When Beijing sends research vessels into the Arctic, “it’s always double-dipping” for broader Chinese economic and military interests than just science, two experts on the changing security environment in the High North said last week.
“If the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] wants access to [the researchers’ findings], they’ll get access to it,” Matthew Funaiole, a senior fellow at the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.
“Keep an eye on the research vessels.”
China sent five research vessels into the Arctic in summer 2024.
Funaiole added, “everything sort of benefits one another” sector in the Chinese government or its economic structure in long-duration missions. “Where’s that information going to go” is the unanswered question.
Iris Ferguson, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Arctic and global resilience, said China’s strategy toward the Arctic has changed “pretty profoundly” especially in the last few years. She mentioned that warming Arctic waters have affected fishing and offered a shorter shipping route for Chinese import and exports. Russia is also increasingly dependent on Beijing’s support in its war with Ukraine..
“The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world,” Ferguson said. For the Northern Sea Route through Russia’s Arctic, this means a longer shipping season and more badly needed revenue.
Beijing, who Ferguson called “one of the newest entrants” into Arctic affairs, has increased military presence. Ferguson said the Pentagon and its NATO allies are keeping an eye on the “increasing levels of cooperation,” like the joint surface action movement in 2023 and this year’s joint bomber sorties and coast guard cooperation between the Kremlin and Beijing near Alaska.
The Arctic “really is a bridge between the U.S., Europe and the Indo-pacific if you look at a map top down,” Ferguson noted during the CSIS online event.
The Pentagon “finds it a key strategic area,” Ferguson added. She pointed to the updated Arctic strategy the department released this summer as a declaration of Washington’s changed approach.
The strategy calls for increased American military presence and more exercises with allies in the Arctic. The U.S. must also invest in better domain awareness, since Arctic communications can be spotty and GPS accuracy difficult. It also recognizes the direct military threat to the homeland from Moscow’s build-up of land, air and sea forces; modernizing airfields; and construction of dual-use ports through Chinese investments.
The Kola Peninsula is home to Russia’s second-strike nuclear capability, namely ballistic missile submarines and long-range bombers. The Kremlin sees development along the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Europe as vital to future economic security and petroleum and natural gas exports.
Ferguson said that until recently the region had been “othered” in security planning to meet immediate Pentagon needs in the Middle East.
She called the Arctic Moscow’s “crown jewels” that the newly vulnerable Kremlin is willing to share with Beijing so it can continue its war with Kyiv.
Ferguson added the increased Russian and Chinese military cooperation is “not necessarily an alliance as we think of it,” working on joint tactics, techniques and procedures through exercises, stressing interoperability in responding to a crisis.
“Flying in circles” as the joint bomber patrol did “is not the same thing,” she said.
Funaiole added that the Chinese have adapted their long-term approach to strategy to the Arctic as they have in the South China Sea and the broader Indo-Pacific.
In an interview with USNI News earlier, Rebecca Pincus, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, said, “I think that [the Chinese] have found it to be a convenient place to apply pressure in the United States and to amplify global messages.”
She added Beijing’s quick construction and deployment of heavy icebreakers to the Arctic “is just something that makes a lot of sense given their relative strengths and our relative weaknesses” in showing interest and presence.
Although the Coast Guard’s posture statement calls for an American fleet of four heavy and four medium icebreakers, there are only two operational now. Bollinger’s Mississippi shipyard is expected to deliver the first new heavy icebreaker in 2028.
In terms of its naval forces, Funaiole said, “China wants to have a ‘blue-water’ navy” so “they need to have a presence” in waters far from the homeland. Years before these joint operations, the Chinese had “been looking at Russia as their gateway” into the Arctic through the Northern Sea Route, port building and mineral extraction.
But cozying up to Russia, which invaded a neighboring European country, has caused Washington’s allies “ to do a little peeking under the hood,” Ferguson said. Their foreign ministries have become more skeptical about the “Polar Silk Road” and Chinese investment strategies for mining, building airfields and ports, improving communication networks in Greenland, Iceland and Sweden or climate, weather and marine research being done at Svalbard, an internationally recognized scientific reserve in Norway.
With its global ambitions growing, China wants a say in the rules of the road for the Arctic’s future economically, diplomatically and militarily, Funaiole added.
The eight-nation Arctic Council, which includes Russia, has not met since the Ukrainian invasion in February 2022. It was often considered a model of international cooperation. The United States shifted focus away from the dormant panel to establish a security council and a chiefs of defense council among the seven NATO allies with Arctic territory to address new concerns collectively.
Inside the American Defense Department, Ferguson said her office is working to close the seams among three regional combatant commands when it comes to the Arctic.
“Do we have the right defense up there” was the question that drove the Pentagon to develop the strategy, she added. Ferguson said the United States’ largest concentration of fighter jets was in the region and its forces stationed in Alaska were ready for Indo-Pacific missions. The challenges for the Pentagon, as in the civilian sector, involve communications, but also intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities as well as weather forecasting.
The Arctic Council concerned itself with non-security matters, such as environmental issues, economic development, wideband communications and search and rescue as areas for cooperation.
Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister from 2019 to 2023, said the change of emphasis to security concerns about Russia particularly and China secondarily has been very dramatic. Speaking at the Wilson Center Wednesday, he added, “in spring ’21, we were very close” to cooperating on the impact of climate change there.
Now, “we have to prepare for the worst” – armed conflict to gray zone activities.
Ferguson described the Arctic as a “clear hot spot for hybrid activities.” In fact, Swedish authorities are currently investigating how two telecommunications cables under the Baltic Sea were suspiciously severed. A Chinese cargo ship dragging an anchor in a mid-November transit from Russia to Egypt may have been responsible for the incident.
