The Real Arctic Threat
Obama focuses on global warming while Putin’s neo-imperialist dreams continue to spread north.
arch center in Russia’s Franz Josef archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in 2010. PHOTO: ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Obama is on a three-day visit to Alaska that will include a stop north of the Arctic Circle. The focus of his trip is climate change. Some of my Senate colleagues and I recently returned from the Arctic, and while we saw the challenges of melting polar ice, we also saw a greater and more immediate threat. It is a menace that many assumed was relegated to the past: an aggressive, militarily capable Russian state that is ruled by an anti-American autocrat, hostile to our interests, dismissive of our values, and seeking to challenge the international order that U.S. leaders of both parties have maintained for seven decades.
Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions are clear enough in his attempt to dominate Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine most of all. But his ambitions increasingly extend to the Arctic and Europe’s northern flank. That is where I and my colleagues met with leaders and security officials from Norway, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
Like the U.S., these nations don’t want a return to the Cold War. But Russia’s aggressive behavior has led them to conclude President Putin wants exactly that. They see Russia’s undeclared, grinding war on Ukraine as a test both for Moscow’s campaign to reassert Russian dominance of its so-called near abroad and the response of the trans-Atlantic community.
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