NATO Secretary General visits Canada's Arctic zone. U.S. State Department Announces Ambassador-at-Large for the Arctic. Two more members of the Arctic Council join NATO. In general, the movement of Arctic ice is increasingly affecting world politics..

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited the Arctic for the first time in his current capacity at the end of August. As a Norwegian politician, he understands Arctic issues well and has been to the Arctic Circle many times.. But the visit to the Arctic zone of Canada was important as the first of its kind.. Alliance Secretary General does not solve practical military issues. Therefore, his visit to the facilities of the North American Aerospace Defense Command can be considered symbolic.. However, this symbolism points to the political attention given to the Arctic in NATO..

The new Strategic Concept of the Alliance, adopted in June this year, does not formally mention the Arctic. It says about the destructive actions of Russia in the Far North and the consequences of climate change. But on the other hand, the Arctic Council - an international structure created in the 1990s to coordinate the actions of countries washed by the waters of the Arctic Ocean - will soon turn into another NATO-Russia Council. The Arctic Council brings together Denmark, Iceland, Canada, Norway, Russia, USA, Finland and Sweden. At the time of creation, these were five NATO countries, two neutral countries and Russia. In a year or two it will be seven NATO countries against Russia. Arctic Finland and Sweden abandoned their neutral status in favor of membership in the Alliance, realizing the reality of the Russian threat on the example of Ukraine.

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The two-year chairmanship of the Arctic Council passed to Russia last year. But she did not have time to fully preside. Against the backdrop of the then existing sanctions, many joint projects with Russia were blocked. With the start of a large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine, other Arctic countries suspended their participation in the Arctic Council, leaving Russia in an aggressive loneliness.. In early July, these Arctic countries (soon all of them NATO members) announced that they would restore the work of the Arctic Council without Russia, creating a kind of " Thus, after some time, the A7 may well take shape in addition to the G7, the “big seven”.

Stoltenberg's visit to the Arctic radar of the North American Aerospace Defense Command reminded that as long as Russia and China are nuclear countries seeking to challenge the United States, the Arctic will remain a key zone of a theoretically possible global nuclear war.. Should it happen, the majority of missile and air strikes, a significant part of sea strikes of nuclear forces will be delivered through the Arctic.

To ensure that such a possibility of nuclear war remains only theoretical, NATO will maintain a military balance in the Arctic. Before the Alliance's June summit, Canada announced $4.9 billion over the next few years. for the modernization of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, whose facilities were visited last week by the Secretary General of NATO. Over the next two decades, Canada is going to spend $ 40 billion to strengthen the Arctic defense. , of which 15 billion - to improve infrastructure.

Jens Stoltenberg directly pointed to the aggressive behavior of Russia and the claims of China as the immediate reasons for NATO's increased attention to the Arctic. Russian and Chinese ideologists see this as a new global battle for fossil resources and transport communications.. China is ready to expand the Russian Northern Sea Route to the " Russia is desperately proving at the UN that its mineral-rich continental shelf extends to the coast of Canada.

There are an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil under the Arctic Ocean. This is enough for four years of all world oil production at the current level.. No less significant - there is one trillion dollars of rare earth metals important for the green transition economy. Russia believes in oil, China in rare earths. And everyone, including NATO, believes in a new geography of transport routes resulting from global warming.. The Arctic is warming faster than the planet on average. Warming rates are high. If the temperature in the Arctic rises by more than a degree, not only will new transport routes open, saving 20 days in transportation from Europe to Asia, but vineyards from the south of Europe will move to its north.. Growing grapes on the Swedish Gotland in the Baltic Sea is already becoming profitable.

NATO's new Strategic Concept places significant emphasis on climate change precisely because the military geography and conditions of warfare are changing.. Military submarines will not drill oil wells. But the sea delivery of military cargo from North America and Europe to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea is a topical issue in the foreseeable future..

The Joseph Biden administration is not as determined on the Arctic as the Donald Trump administration was. The latter was not joking much when he suggested that the United States buy Greenland from Denmark, the landmass closest to the North Pole.. Such a practical approach to natural resources was antagonistic to the interests of China and Russia, but understandable to them in essence.. In Beijing and Moscow, they saw in this a medieval desire close to them to divide the world.

The Biden administration's views on the Arctic are more complex and less clear. They are probably just not formed yet.. The idea to raise the rank of Arctic coordinator (existing in the structure of the State Department) to ambassador-at-large, just means the desire to shape policy. Now it is clear that the role of the Arctic remains important from a military point of view, in the near future it will grow in terms of transport, and this will also have a military dimension..

It is likely that over time the economic role of the Arctic as a source of resources - fish, oil and lanthanum - will become important.. NATO in the Arctic is definitely not behind this now. Perhaps the Arctic economy will be taken over by the new “Arctic Seven”, a group of Alliance countries with common northern interests.

All this will probably have to be dealt with by the new American Ambassador-at-Large for the Arctic..

It is hardly possible to take Russian narratives seriously that the Russian-Ukrainian war is the periphery of some other confrontation, for example, for influence in the Arctic.. But the Russian-Ukrainian war and the melting of the Arctic ice are perhaps comparable in their impact on world politics..

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Read more articles by Alexei Izhak at the link.