Putin is pulled by the military, China prepares the fleet. When the war for the Arctic begins

Arctic glaciers will open access to giant resources and launch a new transport corridor from Asia to Europe. Will this not be the beginning of a new global war? Focus explored the prospects for combating the Arctic. The active melting of glaciers is probably one of the main environmental threats of the XXI century. It can lead to irreversible climatic changes in planetary scale. However, no less important glaciers are in the geopolitical sense.

After all, under the ice of the North Ocean are resources for trillions of dollars. The freezing of the Arctic is an event that can be safely compared to the era of great geographical discoveries, when a modern Western civilization was born. And these events are prepared not only in the centers of climate and ecology research, but also in the political centers of countries, relevant to the Arctic and not only. The Arctic is traditionally included in the polar circles.

The Arctic are eight states: the Russian Federation (53% of the Arctic Ocean Coastline), Canada, USA, Iceland, Denmark (Greenland and Faroe Islands - territories endowed with special status), Norway, Sweden and Finland. Six of them (except Sweden and Finland) have access to the Arctic Ocean. Seven of the eight Arctic states are NATO members, but the large coastline of the Russian Federation allows it to claim dominance in the region.

About 4 million people, dozens of indigenous peoples live in the Arctic. Iceland, Greenland and the Faroeus Islands are completely in the Arctic, also in the region there are 40% of Canada's area. Although the conditions of living in the Arctic are quite complex, people settled this territory thousands of years ago. It began to populate it since the end of the nineteenth century, which contributed to technological progress.

It is clear that the technologies of the XXI century open up fundamentally new opportunities in this direction. The Arctic Ocean is valuable in itself. This is a rare occasion when water goes to the price of gold. In the conditions where in the regions, there is a significant drainage of the territories closer to the equator, which leads to water deficiency, the fresh water of the Arctic glaciers has every chance of becoming "white gold" in the 21st century.

The Arctic Ocean is also rich in more traditional valuable natural resources: oil (only about 412 billion barrels), gas, valuable metals ores, and only 22% of world mineral reserves. The peculiarity of the Arctic is that most of it is the expanses of the ocean. Solid spaces that are frozen thousands of years ago glaciers. Only the extreme parts of it are the northern regions of Eurasia and America, mostly islands.

Thus, Greenland, more than 80% of which is covered with ice, is the largest island in the world. This fact differs significantly from the point of view of international law of the Arctic from Antarctic, which is based around the full mainland of Antarctica. After all, the territories on which the Arctic states claim as marine economic zones claim. Therefore, the state's natural resources should be used to start from these rules.

Namely, at a distance of no more than 200 nautical miles from their coastline, instead, the thought of increasing this distance to 350 miles is in the Arctic countries. The variant of uniform division of the entire Arctic is considered in proportion to the length of the coastline of each country. It is clear that such a division will be the most profitable Russian Federation.

Several international organizations, in particular, the Northern Council (founded in 1952) were formed for joint management of the Arctic, qualitative organization of scientific research, organization of logistics and harmonious commercial use, in particular, the Northern Council (founded in 1952), the Barents Euro -Atlantic Council (Beac), and the most influential is founded in 1996 Arctic Council. Within this organization, the Arctic states mainly interact.

However, such a distribution of the Arctic and the way of its development did not satisfy Russia. In Moscow, traditionally expressed dissatisfaction with the current world order (in this case in the part concerning maritime law) and referring to ancient historical images. In particular, with the island of Svalbard, which was rejected from Russia according to the results of the First World War.

Despite its small size in the region of the region and growth, it plays strategic importance because of its geographical location. It significantly expands the economic zone of Norway and its military strategic opportunities in the region. However, unlike Crimea, this island, along with all Norway, has been under NATO umbrella since 1949. Therefore, the Kremlin is more careful. Moscow pressure in the region is directly proportional to the intensity of the melting of the Arctic glaciers.

Back in 2007, the Russians set a flag at the ocean's bottom at the place of the Earth's geographical North Pole. Especially the processes have accelerated after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Since 2015, the Russian Federation regularly conducts military exercises and builds its infrastructure in the region. A separate Arctic troops were even created.

Thus, the Russian Federation has directly outlined its ambitions for control in the Arctic, which clearly do not coincide with the current rules of international maritime law. The former NATO Analytist Mauricio Jerius believes that Putin will try to control the Arctic resources, as it will be the key to survival of his regime.

To this end, the Kremlin is levying troops to the region - and at the moment the Russian Federation is dominated by other Arctic countries by the number of submarines and military bases located in the Arctic. In addition to the Arctic countries in the region, under the pretext of various humanitarian missions (mainly related to ecology), there are other countries, including India and China. Beijing is interested in the Arctic in the near future as an alternative trade.

Logistics to Europe through the Arctic is much closer than through the Indian Ocean. The discovery of a transarctic trading path will be a transformation of the world economy by an equal discovery of its time through India, which led to the decline of the traditional trading route and civilizations that were on its path.

The Deputy Director of the American Security Research Center in the Arctic Matthew Hiki connects all the fuss about the Arctic with the potential of opening a new logistics route. Over the last forty years, the ice area in the Arctic has almost doubled (from 7. 05 million square meters in 1979 to 3. 92 million square meters in 2020), which makes the prospects of the transark trading route more than real.

However, there are many factors that continue to make a more profitable route through the Indian Ocean and even through the Cape of Good Hope, despite their significant range. Among them, the biggest problem is the lack of proper marine infrastructure along the Russian coastline. If you explain in simple words, in the case of shipwreck (which is quite probable in the northern seas, where numerous pieces of ice float), there is a high probability that rescuers will not be able to arrive on time.

In addition to the ethical moment (the risk of crew life), it is also huge costs of insurance, which is significantly more expensive than the difference in the cost of fuel (simplified) that you need to buy for travel through a cape of good hope. Also, there is no complete disappearance of icebergs in the region in the near future. On the contrary, the melting of the Arctic glaciers only helps to increase the number of ice floes in the waters.

Therefore, for real commercial navigation in the region will need to process commercial vessels that will operate the route, according to the arctic features, which are directly opposite to the tropical, in which the ships that serve the route are now swimming.

Therefore, in Moscow, it is traditionally satisfied with loud ambitious statements about the "bright future" and the routes of their own ships, which in relation to the potential scale of the project are purely symbolic and have exclusively propaganda effect for internal use. However, it is not necessary to rush to bury the northern route, because in addition to the Russian Federation, there is some interest in it.

And this country has repeatedly proved that it is capable of implementing large -scale strategic projects. In the context of economic problems in which the Middle Kingdom is now immersed, the construction of a grand trade Arctic fleet gave a significant impetus to the economy. In parallel, the Chinese dealerships have essentially destroyed the trade route through the Red Sea (the shortest of the now available).

We do not exclude in the medium term problems with an alternative route across the Atlantic Ocean, which is already problematic because it is much longer than the route through the Red Sea. And here it is time to reach the advanced China with its Arctic fleet. The Russian Federation with its approach to the case will traditionally take the role of a guard dog. However, the Kremlin is already similar to this role and therefore not particularly protesting.

The Arctic, along with Antarctic, is the only regions that a person has not yet mastered on the Earth's surface. This is not due to human altruism, but with more prosaic factors - the lack of technical capabilities to do so. Now, when they appeared, humanity can witness the retrospectives of the colonial division of the world only with the latest weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. There were no such factors in the hands of the colonialists of past eras.