Wolf D. Fuhrig

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Bush And Putin Playing Games

While most of the world has been watching the Bush administration’s troubles in the Middle East, the United States and Russia have been opening up a side show of power plays in east central Europe and the Arctic Sea.

President Bush sees an urgent need to deploy a missile defense shield of about ten interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar tracking station in the Czech Republic, right along Russia’s western border. The installations are to counter an admittedly unlikely attack from faraway Iran or North Korea.  Since the U.S. would fund the project, Polish and Czech leaders found it wise not to object.

The Kremlin’s reaction was predictable.  General Nikolai Solovtsov, chief of Russia’s missile defenses, warned that if Poland and the Czech Republic allow the deployment of American missiles on their soil, Russia’s “Strategic Missile Forces will be capable of targeting these facilities.”  Mr. Putin even saw a "new Cold War" in the offing.  One of Russia’s responses to the American missile shield in Eastern Europe may in fact be the recent installation of a new radar system for defense against missiles near St. Petersburg.

Most European leaders have been cautioning that the American project appears to be unnecessarily threatening to the Russians.  Critics also point to the fact that in tests the U.S. antimissile missiles often did not work. When they did function as intended, it was under controlled circumstances that are unlikely to occur in an actual missile attack.

America’s taxpayers would have to shell out some $1.5 billion for the proposed anti-missile missile shield, and that in addition to the tens of billions of dollars the Pentagon has already expended on the system’s development.  Yet, even these costs appear small compared to the estimated $430 billion the U.S. has so far wasted on the war in Iraq.

While few Americans and most Europeans have expressed doubts about the utility of the Bush administration’s latest missile deployment plans, President Putin has quietly been launching a foray into the Arctic region.  On August 2, a Russian mini-sub planted a flag--painted white, blue, and red--at the North Pole on the bottom of the sea at a depth of 14,000 feet.  By August 14, Russian air force planes were reported over the North Pole practicing “routine” missile deployment and in-flight refueling exercises.  The leader of a Russian diving expedition that was also operating at the North Pole explained: “The Arctic belongs to us, and we want to make our presence visible.”

Soon thereafter, the U.S. Coast Guard was reported to have dispatched an ice breaker to take measurements in the polar region while Denmark sent a research ship to the Arctic.  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper set out on an “Arctic sovereignty” tour.

Historically, all countries have so far respected the Arctic as international territory.  Now Russia apparently wants to take full control of it, thus ignoring the interests of the other four countries bordering on the Arctic: the U.S., Canada, Norway, and Denmark (which owns Greenland).  This raises the question whether all arctic neighbors want to claim possession of areas beyond the current 200 nautical mile economic zone whose waters and seabed they are entitled to use.  There actually exists an international authority--the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf--which is to decide by 2009 how far the continental shelf extends for each of the countries adjoining the Arctic Sea.

Oil and gas is already being produced in the polar region from Alaska to Norway. Big new projects include Russia's Shtockman natural gas field in the Barents Sea, one of the worlds most promising with an estimated 3.3 trillion cubic meters of gas. So the controversy over access and ownerships rights in the Arctic region is likely to intensify when it becomes clearer how much oil, gas, and other minerals can be extracted from the bottom of the Arctic Sea beyond its coastal shelf.