A Battle To 'Carve Up' The Arctic

Energy experts estimate that the Arctic contains more than one fifth of the world's petroleum [GALLO/GETTY]


Resource Wars Are Possible As Global Warming Melts Polar Ice - Opening New Areas To Oil Exploitation, Cables Indicate.

By Chris Arsenault
Last Modified: 21 May 2011 15:27
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

It is considered the final frontier for oil and gas exploitation, and secret US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks confirm that nations are battling to "carve up" the Arctic's vast resources.

"The twenty-first century will see a fight for resources," Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin was quoted as saying in a 2010 cable. "Russia should not be defeated in this fight."

Along with exposing an estimated 22 per cent of the world's oil, ice melting due to global warming will open new shipping lanes, the arteries of global commerce, which nations are competing to control. And Russia certainly is not the only country eyeing the frozen prize.

Per Stig Moller, then Danish foreign minister, mused in a 2009 cable that "new shipping routes and natural resource discoveries would eventually place the region at the centre of world politics".

Canada, the US, Russia, Norway, Denmark, and perhaps even China, have competing claims to the Arctic, a region about the size of Africa, comprising some six per cent of the Earth's surface.

'Resource Wars'

"The WikiLeaks cables show us realpolitik in its rarest form," says Paul Wapner, director of the global environmental politics programme at American University in Washington. "Diplomats continue to think of this as a zero sum world. When they see exploitable resources, all things being equal, they are going to approach them through a competitive nation state system."

The cables come to light at a time when academics and activists fear resource scarcity, particularly over dwindling oil and drinking water supplies, could lead to new international conflicts.

Sir David King, the UK government's former chief scientific adviser, called the invasion of Iraq "the first of [this century's] resource wars", warning that "powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others".

In 2007, Russia planted its flag 4,000 metres below the Arctic Ocean, in an attempt to claim that its continental shelf, the geological formation by which claims are measured, extends far into the frozen zone.
"Behind Russia's policy are two potential benefits accruing from global warming, the prospect for an [even seasonally] ice-free shipping route from Europe to Asia, and the estimated oil and gas wealth hidden beneath the Arctic sea floor," noted a 2009 cable articulating US beliefs.

Presently, the Russians are far ahead of the US and other Arctic countries to take advantage of what will happen offshore, says Bruce Forbes, a research professor at the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland in Finland. "The cables confirm what we as scientists already know; [global warming means] the Arctic is not just this hinterland, as it is portrayed in the mainstream media."

In its 2010 Quadrennial Defence Review report, the Pentagon stated: "Climate change and energy are two issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment."

Global Warning

If humans do not drastically reduce their fossil fuel consumption, and current trends continue, the world is heading for a significant temperature increase, melting polar ice caps and causing sea levels to rise between 0.9 and 1.6 meters this century, according to a study from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme released in early May.

The idea that global warming will melt polar icecaps and allow for new petroleum exploitation in the far north represents a terrible irony, says Andrea Harden-Donahue, a researcher with the Council of Canadians, a social justice organisation.

"Climate change is making these resources easier to exploit, while burning these resources will only contribute to more climate change," she says.

"In Canada, we have seen a number of well-known actors, including BP and Chevron, exploring for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea. In the US, Shell is consistently trying to get access to resources off the coast of Alaska; BP hopes to develop off the coast of Russia and Cairn energy have already been awarded licenses in Greenland and they are likely to start [drilling] this year.

"If [these companies] are allowed to move forward, I don't think it is unreasonable that we would see a scramble for these resources."

A 2008 cable quotes Russian Navy head Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky as saying: "While in the Arctic there is peace and stability, however, one cannot exclude that in the future there will be a redistribution of power, up to armed intervention."

Partisan Politics

But verbose rhetoric about conflict could be linked to politicians who want to support the military-industrial complex and boost their own stature, rather than actual fears of impending violence, cables suggest.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere is referred to in a 2009 cable, describing "how, during his March 2009 visit to Moscow, he thanked [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov for making it so much easier for him to justify the Joint Strike Fighter purchase to the Norwegian public, given Russia's regular military flights up and down Norway's coast".

The programme to develop the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is expected to cost the US and its allies more than $380 billion, meaning it is likely the most expensive military project in history - and politicians seem to feel the need to justify such a massive outlay of resources to sceptical electorates.


Environmentalists worry that oil exploitation in the Arctic will damage fragile ecosystems [GALLO/GETTY]




Canadian politicians, including recently re-elected Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, are also capitalising on fears of northern conflict to buttress narrow partisan agendas.

Harper has made several high profile visits to the far north, boasting that: "From Afghanistan to the Arctic, from the coast of Somalia to the shores of Nootka Sound [on Vancouver island] we will be able to see what the bad guys are up to," with new military satellites.

Commenting on Harper's rhetoric in a 2010 cable, US diplomats note that: "The persistent high public profile which this government has accorded 'Northern Issues' and the Arctic is, however, unprecedented and reflects the PM's views that 'the North has never been more important to our country' - although one could perhaps paraphrase to state 'the North has never been more important to our Party'."

While politicians pound their chests over resource claims, Prof Forbes says the risk of actual conflict is minimal, because there are international institutions and treaties governing competing claims.

The Arctic Council, composed of eight Arctic nations, is the main discussion forum for issues related to the far north and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US has not signed, is supposed to govern resource claims in the region.

During a meeting of the Arctic Council held on May 12 in Greenland, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that US ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention was "way overdue".

Clinton's desire to change US policy to sign the convention may have more to do with resource battles than respect for international institutions.

"If you stay out [of the convention]" then-Danish foreign minister Moller is quoted as saying in 2009 cables, "then the rest of us will have more to carve up in the Arctic".

The US position of not ratifying the convention means it cannot put forward a formal claim to the seabed directly north of Alaska, says Oran Young, a professor of environmental science at the University of California.

"If I knew why the US hasn't signed, I'd be happy," Young says, speculating that lobbyists for the mining industry and some senators who display "knee jerk negativism to the UN in general" were driving the decision.

'Doomsday Scenario'

In a 1987 speech, Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the former USSR, described the "threatening character" of NATO in the far north. Today, NATO's role in the Arctic is unclear.

"There is no reason for NATO to have a strong Arctic profile," says Timo Koivurova, a visiting professor specialising in northern issues at the University of New South Wales in Australia. "All the Arctic Ocean coastal states have behaved exactly as the Law of the Sea dictates."

But plenty of other people, from scholars to diplomats and military officials, do not entirely share Koivurova's optimistic view.

"The very best case scenario [for peace in the arctic] is that we move beyond fossil fuels," says American University's Paul Wapner. "The best case scenario is that we have cooperative institutions - with representatives of indigenous people - who use peaceful and cooperative means to ensure fair access to these resources.

"The doomsday would be competitive resource wars. As climate change gets worse, people will be pushed to get more resources to run their air conditioners and so forth. My prediction is that we are still going to be addicted to oil [when the main icecaps melt] and these resources are going to be extracted by the most powerful lot - which would include Russia, the US and China."

West Prepares For Arctic Warfare

Loose Cannon And Nuclear Submarines

by Rick Rozoff
Source: Stop NATO
December 1, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Research

The Arctic Ocean, in particular that part of it under the ice cap, is Russia's last retaliatory refuge, that spot on the earth where any element of its strategic forces is comparatively safe from a Western first strike and least targetable by interceptor missiles after such an attack.

That Canada has advanced to the front rank of Western nations confronting and challenging a disproportionately stronger Russia in the Arctic strongly suggests that it has been put up to the task. Being a smaller and weaker nation allows it to be cast in the role of a sympathetic victim of "Russian aggression," much like Estonia two years ago with alleged cyber attacks and Georgia last year after its invasion of South Ossetia. Leading Western elected officials were champing at the bit to activate NATO's Article 5 in the last two cases (even though Georgia is not yet a full member of the bloc), and Canada could provide a casus belli impossible to resist. This year is ending as it began, with heightened U.S. interest in the Arctic Ocean. For energy, transportation and military purposes. Especially the third. An American website has scanned and posted a 36-page document released by the U.S. Department of the Navy on November 10, 2009 called Navy Arctic Roadmap [1] The paper states that "The primary policy guidance statements influencing this roadmap are the National Security Presidential Directive 66/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 25 (NSPD 66/HSPD 25) and the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (CS21)." [2] The second policy document was issued by the U.S. Navy on October of 2007 and the first, the National Security Directive, was written on January 9 of this year. A previous article in this series examined the second in detail shortly after it was made public. [3] The key components of January's National Security Directive are these, the first reproduced verbatim: "The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight." The document also speaks unapologetically of the intent to “Preserve the global mobility of United States military and civilian vessels and aircraft throughout the Arctic region” and stipulates in its fourth point that “The Senate should act favorably on U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea promptly, to protect and advance U.S. interests, including with respect to the Arctic. Joining will serve the national security interests of the United States, including the maritime mobility of our Armed Forces worldwide. It will secure U.S. sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain.” [4] A Russian news source commented four days after the directive's release as follows: “In his final days in power, President George W. Bush asserted U.S. military ’sea power’ over the oil-rich Arctic in a fresh effort to ensure permanent American presence in the region and the deployment of missile defense facilities there. “According to the text of a sweeping new directive on the Arctic released just eight days before Barack Obama is to be sworn in, the United States declares the territories within the Arctic Circle a zone of its strategic interests and the new Administration is advised to expand the US foothold in the Arctic.” [5] Indeed the new American administration has here as in most every other instance proven a faithful enforcer of its predecessor's geopolitical blueprints. Less than three weeks after the Bush White House unveiled its new Arctic strategy, NATO held a hastily convened two-day meeting in Iceland attended by its secretary general and its top military commanders. The get-together, called a Seminar on Security Prospects in the High North, dutifully followed the American Arctic initiative and proclaimed that "the High North is going to require even more of the Alliance’s attention in the coming years." [6] Four of the five official Arctic claimants - the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway - were represented as founding members of the military bloc; Russia was not invited to send even an observer. Another Russian news report wrote of the inescapable logic of the meeting: "NATO is seriously thinking of [establishing] military presence in the Arctic. It considers global warming and consequently an Arctic thaw as an occasion for this. NATO sees this as a possibility for its Arctic expansion. “When taking into account the fact that all Arctic littoral nations but Russia are NATO member countries, it is quite clear who the alliance considers its rival in this region.” [7] In the intervening months the four NATO members with longstanding territorial claims in the region - Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States - have made military moves into the Arctic Circle in fulfillment of the Alliance's pledge in January. Norway has moved its Operational Command Headquarters into the Arctic and purchased 48 Lockheed F-35 fighter jets for Arctic patrols, and Denmark announced plans to establish an all-service Arctic Command, an Arctic Response Force and a military buildup at the Thule airbase in Greenland, to be shared with its NATO allies. [8] Great Britain, Finland and Sweden have been conscripted into the common effort, the latter two nations having been surreptitiously integrated into NATO behind the backs of their peoples. [9] But it is Canada that has been appointed the role of vanguard in the impending showdown with Russia over the Arctic. Specifically, over the Lomonosov Ridge which runs 1,800 kilometers from Russia’s New Siberian Islands through the center of the Arctic Ocean to Canada’s Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. [10] Ottawa has conducted its largest-ever military exercises, established new bases and exhibited increasing truculence and saber rattling toward Russia in the region. Washington, although it along with Brussels is employing Canada to confront Russia at the top of the world, is not shy in asserting its own military presence and pursuing its own geostrategic objectives in the Arctic. The Navy Arctic Roadmap - a curious choice of nouns when speaking of a part of the globe without land - as the document itself takes pains to point out, proceeds from the National Security Directive of the beginning of the year and reaffirms most of the latter's major goals. It highlights these strategic components for the intensified application of military deployments in the Arctic region: Strategy, policy, mission and plans Operations and training Investments in weapons, platforms, sensors, command, control. communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C41SR) installations, and facilities Strategic communications and outreach In another section of the document these are the four operations mentioned first: Undersea Warfare Expeditionary Warfare Strike Warfare Strategic Sealift The Navy Arctic Roadmap also states that "the naval services must be prepared to prevent or limit regional conflict when required," giving particular emphasis to strategic deterrence and ballistic missile defense. [11] A reiteration of the priorities itemized in the National Security Presidential Directive 66 ten months earlier. What the practical implementation of this policy means is the expanded penetration of the Arctic Circle by the U.S. Navy's submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) third of the American nuclear triad, as will be examined later, and the extension of plans for a U.S.-NATO-Asian NATO worldwide interceptor missile system already being put into place near Russia's western, southern and eastern borders. U.S. and NATO radar, submarine and missile deployments in the so-called High North will complete the encirclement. The U.S. and Britain have conducted joint submarine warfare exercises under the polar ice cap twice in the last two years, Operation Ice Exercise 2007 and Operation Ice Exercise 2009. A U.S. Navy website said during the first exercise that "The submarine force continues to use the Arctic Ocean as an alternate route for shifting submarines between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans....Submarines can reach the western Pacific directly by transiting through international waters of the Arctic rather than through the Panama Canal.” [12] The Arctic Ocean, in particular that part of it under the ice cap, is Russia's last retaliatory refuge, that spot on the earth where any element of its strategic forces is comparatively safe from a Western first strike and least targetable by interceptor missiles after such an attack. Earlier this month the American attack submarine the USS Texas "completed an Arctic mission, with some U.S. media outlets noting the nuclear-powered submarine broke through the ice near the North Pole and stayed on the surface for 24 hours." [13] A Canadian news agency reported that the government's Foreign Affairs spokesman Alain Cacchione "said information about submarine operations is considered secret. He noted...that Canada permits shipping through its Arctic waters...." [14] A rather broad definition of shipping, to be sure, but Cacchione's attempt at evasiveness wore thin when he added "There are safety protocols in place under NATO that provide for the exchange of information on allied submarine movements...." [15] That is, the U.S. submarine was off the Canadian coast with Ottawa's full knowledge. And blessings. "The U.S. navy did not release details on what, if any, weapons tests were performed by the Texas." Nor did the Canadian government ask, even though January's U.S. National Security Directive explicitly challenges Canada's claim to exclusive rights over the legendary Northwest Passage, now navigable for the first time in recorded history. Instead, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon "have taken a hard line in regard to excursions by the Russians into the Arctic. Earlier this year, [Defence Minister Peter] MacKay accused the Russians of sending military aircraft too close to Canadian northern airspace. He vowed that Canadian Forces CF-18 fighter aircraft would intercept Russian aircraft each and every time they came near the country." By excursions are meant routine patrols over neutral, international waters conducted according to the terms of the relevant treaties. "In March, Cannon said Canada 'will not be bullied' by a Russian plan to create a new security force for the Arctic." [16] If loose lips could sink ships, Harper, Cannon and McKay would have sent the entire Russian navy to the bottom of the Arctic and the North Atlantic. All three have delivered a steady stream of exhortations, bluster and downright threats to Russia throughout the year. This blunt, eminently non-diplomatic, and incessant saber rattling by a relatively minor military and international political player would not persist for as long as it has - questionable domestic gains notwithstanding - if the three ministers were not assured of support from the United States and NATO. In the second case, the Article 5 mutual obligation to engage in armed intervention if any member state requests it. In fact Canada has nothing to back it up except for its military ties with Washington and the Alliance. That Canada has advanced to the front rank of Western nations confronting and challenging a disproportionately stronger Russia in the Arctic strongly suggests that it has been put up to the task. Being a smaller and weaker nation allows it to be cast in the role of a sympathetic victim of "Russian aggression," much like Estonia two years ago with alleged cyber attacks and Georgia last year after its invasion of South Ossetia. Leading Western elected officials were champing at the bit to activate NATO's Article 5 in the last two cases (even though Georgia is not yet a full member of the bloc), and Canada could provide a casus belli impossible to resist. In line with that scenario, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, the self-styled Lawrence of the Arctic, was back on the warpath on November 23, warning "the world...that this country will respond 'firmly' when other nations 'push the envelope' with military exercises or other provocative actions anywhere along Canada's northern frontier." [17] He was not, of course, referring to the United States or Great Britain or Denmark, who as NATO allies are allowed to parade their military presence off Canada's coast as they choose to do. He singled out Russia. Cannon spoke three days after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. "The future of NATO and international claims on untapped Arctic oil [also] dominated discussions, largely behind closed doors, between Gates and top officials from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, Germany, India, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. "Gates announced...that Washington planned to boost cooperation with Canada in the Arctic, as Russia and others eye its vast energy and mineral resources." [18] Cannon's - laughable except for the broader context - comments were made at the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto where he retrieved a chestnut from the archives ("Arctic superpower" and "energy superpower" from last August) and "said the country's future as an 'energy superpower' is closely tied to potentially rich deposits of Arctic oil and gas on land and seabed." [19] This year's study by the U.S. Geological Survey "assessed the area north of the Arctic Circle and concluded that about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil may be found there, mostly offshore under less than 500 meters of water. Undiscovered natural gas is three times more abundant than oil in the Arctic and is largely concentrated in Russia.” [20] Hence Cannon's assertion that "This is why we react so strongly when other nations, like Russia, engage in exercises and other activities that appear to challenge our security in the North...." [21] Three North American news sources, one Canadian and two U.S., all not unsympathetic to the initiative, recently wrote about the new Navy Arctic Roadmap. The National Post recently published this: "The U.S. Navy is planning a massive push into the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches and other maritime interests. "An 'Arctic road map' released by the Department of the Navy details a five-year strategic plan to expand fleet operations into the North in the expectation the frozen Arctic Ocean will be open water in summer by 2030. "[I]t is clear the United States is intent on seriously retooling its military presence and naval combat capabilities in a region increasingly seen as a potential flashpoint as receding polar ice allows easier access." [22] An American source which linked the online version of the Roadmap added of it in relation to U.S.-Canadian collaboration in the Arctic: "It includes a comprehensive, three-phase outline of measures the Navy hopes to undertake in the Arctic region within four years: develop new, resilient vessels and weaponry; map the seabed floor for potential resources and geological information; and innovate diagnostic tools to more accurately predict when the cap will thaw. "Even as the ratification process lurches through the Senate, the U.S. Navy is launching the first phases of its program. In August, Navy service-members and administrators took part in a Canadian training program, Nanook, where they learned tactical strategy for rugged climates and underwent disaster-relief training. In October, the United States Naval War College hosted the 19th biennial Seapower Symposium, where American and Canadian Naval administrators discussed their 6,500-nautical-mile dispute over waterway boundaries." [23] Third, with the unabashed title of "U.S. Navy Prepares for Militarization of the Arctic," another report revealed that "the U.S. Navy is...planning for potential combat situations that may arise once global warming has melted the Arctic Ocean’s summer ice within two decades. A 35-page memo from the Department of the Navy spells out a five-year plan expressing the need to develop new technology and strategies in the event things become contentious in the open waters of the Arctic Circle by 2030." [24] As the U.S. and NATO campaign in Afghanistan is being intensified to an all-time high level of fighting (with more foreign troops in that nation than at any previous period in its history), with the Pentagon expanding into Colombia in a move that could trigger a regional and even continental war, and with Western proxies in the South Caucasus eager to launch new armed hostilities on Russia's southern border, even the top of the world, the remote Arctic Circle, is not being spared the threat of war. Notes 1) http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2009/11/us-navy-arctic-roadmap-nov-2009.pdf 2) Ibid 3) NATO’s, Pentagon’s New Strategic Battleground: The Arctic February 2, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/natos-pentagons-new-strategic-battleground-the-arctic 4) National Security Presidential Directive 66 http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-66.htm 5) Voice of Russia, January 16, 2009 6) NATO, January 29, 2009 7) Voice of Russia, January 30, 2009 8) Encroachment From All Compass Points: Canada Leads NATO Confrontation With Russia In North Stop NATO, August 5, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/encroachment-from-all-compass-points-canada-leads-nato-confrontation-with-russia-in-north 9) End of Scandinavian Neutrality: NATO’s Militarization Of Europe Stop NATO, April 10, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/end-of-scandinavian-neutrality-natos-militarization-of-europe 10) Canada: Battle Line In East-West Conflict Over The Arctic Stop NATO, June 3, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/canada-battle-line-in-east-west-conflict-over-the-arctic 11) Navy Arctic Roadmap, November 10, 2009 12) Navy NewsStand, March 20, 2007 13) Canwest News Service, November 16, 2009 14) Ibid 15) Ibid 16) Ibid 17) Canwest News Service, November 24, 2009 18) Agence France-Presse, November 22, 2009 19) Ibid 20) Science, May 29, 2009 21) Canwest News Service, November 24, 2009 22) National Post, November 27 23) World Politics Review, November 30, 2009 24) AllGov, November 30, 2009 Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato Blog site: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/ To subscribe, send an e-mail to: rwrozoff@yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff

Russia Plans To Create Arctic Military Force

Kremlin Policy Paper Envisages Creation Of Dedicated Military Force In Arctic

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Source:AP News
Mar 27, 2009 11:39 EST
Courtesy Of Anti-War NewsWire

Russia plans to create a new military force to protect its interests in the disputed Arctic region, a Kremlin strategy paper says.

The document outlines Russia's policy for the Arctic, which is believed to contain as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. The paper was signed by President Dmitry Medvedev in September and released by presidential Security Council, but only reported by Russian media on Friday.

Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway have been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic.

The dispute has intensified amid growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice, opening up new shipping lanes and allowing natural resources to be tapped.

The Kremlin paper says the Arctic must become Russia's "top strategic resource base" by the year 2020.

It calls for strengthening border guard forces in the region and updating their equipment, while creating a new group of military forces to "ensure military security under various military-political circumstances."

By 2011, it says, Russia must complete geological studies to prove its claim to Arctic resources and win international recognition of its Arctic borders. The paper has been posted on the Security Council's Web site.

Moscow first submitted its claim in 2001 to the United Nations, but was rejected for lack of evidence. Russia now hopes to prove that an underwater mountain range crossing the polar region is part of Russia's continental shelf.

In 2007 two Russian civilian mini-submarines descended to the Arctic seabed to collect geological and water samples and drop a titanium canister containing the Russian flag. More such missions have been planned, officials have said.

Polar scientist Artur Chilingarov, who took part in the 2007 submarine mission, praised the new strategy paper.

"The creation of Arctic forces reflects a normal desire to protect our territory," Chilingarov was quoted as saying by the business daily Kommersant.

Earlier this week, a deputy chief of staff of the Russian Navy also said submarines from Russia's Northern Fleet could be involved in efforts to claim and protect Arctic resources.

Russian diplomats have voiced concern in recent days about a military exercise in Norway.

"The increased NATO activities in the Arctic could erode constructive cooperation between littoral nations," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Thursday.