Rana Foroohar reports from the USS Healy (pictured above) in Marine change.
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As polar ice melts in the Arctic, shipping lanes open, making the region a new zone of superpower competition. Writer Rana Foroohar got an up-close look at the USS Healy, a Coast Guard icebreaker. She says crossing the North Pole by boat – once a “largely conceptual” route – is now becoming a “real possibility” for two or three weeks a year.
“If you take one of these Arctic routes, you can save up to 40% of the time it would take you to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and depending on the price of oil, that’s a hell of a lot of money,” she says. “China and Russia are clearly trying together to make the world summit the region they are most interested in.”
In his new book, Sea Change: the new great American game in the Arctic Circle, Foroohar argues that the “Great North” could become as crucial to global shipping as the Suez or Panama Canals. But she also notes that beneath Arctic waters lie significant deposits of oil, natural gas and rare earths, as well as undersea cables, which carry much of the world’s intercontinental information flow.
“Undersea cables have become a real touchstone in wars and conflicts around the world,” she says. “So you’re seeing a race to lay new cables, and who can get there the fastest, and then who can potentially commercialize and even militarize the areas where those cables have been laid.”
Foroohar describes the Arctic Circle as one of the few regions on the globe where countries and companies can still “hunt” for territory and “potentially clash with rivals.” And she predicts more conflict in the decades to come as the region continues to warm.
“There will be more trade in this region. There will be greater military interest in the region, and all of that is important because it really is in America’s backyard,” she says. “I just think anything that happens in the High North will be a higher priority for America going forward.”
Interview Highlights
On increased international interest in the Arctic
China and Russia are clearly trying together to make the world summit the region that interests them most. And it’s very interesting because it’s starting to coincide with something that’s happening in American politics, which is more of a feeling that we have to protect what’s close to home. And so, if you look at it that way, then you see the United States and China entering into a much closer geographic conflict. Whether or not it’s a hot-button conflict, I don’t hope so, but there is certainly competition in this area.
On the debate over resource rights in international waters
There is a debate about this. There is something called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs maritime activities, including those in the Arctic. It has… rules about where you can mine, how you can mine, who gets what. But the United States never signed this convention. Various presidents, from Clinton to Bush (to) Obama, have supported it, but key Republican senators have opposed it, largely on ideological grounds, the idea that no international body should have sovereign rights over what the United States does. … What follows is a real battle for everyone in the Arctic. And then we must add the fact that the Russians and Chinese do not always respect UN rules either.
How Arctic power struggles are part of a larger global trend
It’s sort of part and parcel of a larger breakdown of international dominance and a shift in globalization towards something that’s more about regionalization and spheres of power…and influence, which is exactly what’s happening in the Arctic, which to me is very interesting, not only in itself, but because it’s a mirror of what’s happening in other parts of the world. Some of the same conflicts over territories, mineral rights and ports that we currently see in the Arctic also occur in Latin America, West Africa or parts of the South China Sea. It is therefore a bit of an indicator of geostrategy more broadly. …
And then there’s this transpolar route – largely theoretical so far, but becoming more and more realistic – where, right now, it might take a few weeks to even consider crossing the pole, but if global warming continues as it seems to be going over the next ten or two years, that could turn into a month, two months, three months. So who will control this area? This is what is at stake now.
What it’s like to live on an Arctic icebreaker
You begin to feel and hear the ice as it is broken by the ship. And I remember being in the dining hall, which is a few stories up from the waterline, and I was sitting eating my lunch and you start hearing this kind of chhhhhh sound, like something traveling through the sound, and then it gets squeaky, like fingers on a chalkboard, and you can kind of feel a vibration and it gets louder and louder and you’re like, “Wow, there’s only 12 inches of reinforced steel between me and death. This is food for thought.
On climate change in the region
I actually contacted some of these scientists several months after we left the Healy, and they were starting to look at this data and review it. And there is real science showing that these areas are changing. They are warming up. They become different from what they were in the past. And it affects all kinds of things. This affects the type of fish that might live there. This affects wind and wave patterns, which in turn could affect things like the Canadian boreal forest fires I’m experiencing at home in Brooklyn, New York. You might think that this has nothing to do with the Arctic, but in reality it has everything to do with what is happening in the Far North.
Therese Madden and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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