Will Nuclear Free Thinking Spread to the Arctic?

President Obama announcement today that he has reached agreement with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to further reduce the two countries' nuclear weapons stockpiles. Weapons of mass destruction have no place in a world that calls itself 'civilized' and we are seeing again in this announcement the sea-change in political life that now allows us all to think such rational thoughts.

Disarmament campaigners have for years made the case that until the 'official' nuclear weapons states (Russia, the US, UK, France and China) control their addiction to nukes, no one else who covets them (Iran, Iraq, Isreal, India, Pakistan, etc) will be the slightest bit interested in even talking about, let alone actually, getting rid of theirs. You say we can't have nuclear weapons? how come they formt a central pillar of your foreign policy? (Beyond this rationale, the 'official' weapons states are also bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty to move toward total nuclear disarmament, and unless they do there are concerns that this treaty will simply collapse for lack of legitimacy in the global South.)

Now Obama and Medvedev are applying that logic, and explicitly hoping to influence discussions in the Middle East, where constant flareups of violence look ever more ominous as the 'unofficial' nuclear arsenals of the beliigerents (including Isreal) grow.

Let's take this another step though, and not just put pressure on Mideast nations, but actually model steps to total nuclear disarmament. Russia and the US can take the lead on a treaty to impose a permanent ban on nuclear weapons (and nuclear-powered vessels) in the Arctic region. This area is turning into a geopolitical hotspot in its own right, what with all that oil under the ice and that ice disappearing faster than you can say 'catastophic climate change'.

Our own Canadian hawk, PM Stephen Harper, has repeatedly rattled his little sabre about Canadian sovereignty in the North, and a major public debate about the future of this region is long overdue.

Michael Ignatieff, are you listening?

Here's a major foreign policy angle for you to outflank Mr Harper (as you've failed to do on the Arctic since you won the Liberal leadership earlier this year) - Canada pressing for a nuclear free Arctic would be credible internationally, it would strengthen, not weaken, our claims to the North, and it would prove difficult for Mr Harper to follow suit since his own base finds that kind of policy shift both unappealing and untenable (they still think that Harper's Arctic rhetoric is based in military thinking).

It would also give Mr Ignatieff the chance to speak truth to Mr Obama while at the same time directly engaging the other Arctic nations (in addition to Russia and the US - Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland), and making a practical proposal that would echo very powerfully in the Middle East. Obama would then have another international plank to build the scaffold around Isreal and Iran, pressuing THEM to consider a nuclear-free Middle East.

This would be a big improvement on Mr Ignatieff's ridiculous preening about Arctic issus so far, which have been a laughable imitation of Harper's hawkishness (see the 23.1.09 Arctic post here on NC). As such, such a move by Ignatieff would raise all the right sentiments about the Liberal Party among centrist Canadian voters - nuclear disarmament is not a leftwing issue, after all.

As we've all been saying, that Obama sure does open up possibilities, doesn't he? If only the rest of the geopolitical class was as bold.

Arctic Sovereignty -- But Why?

After the ignominious failure of the Liberals' 'Green Shift' under former leader Stephane Dion, we should expect the party to take a step to the right as new leader Michael Ignatieff waltzes onto the dance floor with intentions to cut into the Harper Tories' centrist positioning. How else to dispel the down-market leftist Eau d'Ion that clung to the party during the fall election campaign?

Right on cue, and with Barack Obama still only President-elect, Ignatieff polished up his tough guy credentials by assuring a hooting, cheering audience of more than a hundred Young Liberal that he will keep Yankee hands off our beloved Arctic regions.

"This is sovereign Canadian territory, okay?" he told his audience, referring to the Northwest Passage.

"And let me remind you, Mr Obama, that Canada exports more petroleum to the United States than Saudi Arabia [does] -- so I suggest respectfully that you listen very, very carefully when the Canadian Prime Minister soeaks."

So from Dion's embrace of a significant new economic policy (carbon tax coupled with broad income tax reductsions) the party is poised to embrace the dramatic loss of sea-ice in the high Arctic as a segue to preserving the old petroleum economy and the bellicose rhetoric that goes along with it. Take that, Stephen Harper.

The metaphorical temperature ins the Arctic has been rising dramatically eve since it became clear around 2005 that the actual temperature is rising so fast, as a result of global climate change, that the whole vast region is turning from impenetrable ice sheet to open water. Again this year, scientists report record-breaking open water where there should be cool, sunlight-eflecting ice. Not only does this phenomena create a positive feedback that accelerates global warming, it also stirs the aquisitive spirit of every nation encircling the Arctic because it raises the possibility of a huge mineral and oil bonanza.

The Americans touched a nerve with Canadians (who fantasize that they really do care about the Arctic as a kind of 'missing child' of Confederation) when they sailed an icebreaker through the Northwest Passage in 2005 without asking Canada's permission. The Danes pissed us off with their assertion of sovereignty over an obscure island off of Greenland.

But it is the Russian government that has made many in the diplomatic community nervous. Grandstanding events like the 2007 planting of a Russian flag at the North Pole are one thing, but Germany's Der Spiegel mag reports this week that the most recent iteration of the country's National Security Strategy states that

"It cannot be ruled out that the battle for raw materials [in the Arctic] will be waged with military means."

But it is precisely such a confrontation that we must rule out, and soon. Hunger for raw materials is driven by economic growth and competition, two forces that humanity must get to grips with if we hope to stop the global slide into the ecological trashbin. Mr Ignatieff is hardly helping the situation.

There are more sensible voices speaking up to give the Arctic a fighting chance at sustainable co-existence with human beings - especially that made by aboriginal activist and Nobel Prize nominee Shiela Watt-Cloutier:

"We [Inuit and other northern aboriginal people] are Canadians, and we can continue to assert sovereignty for Canada if Canada would build sustainable communities here."

That's the catch - what is sovereignty for? What end is served by one country or another controlling a vast part of the Earth's lands and seas?

That's the question we must ask and answer, together, internationally. Luckily we have international law and we have civil society organizations ready to take up the challenge, and to those actors we will return in future posts.

See the latest detailed map of the disputed territories, drawn up by UK researchers.

See a recent CBC documentary 'Battle for the Arctic'.

(with thanks to Remi Parmentier - chezremi.blogspot.com)