Explanation of advantages— Science Diplomacy

Extension: Icebreakers Solve

The aff solves – it doesn’t trigger the perception of containment but sends a clear signal that forces Russia to cooperate and limit military expansion

Dowd 11 – Alan Dowd, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute and Senior Editor of Fraser Insight, adjunct professor at Butler University, founding member of the Sagamore Institute leadership team, former director of Hudson Institute’s corporate headquarters, B.A. with departmental high honors from Butler University and an M.A. from Indiana University, 2011 (“The Big Chill: Energy Needs Fueling Tensions in the Arctic,” appeared in American Legion Magazine, available from the Fraser Institute, December 1^st, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=2147483979 | ADM)

One reason a military presence will be necessary is the possibility of accidents caused by drilling and shipping. In addition, competition for Arctic resources could lead to confrontation. Adm. James Stavridis, who serves as NATO’s military commander, concedes that the Arctic could become “a zone of conflict” (UPI).

To brace for that possibility and thwart Russia’s Arctic fait accompli, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway—all NATO members and Arctic nations—should follow the Cold War playbook: build up the assets needed to defend their interests, use those assets to deter aggression, and deal with Moscow from a posture of strength and unity.

The challenge is to remain open to cooperation while bracing for worst-case scenarios. After all, Russia is not the Soviet Union. Even as Putin and his puppets make mischief, Moscow is open to making deals. Russia and Norway, for instance, recently resolved a long-running boundary dispute, paving the way for development in 67,000 square-miles of the Arctic. Moreover, the U.S., Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway have agreed on Arctic search-and-rescue responsibilities (Cummins).

In a world of increasingly integrated markets, we know there is much to gain from Arctic cooperation and much to lose from protracted military standoff. But we also know that dealing naively with Moscow carries a heavy cost—and that integration is a two-way street.

“Russian leaders today yearn not for integration,” the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan concludes, “but for a return to a special Russian greatness.”

In short, Russia is more interested in recreating the autarky of some bygone era than in the shared benefits of globalization.

Framework for Partnership

Dealing with Russia is about power. As Churchill once said of his Russian counterparts, “There is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness.”

When the message is clear—or “hard and consistent,” to use Putin’s language—Russia will take a cooperative posture. When the message is unclear, Russia will take what it can get.

Just consider Russia’s contrasting treatment of its neighbors: Moscow blusters about Poland and the Baltic states but keeps its hands off, largely because they are protected by the U.S.-NATO umbrella. Conversely, Russia bullies Ukraine, garrisons its troops—uninvited—in Moldova, and occupies Georgian territory. The common denominator of these unfortunate countries: They have no U.S. security guarantee.

Russia should be given an opportunity to participate as a responsible partner in Arctic development. But if Russia continues to take Putin’s hard line, the U.S. and its allies are left with few other options than standing together or allowing Russia to divide and conquer.

To avoid that, the allies may need to agree among themselves on lines of demarcation, transit routes and exploration rights—and then pool their resources to protect their shared interests.

This will require investment in Arctic capabilities. For instance, the U.S. has only three polar icebreakers, two of which have exceeded their projected 30-year lifespan (O’Rourke). Russia can deploy 20 icebreakers.

“We have extremely limited Arctic response capabilities,” explains Adm. Robert Papp, USCG commandant. Noting that the Coast Guard has “the lead role in ensuring Arctic maritime safety, security and stewardship,” Papp urges Congress “to start building infrastructure up there” (Joling and Papp).

Washington’s defense cuts will only exacerbate these gaps, especially as Russia’s oil-aided boom enables it to retool its armed forces. Investing just 1.1 percent of its GDP on defense, Canada faces even greater challenges in defending its Arctic interests.

But if the allies can combine their Arctic capabilities—each filling a niche role—and agree on a common approach to Arctic security, the framework to put those capabilities into practice is arguably already in place.

Jointly operated by the U.S. and Canada, NORAD could serve as the model for an Arctic security partnership. Just as NORAD defends North American airspace, an allied maritime arrangement under the NORAD rubric could provide for security in Arctic waters.

It’s worth noting that maritime surveillance was added to NORAD’s responsibilities in 2006. And in 2011, the Pentagon shifted responsibility for most Arctic operations to Northern Command (NORTHCOM), headed up by the same person who commands NORAD (Elliot).

Preparing

Bracing for military eventualities in the Arctic is not armchair alarmism.

In fact, Gen. Gene Renuart, former NORTHCOM commander, reported in 2008 that U.S. officials were beginning to explore ways to “posture NORAD…to provide the right kind of search and rescue, military response, if need be, and certainly security for whatever activities occur in the Arctic.”

“In order to ensure a peaceful opening of the Arctic,” adds Adm. James Winnefeld, current NORTHCOM commander, “DOD must anticipate today the Arctic operations that will be expected of it tomorrow.”

In other words, the goal in preparing for worst-case scenarios and shoring up allied resolve in the Arctic is not to trigger a military confrontation, but to prevent one.

Icebreakers effectively prevent conflict – they maximize US leadership and facilitate improved relations in the Arctic

Kraska 10 – James Kraska, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Mary Derrickson McCurdy Visiting Research Scholar at Duke University Marine Laboratory, former U.S. Navy commander serving as the Howard S. Levie Chair of Operational Law at the U.S. Naval War College, Doctor of Juridical Science from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Indiana University, 2010 (“Northern Exposures,” The American Interest, May 1^st, http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2010/5/1/northern-exposures/ | ADM)

Russia has more icebreakers than any nation on earth. Three more heavy, nuclear-power ships will join the fleet by 2016 if current plans mature. These powerful ships can operate along the northern coast throughout the entire year. A variety of planned ice-strengthened service vessels will see to offshore port service and search-and-rescue operations. Similarly, if the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard expect to reliably operate in the Arctic, the Coast Guard’s dwindling handful of aging icebreakers must be recapitalized right now, since vessels are acquired on very long procurement cycles.

Homeland Security: As U.S. near-shore or offshore oil and gas activity in the region increases, the Coast Guard will be spread dangerously thin. The world’s largest coal deposit lies inland along the northwest coast of Alaska. The world’s largest zinc mine is located at Red Dog, near the Chukchi Sea, and its products are carried by sea. Thus, economic development in the Arctic, even on land, is bound up with the safety and security of civil merchant shipping. The Coast Guard is already in desperate need of new icebreakers and ice-hardened patrol vessels. The United States has grossly undercapitalized the capabilities needed to confront future missions in the Arctic, including critical infrastructure protection for ports, waterways and fixed and floating platforms on the continental shelf, search and rescue, and maritime security. We are suffering from a case of northern exposure.

In the summer of 2008, the Coast Guard conducted a “proof of concept” study for a strategic, forward-operating location in Barrow, Alaska, situated 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle. With a population of 4,000, Barrow is the northernmost settlement on the North American mainland. This exercise is a good first step toward honing an Arctic presence and response capability, but the force will have to grow.

THE DIPLOMATIC ANGLE

The United States has its defense policy ducks more or less in a row. The diplomatic aspects of U.S. policy, however, need work. All Arctic states would do well to mind their manners. Like vacationers who forget how to act when they’re away from home, most Arctic nations have been prone to boorish behavior in the region, acting in ways that are popular at home but harmful to their own long-term interests in regional stability. Russia and Canada suspect each other’s intentions. Norway and Denmark, like Russia and Canada, are too close to the problem to offer responsible and detached multilateral leadership in the region. Only the United States can fill that role.

We have made a start. All five nations with Arctic territory met in 2008 at Ilulissat, Greenland and emerged with a declaration that acknowledged the Law of the Sea Convention as the essential rule set for resolving Arctic conflicts. Sweden, Finland and Iceland did not participate, unfortunately. Though less endowed with Arctic resources than the core five, all three countries display a refreshing lack of Arctic emotionalism and are thus likely to be natural supporters of American leadership in Arctic governance. We should bring them in from the cold.

We need especially to help our Canadian friends, who have uncharacteristically acted quite unilaterally over the Arctic. By claiming sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, a position clearly inconsistent with the Law of the Sea Convention, Ottawa has painted itself into a corner. The Canadians have desperately sought to get the U.S. government on board with their maritime claims before international shipping from China, Japan and Korea arrive in the region and begin to use Arctic maritime routes. We cannot board that particular vessel, however, not least because the issue of transit through the Arctic Ocean cannot be addressed bilaterally between the United States and Canada. Thus we have a potential problem with our best neighbor.

In order to gain diplomatic leverage to champion their claims, Canada and Norway have tried to persuade the United States that Russia is causing all the problems—an argument, one supposes, they think we will buy on account of habit. Canada’s main concern is the Russian continental shelf claim over the Lomonosov Ridge on the seabed of the North Pole. Certainly, Russia has embarked on a program to maximize its influence in the Arctic, but Moscow has been surprisingly moderate and responsible in its conduct. Russia is following the rules in asserting its claim to the seabed of the North Pole, dutifully filing a legal continental shelf claim and offering supporting scientific data with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Norway is anxious to assert authority over the waters beyond the Svalbard Islands, but the 1920 treaty is silent on whether Norway may claim an offshore exclusive fishing zone beyond the territorial sea. In neither case is it clear that the two U.S. allies have a stronger diplomatic or legal position than Russia.

Obviously, this is all a potential diplomatic nightmare, one that could get us in trouble with friends and complicate an already fraught U.S.-Russian relationship—reset or not. And yet we seem to have hardly begun even to think about it. The U.S. government should avoid being drawn into Arctic squabbles on the side of any one claimant. We should try instead to play the role of an honest broker. It is wrong to assume that the Russian Federation is over-reaching in either case; the contrary is true, as Russia has plausible claims that should be resolved through the dispute resolution procedures in the Law of the Sea Convention.

Russia is edging ahead – US icebreaking key to deter expansionism

Pike 8

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, Former Senior Member of The Federation of American Scientists, directed the Space Policy, Cyberstrategy, Military Analysis, Nuclear Resource, and Intelligence Resource projects, 2008 (last date referenced), (“Military: Atomic Icebreakers”, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/icebreaker-3.htm)//AW

Russia is the only country to operate civilian nuclear-powered icebreakers in the Arctic, and it has been doing so for over 40 years. The first reactor for the Lenin icebreaker was developed in 1954-1956, and the ship itself entered service in 1959. Seven more icebreakers and an ocean-going cargo icebreaker were built in 1975-1992. The start was a slow one. As early as 1948 the Russian director for Institute for Problems in Physics, Academician Anatoli Aleksandrov, wanted to see a nuclear-propulsion project established. However, Stalin's right-hand man, Beria, said that nothing was to be done until a nuclear bomb had been built. The bomb was finally ready, and on September 9, 1952, work on a submarine using a nuclear-propulsion reactor was officially initiated by the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. By 1985 the Soviet Union operated approximately 70 icebreakers of many types and 14 specialized icebreaking cargo ships of the SA-15 class. However, within this fleet only 16 vessels can be considered true polar icebreakers - large, powerful ships capable of independent operations in multi-year ice. These polar icebreakers, all built since 1959, are the mainstay of the Soviet Union's polar marine transportation system. Three classes of Finnish design - MOSKVA, YERMAK and KAPITAN SOROKIN - comprise 12 vessels. The nuclear fleet includes LENIN, LEONID BREZHNEV (ex-ARKTIKA), SIBIR and in 1985 ROSSIYA. As of 1985 two vessels of the new TAYMYR class and an additional ARKTIKA class ship were under construction. Each of these classes rank among the most capable and largest polar icebreakers in the world. A progression in design from deep-draft, conventional power to shallow-draft, nuclear power was evident. The main features and icebreaking performance of these capable ships compared favorably to the world fleet. The importance of these ships to the ice season extension along the Northern Sea Route and to the overall development of the Soviet Arctic is fundamental. While only limited information is available about the design of the reactors used in Russian military naval vessels, the situation is different for the country's icebreakers. Here a significant amount of information is available on reactor design. The reactors are all pressurized water reactors. The development of a Russian marine reactor for civilian purposes started with the OK-150 power plant, which was the first plant used in the NS Lenin. Later on came the OK-900 and the KLT-40 plants. The OK-900 and the KLT-40 plants exist in various versions. As of 2000, according to MSCO, 2 Arktika and 2 Taymyr class ice-breakers were needed during winter to maintain the year-round Murmansk-Dudinka line at a level of up to 1.4 mln tons of cargo annually210. Furthermore, MSCO claims that its present fleet will be capable of escorting annually up to 10 mln tons of hydrocarbons from future fields in ice-covered parts of the Kara and Barents Seas, as well as 3 mln tons of cargoes to/from the Yenisey River and eastern NSR (including transit trade and the year-round Dudinka trade). This scheme would employ all its 8 major ice-breakers - 2 Arktika-class and the 2 relatively old diesel-electric ice-breakers for the hydrocarbons export, and 2 Arktika-class and the 2 shallow-draft Taymyr-class ice-breakers for the escort of ships on the Yenisey River and the eastern NSR. If such a capacity to escort totally 13 mln tons of cargo annually can be sustained, it would be sufficient for several years to come. Even if the old diesel-electric ice-breakers were to disappear, the capacity would still be sufficient to accommodate the 5.0 mln tons of cargoes that had been estimated for 2005. Funds for operating Russia's six operational nuclear-powered icebreakers and one nuclear-powered container ship were cut out of the federal funding in the 2003 budget. The federal budget had allotted $14.3m a year during the previous two years. To finance the operation of the nuclear icebreakers, Murmansk Shipping Company [MSCo] raised the cost of icebreaker services in the Arctic by a minimum of 50%. But even though Norilsk Nickel, the major customer of MSCo, agreed to the new rates, MSCo feared that cargo shipping volumes would drop. By 2007 the Murmansk Shipping Company in Russia had the largest nuclear surface fleet in the world: five Artic-type icebreakers, two icebreakers designed to serve on rivers, and one nuclear-powered container ship. And the Lenin is not the only one that can claim a first. The Artika, which began operation in 1975, was the first surface ship to reach the North Pole. In August 2008 Andrey Nagibin, Chairman of the Board of All-Russian Public Organization, stated that "Russia's strongest rival, the Untied States, is gradually losing its strength in the Arctic Sea because it has paid insufficient attention to the development of its nuclear icebreakers in the last years. Meanwhile, we are actively enlarging our fleet and can be sure that its placement under the management of Rosatom will help it to become the world's leader and will give our country all prerequisites for a victory in the "arctic race."" In August 2008 Semyon Dragulsky, Director General of the Russian Energy Efficiency Union, said "The United States also has a very strong icebreaking fleet. But in the last years two 30-year US icebreakers - Polar Sea and Polar Star - and one smaller scientific icebreaker have almost exhausted their resources. So, it is yet unclear how our rival is going to explore the Arctic region in terms of both ecological safety (nuclear icebreakers are ecologically friendly) and economic efficiency (it is very hard to transport thousands of tons of diesel fuel for such long distances for ordinary icebreakers). Hence, nuclear icebreaking fleet has been and will be an important component of Russia's strategic power." On 27 August 2008 Atomflot FSUE was given control over all the nuclear icebreakers of Russia: Lenin (1959), Arktika (1975), Siberia (1978), Russia (1985), Taymyr (1988), Soviet Union (1988), Vaygach (1990), Yamal (1992) and 50 Years Since Victory (2007). All the nuclear icebreakers of Murmansk Shipping Company were transferred to the Territorial Department for Murmansk region of Rosimuschestvo until 27 August 2008 and afterwards to Atomflot FSUE. In its turn, Atomflot was given to Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation.

Icebreakers enable international assistance and cooperation missions

AP 14 – Rod McGuirk is a staff writer for the Associated Press, 2014. (“Polar Star icebreaker from US to rescue 2 ships in Antarctica,” January 6^th, Available Online at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0106/Polar-Star-icebreaker-from-US-to-rescue-2-ships-in-Antarctica, Accessed 08-01-2014) LB

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA — A U.S. Coast Guard heavy icebreaker left Australia for Antarctica on Sunday to rescue more than 120 crew members aboard two icebreakers trapped in pack ice near the frozen continent's eastern edge, officials said.

The 122-meter (399-foot) cutter, the Polar Star, is responding to a Jan. 3 request from Australia, Russia and China to assist the Russian and Chinese ships because "there is sufficient concern that the vessels may not be able to free themselves from the ice," the Coast Guard said in a statement.

The Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy has been trapped in ice-clogged Commonwealth Bay since Christmas Eve, while the Chinese ship which came to its rescue, Xue Long or Snow Dragon in Chinese, reported on Friday it too had become stuck nearby.

A day earlier, the Chinese ship's helicopter had retrieved from the Russian ship 52 scientists, journalists and tourists who are now on their way home aboard an Australian icebreaker, Aurora Australis.

Authorities say the 101 crew aboard the Chinese ship and 22 aboard the Russian ship were well provisioned and in no immediate danger.

The Polar Star cut short its planned stop in Sydney, Australia, to assist. It left Sydney on Sunday morning local time, Coast Guard spokeswoman Chief Warrant Officer Allyson Conroy said in an email.

"Our highest priority is safety of life at sea, which is why we are assisting in breaking a navigational path for both of these vessels." Vice Adm. Paul F. Zukunft, the Coast Guard Pacific Area commander, said in a statement. "We are always ready and duty bound to render assistance in one of the most remote and harsh environments on the face of the globe."

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Centre, which oversaw the rescue, said thePolar Star, the Coast Guard's only active heavy polar icebreaker, would take about seven days to reach Commonwealth Bay, depending on weather.

After the Snow Dragon reported it was stuck on Friday, AMSA told the Aurora to stay in the area, with its rescued passengers on board, in case help was needed. Under international conventions observed by most countries, ships' crews are obliged to take part in such rescues and the owners carry the costs.

On Saturday, AMSA said the Aurora was allowed to continue and that the Chinese and Russian ships were safe.