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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Maintaining A Cold Peace.

Monday, July 31, 2023

Written by Alan W. Dowd, ASCF Senior Fellow

Categories: ASCF Articles The Dowd Report

Comments: 0

Pituffik Space Base

August 2023—The July installment of this series on Arctic security laid the groundwork by offering a thumbnail sketch of what Putin is doing and planning in the High North. This issue discusses how the U.S. and its allies are responding.

An Arctic Nation
First things first: As a 2013 U.S. government report bluntly reminded America’s enemies (and the American people), the United States is “an Arctic nation with broad and fundamental interests in the Arctic.” Too many Americans forget—and our enemies tend to resent—the fact that a large swath of our 49th state lies inside the Arctic Circle; some 27,000 American troops are based in Alaska, and American troops man a key military base above the Arctic Circle (Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base).

In short, America’s renewed interest in, and commitment to, Arctic security is justified and long overdue.

The past six years have seen the U.S. steadily expand and deepen Arctic-related initiatives.

The Trump administration issued a policy directive on safeguarding U.S. interests in the Arctic and an Arctic defense strategy. In addition, the Trump administration reactivated the 2nd Fleet, which focuses on the North Atlantic and Arctic.

Taking the baton, the Biden administration established a new post in the Pentagon committed to Arctic security—deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience—and issued a new whole-of-government strategy for the Arctic. The strategy makes clear that the U.S. “seeks an Arctic region that is peaceful, stable, prosperous and cooperative,” while emphasizing that the U.S. “will deter threats to the U.S. homeland and our allies by enhancing the capabilities required to defend our interests in the Arctic.” The strategy notes that Russia’s war on Ukraine has “enhanced unity with our Arctic partners.”

Under President Biden, the Pentagon has redesignated the U.S. Army’s 12,000 troops in Alaska as the 11th Airborne Division. The soldiers in the reconstituted 11th Airborne, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville vows, will be “masters” in “Arctic warfighting, in extreme cold weather, in mountainous and high-altitude terrain.”

Just this year, the 11th Airborne led wargames in Alaska involving 8,000 U.S. personnel. Elements of the 11th Airborne also joined elements of the 10th Mountain and Virginia National Guard for exercises in Finland with the Finnish military. In addition, the Finnish armed forces hosted large-scale ground exercises this spring above the Arctic Circle featuring 7,500 troops from the United States, Britain, Norway, and Sweden.

U.S. troops joined troops from Norway, Britain, and Netherlands in spearheading cold-weather exercises in Norway, which put 20,000 troops in the field. And in its first deployment, the USS Gerald R. Ford sailed into Norway’s Arctic waters.

In May, thousands of U.S. troops, five ships, and more than 150 aircraft—joined by British and Australian assets—linked up in Alaska for Northern Edge 2023. It was “the largest and most complex Northern Edge exercise we’ve ever developed,” according to an American officer.

Finally, it’s worth noting that America’s largest concentration of fifth-generation warplanes (F-22s and F-35s) is now deployed in Alaska—and that the Air Force is investing some $6 billion annually in Arctic capabilities.

Allies
Thankfully, the U.S. isn’t alone in the Arctic. Close allies Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, and Norway are Arctic nations. Importantly, all of these nations are current or future members of NATO.

NATO is crucial to leveraging and maximizing the combined capabilities of these Arctic allies. As they learned during the Cold War, America, and its allies can achieve more by pooling their assets, identifying and pursuing common interests, and coordinating plans and deployments than they can by going it alone. NATO’s “Arctic Seven” need to formalize and harmonize their efforts, combine their capabilities, and deal with Moscow from a posture of unity and strength. Any number of bodies or subagencies within the NATO alliance—a center devoted to Arctic issues, an Arctic working group, even an Allied Command Arctic—could enable the U.S. and its Arctic region allies to deal with Moscow from a posture of strength and thus deter further Russian aggression.

What Churchill said of his Russian counterparts is true of Putin and his generals: “There is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness.” That was true when NATO confronted Moscow in West Berlin and the North Atlantic during Cold War I; that was true when NATO brought stability to, and consolidated free government in, Eastern Europe during the post-Cold War period; and that remains true as NATO confronts Moscow’s new/old threat in the Arctic in these early chapters of Cold War 2.0.

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