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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.

Rising to Russia's Arctic Challenge

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Written by Alan W. Dowd, ASCF Senior Fellow

Categories: ASCF News The Dowd Report

Comments: 0

Rudolf Island Russian Base

July 2023— Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Michael Gilday recently raised eyebrows when he called for the U.S. and its NATO allies to start holding exercises in the Arctic on par with the RIMPAC exercises in the Pacific. RIMPAC enfolds 30 nations, dozens of warships, nearly 200 aircraft, and thousands of sailors and airmen. “I think that we could do the same up in the Arctic,” Gilday said.

Hopefully, Gilday’s words have gotten the attention of the White House and Congress—and America’s Arctic allies—because those words won’t matter to Vladimir Putin until they are backed up by ships, planes, and troops.

Building Up

Any discussion of Arctic security must begin with Russia—because it is Russia’s actions that are threatening the security and stability of the Arctic.

Even with his military tied down in Ukraine, Putin has expanded and modernized bases around and in the Arctic. Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, reported in February that Russia now has six bases, 14 airfields, 16 deep-water ports, and 14 icebreakers across the region, girded by precision-guided weapons and S-400 air-defense systems—all yielding a “strong anti-access and access-denial capability that reaches from the Arctic to the Baltic.”

Eight of Russia’s 11 subs designed for delivering long-range nuclear weapons are based in the Arctic, as Reuters reports. Russia has tested new hypersonic missiles in the Arctic; conducted multiple airborne-assault exercises, amphibious landings, and large-scale wargames in the Arctic (some enfolding as many as 80,000 troops and 220 aircraft); revived the Cold War-era practice of testing America’s air defenses along Alaska’s frontier; flouted America’s exclusive economic zone off Alaska; and conducted large-scale maneuvers on the edge of Alaskan waters.

As a Canadian general at NORAD puts it, “This adversary—this competitor, Russia—has advanced on all fronts.”

Claims
Russia lays claim, without justification, to half the Arctic Circle and the entire North Pole—some 463,000 square miles of Artic sea shelf. Like Beijing in the South China Sea, Moscow has underlined its claims in a brazen military context: In 2008, for example, a Russian general revealed plans to train “troops that could be engaged in Arctic combat,” ominously adding, “Wars these days are won and lost well before they are launched.”

Why is Russia making such claims and committing so many military assets to the Arctic? The region represents a treasure trove of oil, natural gas, and potential shipping revenues. As the ice in the Arctic continues to melt, there will be $35 trillion worth of untapped oil and minerals up for grabs. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic holds 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 90 billion barrels of oil, equaling 30 percent of technically recoverable global reserves of oil and 13 percent of gas. (About a third of the oil is in Alaskan territory.)

The Arctic’s vast and rich bounty of natural resources will be increasingly recoverable and transportable because the Northwest Passage, once frozen throughout most of the year and navigable only by heavy-duty icebreakers, is thawing. An ice-free Northwest Passage will slash some 4,000 miles from existing Europe-to-Asia shipping routes.

A report by the Wilson Center explains that Russia needs new Arctic oilfields “to offset declines in production at its conventional, legacy fields and to maintain production at a level of at least 10 million barrels per day beyond 2020.” Oil and gas account for over 40 percent of Russia’s budget revenue. As Putin explains, “Natural resources, which are of paramount importance for the Russian economy, are concentrated in this region.” Thus, to keep his economy going—and keep his oligarchs happy— “Russia must make huge investments in exploring and recovering oil from...the east Siberian region and the Arctic shelf,” as a study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute concludes.

Justifications
Add it all up, and Russia appears to be employing a strategy by which claims will justify possession, and possession will justify claims.

The next installment of this series will explore what the U.S. and its Arctic allies are doing—and what more they need to do—to answer the threat posed by Putin’s militarization of the Arctic, to block Putin from attempting his salami-slice tactics in the Arctic, to deter Putin from extending his war of neo-imperialism into the Arctic, and to ensure that the Arctic’s resources are developed in a transparent manner governed by the rule of law.

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