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Stephen Harper’s trips to the Arctic no longer raise warnings that the Russians are coming. The sabre-rattling rhetoric the Conservatives initially applied to Canada’s Far North has largely been jettisoned for a more commercial focus on exploiting natural resources. But the world is still interested in the Arctic. The Chinese are coming. And others, too.
Mr. Harper’s Arctic trip this week started just days after the Chinese icebreaker Xuelong arrived in Iceland, the first Arctic crossing by a Chinese vessel. China has asked for official observer status in the Arctic Council – the eight-nation international body that Canada will chair starting next year – and so have Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
There are some misgivings, and hype, about what these outsiders want. For Canada, assessing their interests matters to our foreign policy and whether we preach quiet co-operation, launch legal battles or reach for our guns.
The last option has always been far-fetched. Since 2010, Canada’s official Arctic policy has promoted co-operation. But even now, Mr. Harper’s “use-it-or-lose-it” rhetoric about “Arctic sovereignty” sometimes recalls the days when he and Peter MacKay raised the spectre of Arctic conflict and Russian interlopers.
“I always thought it was all smoke and mirrors. Who’s coming to take over the Canadian Arctic?” said Lawson Brigham, professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain. Foreign governments viewed the fear-mongering as political hoo-ha. Their diplomats heard a different tone behind closed doors. WikiLeaks released a 2010 U.S. cable in which Mr. Harper told NATO’s secretary-general there’s no military threat.
Now that China is showing an increasing interest in the Arctic, Mr. Harper, who has welcomed Chinese investment, isn’t raising the same fears – but many others are questioning their intentions. It’s worth remembering to separate out the hype.
For one thing, the mad scramble for Arctic territory doesn’t look so mad. The claims to Arctic waters are 99-per-cent settled; the real outstanding issues are Canada’s Beaufort Sea dispute with the United States and a potential three-way central Arctic claim, both expected to be settled by science.
Sure, China also has an interest in natural resources in Canada’s North, but they’re much like its interests in Canada’s south.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Globe and Mail website: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/harpers-arctic-trips-are-now-diplomatic-ventures/article4494231/