Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Canadian JTF Adv. – 1AC – Arctic Conflict

Scenario 2 is Arctic Conflict
Now is key to solve the Arctic conflict – the arms race is happening now

Rogers 3/2 (Walter Rogers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN. Christian Science Monitor. “War over the Arctic? Global warming skeptics distract us from security risks.”. March 2, 2010. http://www.csmonitor.com/ Commentary/Walter-Rodgers/ 2010/0302/War-over-the-Arctic- Global-warming-skeptics- distract-us-from-security- risks)

This defiance of science isn’t just harmful for the environment. It’s also distracting us from growing threats to US national security. Actual – not theoretical – effects of climate change are turning the Arctic into a potential military flash point. 

Expected melting of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean means greatly expanded access to increasingly scarce fossil fuels. It also means tensions over Arctic real estate. What the Middle East was to the second half of the 20th century, the Arctic could be to the first half of the 21st. Because America has been so slow to wake up to climate change, it’s lagging behind in protecting its Arctic interests.

“Since 1995 we have lost 40 percent of the North Pole’s icecap,” said Professor Robert Huebert, of the University of Calgary and an adviser to the Canadian government. Mr. Huebert and other experts spoke at a recent conference on climate change security risks hosted by the Center for National Policy. “It is not a matter of if, but when, the ice will be gone,” he said.

Moscow gets this, even if the US public does not. “The Arctic must become Russia’s main strategic resource base,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, declared last year. “It cannot be ruled out that the battle for raw materials will be waged by military means,” a Russian planning document has warned.

Partially because of years of climate change denial, “the United States remains largely asleep at the wheel,” according to a Foreign Affairs article last March by Scott Borgerson, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Meanwhile, other Arctic nations are moving to muscularly stake their sovereignty claims while prospecting for hundreds of billions of dollars of treasure buried on the ocean floor up there. 

Major melting has spurred Russia, Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), and Norway into a new gold rush, except this time it’s about staking claim to huge reservoirs of natural gas, petroleum, and untold deposits of minerals previously inaccessible because of the polar ice shield. Much of the sub-sea Arctic wealth will of necessity be transported by ships because thawing tundra will be too unstable for pipelines. The South Koreans anticipated this more than a decade ago, building giant vessels to secure a big share of the shipping market.

The US and other Arctic nations are meeting this month to discuss Arctic sovereignty. Previous summits have included agreements to act responsibly and peacefully as the polar icecap recedes, but nearly all nations involved are rearming militarily to defend their sovereignty. “We are already in an Arctic arms race,” Huebert says. “The year 2010 in the Arctic is akin to 1935 in Europe.” Russia is building military bases on the Arctic coast and has 10,000 troops deployed near its northern border to assert its expanding claims.
Arctic conflict amounts to a nuclear war between the US and Russia

Buckley in ‘8 (Dr. Adele Buckley, Vice President Technology and Research at the Ontario Centre for Environmental Technology Advancement. Canadian Pugwash Group. July 11, 2008. http://www.gsinstitute.org/ pnnd/events/Pugwash2008/pres_ Buckley.pdf)JFS

The polar ice that envelops the high Arctic is melting at a rate even faster than anticipated by climate change scientists. Providing an equitable regime to govern the results of these unprecedented challenges will require a high degree of global cooperation. With the opening of Arctic waters, and then opening of shipping lanes, comes the potential for economic gains in international trade and the search for seabed oil and gas and other resources. There is guaranteed territorial jurisdiction within the 200-nautical-mile limit, but elsewhere nations are taking measures to assure national access, rights and, in some cases, sovereignty over portions of the seabed. Security strategy will dictate the deployment of an increased military capability. Territorial claims and counter claims will be a source of tension that could degenerate into open conflict. Naval operations1 of both Russia and the United States will increase when there are open waters, creating a potential for military confrontation, especially because both have nuclear-armed submarines. The Arctic regions are host to the two major nuclear powers, and nowhere else are they in such close proximity to each other. There exists a potential for additional nuclearization, for both sea and land. Prudence suggests that nuclearization must diminish and sooner, rather than later; there must be no role for nuclear weapons in the Arctic (as it is now in the Antarctic). Nuclear weapons overtly stationed in the region present a multi-faceted danger to the Arctic lands and peoples, and, before it is too late, preventive measures must be taken. So while this issue may, at first, seem peripheral to adaptation to the new Arctic climate, it is actually central to the Arctic security environment.