Canadian Arctic security comes to the fore after Russian invasion of Ukraine

After the West stopped cooperating with Russia in the Arctic because of its invasion of Ukraine, Canada set itself the task of strengthening defenses in what its major general called “NATO's northern front.”

Canada's chief of joint military staff, General Wayne Eyre, warned that “much more effort” is needed to strengthen national security, with a strong “focus on the north.”

Defense Minister Anita Anand, who plans to travel to the Arctic in the near future, also promised significant new investments that will reduce the gap in Canada's commitment to NATO to spend 2% of its GDP on defense, up from 1.39%.

“As we look at what is happening in Ukraine, we look closely at what Russia is doing in the world, and the far north is an important area” of interest to defend, Eyre said at a security conference held in Ottawa this month.

He noted that Russia “recovered” in recent decades “Cold War bases that had been abandoned” in the region. “It is not inconceivable that our sovereignty can be challenged,” he added.

The general and others minimized the possibility of Russia invading the Canadian Arctic with troops, citing the harsh climate and 1,600 kilometers of frozen sea that separate the two countries. Norway, which shares a small land border with Russia, should be more concerned.

Both nations along with the United States and other NATO allies conducted military exercises this month in the north, including interceptions of bomber planes, tracing mines in Alaskan waters and landing paratroopers on the ice.

Everyone agrees that American defense of the Arctic, which includes a Cold War surveillance program known as the North Warning System (NWS), needs an update to be able to track newer aircraft and missile systems.

Anand promised “a robust package to modernize” the NWS and other continental defenses, which would cost tens of billions of dollars and include icebreakers, warships and a contract to acquire 88 new fighter planes to be defined this year.

Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, after admitting to the Montreal forum on Monday that Ottawa “must better equip our soldiers,” noted that Germany decided to disburse $112 billion to modernize its armed forces in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

- 'Head in the Snow' -

According to Arctic affairs expert Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia, defense spending has long been relegated to Canadian politics.

Ottawa “didn't feel any need” to do so after the end of the Cold War, which could have been justified “if you don't think that a power with nuclear weapons is going to invade an important democracy,” he explained.

Robert Huebert, of the Arctic Institute at the University of Calgary, defined it as an “attitude of sinking one's head in the snow”

But the Russian militarization of the Arctic and its claims last year to part of the resource-rich north shared by Canada and Denmark have brought Arctic sovereignty back to the fore.

Byers believes that an invasion with Arctic troops would be “completely irrational for Russia”, noting that “it is really a hostile environment” and a “long way” from the central territory.

NATO should be more concerned about the presence of the Russian Navy in the Arctic, he added, including submarines with nuclear-powered ballistic missiles stationed in Murmansk, near the Russian-Norwegian border.

“The threat is in Europe right now. He's not here,” he said.

Huebert, however, noted that along with the use of new hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, Russia has returned to “Cold War behavior,” which includes land and sea incursions into “sovereign waters of all northern states,” including Canada.

This month in Canada, the United States, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Finland announced that they would boycott meetings of the Arctic Council, whose presidency is currently being held by Russia.

The Canadian Coast Guard also stopped cooperating with Russia through the Arctic Coast Guard Forum.

University of Ottawa professor Mathieu Landriault suggested that the war in Ukraine has made Canadians more keen to the idea of increasing military spending to counter “a more aggressive Russia.”

In the future he hopes to see “two Arctics”: one where Russia will work with China to exploit underwater mineral and energy resources and seek to develop the Northern Maritime Route for its ships, and another in which “the other seven (...) do not want to know anything about Russia and cooperate only with each other”.

This could lead to weakening environmental protections in the north, he said, and dividing indigenous peoples with economic and cultural ties beyond the borders of the Arctic, such as the Saami of Scandinavia and the Russian Kola Peninsula.

“That would hurt them,” he said.

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