It is no secret that the consequences of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine are getting bigger far beyond the European battlefield. In the far north, the eight-nation Arctic Council, a foreign intergovernmental forum dealing with Arctic affairs, came to an abrupt halt because member countries refused to participate in meetings organized through or in Russia. After a pause, member countries are moving forward, recalibrating, as the opening of the Arctic threatens to overwhelm Russia’s weakened and overly extensive state.
Outside of Greenland, the Danish Joint Arctic Command has just finished exercise Argus, an annual educational event run across Denmark. The exercise, designed to search and rescue and marine environmental responses in the Arctic, provides the U. S. Coast Guard with the opportunity to respond to the U. S. Coast Guard. UU. la opportunity to get some operations to delight in polar waters.
For the exercise, a number of elements of the U. S. Coast Guard. The U. S. , united through French ensembles, an observer state of the Arctic Council, worked with resources in Denmark and Greenland. The foreign team has been preparing for a complex maritime accident, a crisis that top Arctic observers suspect will be inevitable in the coming years.
Before training began, a 225-foot marine buoy, the Coast Guard Cutter Oak (WLB 211) arrived in Sisimiut, Greenland, equipping one of the few U. S. ships to have operated north of the Arctic Circle. At sea, it joined the tender via a French patrol boat, FS Fulmar (P740), and the Knud Rasmussen-class Danish hdms patrol boat Ejnar Mikkelsen (P571), as well as smaller law enforcement vessels and local pollutants.
“The Arctic is creating a new maritime frontier with an increase in industry and human activity,” said Vice Adm. Kevin Lunday, commander of the Atlantic Zone for the U. S. Coast Guard. UU. ” For 150 years, the U. S. Coast Guard has been using the U. S. Coast Guard. they have secured access and our enduring national interests in the Arctic. We accomplish this by collaborating with Alaska Natives and Alaska Natives, our allies and partners, to achieve some maritime governance. Together, we are committed to achieving the purpose of a safe and cooperative Arctic.
Greenland is the best laboratory for testing the maritime emergency reaction. While local crisis response resources are limited, global interest in Greenland is developing by leaps and bounds. The country expects a record 463 cruise ship shipping calls this year, about 30% less than the busy U. S. tourist port of Ketchikan, Alaska. In addition to tourists, the movement of industrial routes through the Arctic will increase the traffic of goods of all kinds.
In addition to managing the challenge posed by search and rescue operations, the destination’s sea turn off Greenland will occur in ecologically fragile areas, threatening Greenland’s productive fishing grounds. As the world eagerly searches for food in the wake of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Greenland’s health and well-controlled fisheries produce more than 190,000 tonnes of protein, a build-up of nearly 37% since 2008. A poorly controlled maritime fate shift can decimate Greenland. The fishing industry.
While Exercise Argus is a modest annual project, which only strengthens the fundamental elements of crisis reaction, it does a smart job by laying the groundwork for a cooperative reaction to mistakes in the Arctic. Last year, another U. S. Coast Guard buoy. UsCGC Maple (WLB-207) joined French, Danish and local teams in Greenland to conduct airborne medical evacuations, stealArray logistical support, and search and rescue in ice fields. The synthesis activity simulated the twisting of a ship’s fate and the concomitant release of pollutants, allowing local ensembles to check pollutant apparatus together with Coast Guard experts from the Coast Guard’s elite Atlantic strike team.
Now that training is a regimen project, it’s potentially time to start making things happen. While no opportunity should be missed for a delicious team-building effort in the summer, participants deserve to host similar workouts in the spring and fall, when days outside greenland are short and conditions are sometimes bleak.
The coast of Greenland is a beautiful and wild place. And while the charm is understandable, the domain is ripe for the pulse of coastal activity heading there.
The challenge is enormous. It’s hard to ask a country to move from next to nothing to a sudden operational infrastructure capable of handling the largest and most fashionable cruise ship and container shipments in the global advertising fleet. Today, at least nine structure cranes dominate Nuuk, a city of only 18,000 people. Greenland’s capital is moving from a quiet port of an old port infrastructure from the 1950s and 1960s to a modern container facility and cruise ship shipping center.
That’s a lot to handle for any country. But the maritime challenge off Greenland is even more complex. While Greenland can progress along the coast and port usage rates, neither Greenland nor Denmark have much influence on the civilian transport ships that pass through there. That’s a problem. By the time the Arctic thaws and opens up to general civilian traffic, Greenland will be in the midst of many global industrial routes, an unprepared host for what will most likely be the Wild West.
Nasty operators, with the full connivance of some geographic regions, are already making plans to flood the area, get ahead of regulatory regimes, overload regional collaborative mechanisms to enforce the law, overload limited law enforcement resources, and degrade local sovereignty.
The immediate transformation of the Arctic will be fraught with threats and opportunities. In the race for profits, Greenland and other generally law-abiding Arctic stakeholders will come under great pressure to abandon regulatory prudence. The rush to exploit the large economic gains from such a sudden expansion of local economic activity simply will not wait for slow-paced governments to catch up. The personal sector will move forward, accepting the threat, living with potentially more threats than is prudent. Marine observers know what’s going to happen. Beyond the maritime gold rush, mandatory supporting infrastructure was set aside and added only after a disaster.
The United States experienced anything in Alaskan waters, but, compared to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, the U. S. state of Alaska had much more time to deal with a much less complex set of maritime challenges.
In Alaska, replacements came quickly, but replacements, in retrospect, were manageable. While tourist traffic has grown rapidly in recent decades, boat travelers have been traveling to the relatively small and picturesque port of Ketchikan for more than a century. At first, traffic grew slowly; the “big” ships carrying more than 1,000 tourists did not begin to make a stopover until 1970. Fifty years later, several giant cruise ships dock in Ketchikan, eclipsing the small village.
and it works
The village can cover virtually any tourist need. But it wasn’t done all at once. The U. S. cruise industryThe U. S. Navy has had more than fifty years to help build docks, hotels, and other navigation infrastructure needed for its passengers, while the U. S. Coast Guard has been able to build docks, hotels, and other navigation infrastructure needed for its passengers. The U. S. government and the Alaskan government have had more than a century to make things safer, gradually tracking passages. , mark channels, organize bases and expand functional emergency response protocols. Even then, many worry that sleek Alaska is still not in a position to attend to a primary emergency aboard a giant cruise ship.
Today, Ketchikan, a city part of the length of Nuuk, is very lively. But it is home to an entire busy port full of giant ships that want to ensure the mobility and protection of ships. It has a giant coast guard base, 4 PANAMAX -long cruise ship shipping docks, a good length shipyard, really extensive shipping maintenance support, a primary hospital and airport, and a well-organized reaction and crisis prevention infrastructure, adding shipping and port inspection equipment, ready-to-use contaminant sets and a wide diversity of emergency response personnel, trained to respond to all hazards. In Nuuk, mass cruise ship shipments are clamoring for an area on the docks while the port is still functioning to provide visitors with the mandatory resources. Given the frenetic pace, only a realistic practice can reveal gaps in local preparation.
Exercises like Argus not only prepare Nuuk for a busy future, but joint exercises allow the entire region, all Arctic actors, and some polar actors, to navigate their crisis reaction manuals.
This is a start.
To safely manage a thawing Arctic, the United States, Denmark and the rest of the Arctic states have much to do and very little time to do so. Russian aggression does not explain why postponing more ambitious crisis exercises in the Far North. Indeed, the senseless waste of Russia’s resources in Ukraine, coupled with evidence of systemic corruption by the Russian state, suggests that other Arctic stakeholders are carrying out capacity-building activities far further north than Nuuk.
This is a big change. A year ago, Arctic stakeholders were grappling with a resurgent Russia that was gradually subordinating the Arctic. The scenario has been reversed, and now Arctic stakeholders are grappling with the much more daunting prospect of a prostrate Russia and the prospect of an “open but lawless” Arctic. .