its claim. Finally, a government could employ military force to assert its claims over an area that can otherwise only be ‘no man's land’, or what the 1982 Convention simply refers to as ‘the Area’ that lies ‘beyond the limits of national jurisdiction’. There is one unclaimed stretch of Arctic seabed that lies beyond the theoretical maximum limits of the outer continental shelves of each of the ‘Arctic Five’. It will therefore be administered as ‘the common heritage of mankind‘ by an intergovernmental organization, the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority, which the Convention specifically established to undertake this task.