Vulnerable, Strategically Critical, and Underfunded

The US Department of Defense (DoD) released its new Arctic strategy on July 22. The document reflects significant changes in the geostrategic environment since its predecessor document was published in 2019. The new strategy emphasizes the compounding risks associated with climate change while highlighting the impact of Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession on the regional security architecture. Most significantly, it discusses China’s Arctic activities and the challenges posed by the country’s growing collaboration there with Russia. This is a critical issue, which a recent series of papers by GMF experts explores in detail.

The strategy uses muted language in its threat assessment and seems to make a deliberate effort to avoid escalatory language. Still, Russia and China pushed back immediately. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson accused the United States of “escalating political and military tensions” and her counterpart in Beijing argued that Washington is misrepresenting Chinese activities in the Arctic. Two days after the strategy’s release, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) intercepted four Russian and Chinese bombers in international airspace near Alaska. This was the first time that China participated in such a legal, if provocative, maneuver in this zone. The incident underscores the deepening strategic ties between the United States’ two primary adversaries.

The new strategy opens with a description of Chinese activities in the Arctic before turning to Russia. This reflects the Biden administration’s view of China as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge”. It also aligns with the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which placed its primary focus on addressing this “pacing challenge”. While there is no question that Russia currently poses the greatest and “acute” regional threat to the United States and its Arctic NATO allies, the framing and focus on China captures the Arctic’s strategic importance for the coming decades and its role in US efforts to defend American interests from Beijing’s ambitions to field a world class military and reshape the international order.

The new strategy highlights Moscow’s increasing economic dependence on Beijing and traces an uptick in Arctic exercises and agreements between the two, but it is less specific on the needed US response. The document takes a “monitor and respond” approach and stresses the importance of exercises “to strengthen homeland defense plans, exercise joint presence, and highlight global integration among USNORTHCOM, USEUCOM, and USINDOPACOM”. Greater coordination among these regional combatant commands with responsibilities across the Arctic—from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific—is critical for creating a more unified strategic approach to regional threats posed by Russia and China. But in the long term, a more top-down approach is required. As GMF experts have argued, the United States should continue to reassess its Unified Command Plan (UCP) to streamline the Arctic force structure.

The strategy also seeks to strike a difficult balance between highlighting the centrality and vulnerability of the Arctic for US homeland defense and acknowledging competing strategic and budgetary priorities that hamper further prioritization of the region. The need for investment to defend US interests in other theaters is clear and urgent, but the Arctic’s importance cannot be overstated. As USNORTHCOM’s deputy commander stressed recently, US northern approaches are the “shortest and least defended threat vector of North America”. This leaves the United States vulnerable to challenges from Russia and, in the future, from China as it expands its presence in the region.

Arctic security is critical to national security and should matter to Americans. The new Arctic strategy is a deliberately unclassified document that highlights threats to the United States and its allies concisely and transparently. It is made for public consumption. It is not, by design, a visionary strategy that maps out long-term strategic priorities. It is clearly grounded in difficult budgetary realities. Much of the strategy focuses on enhancing and continuing important existing projects and efforts, including in domain awareness and missile warning, communication, and military infrastructure. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Arctic and Global Resilience Iris Ferguson characterized it as a “roadmap” that should guide the department’s future priorities. These include space-based capabilities for geological forecasting and Arctic-specific capabilities such as unmanned platforms and cold-weather equipment.

The strategy stresses the critical role of allies and partners in advancing joint security priorities. It highlights opportunities for bilateral and minilateral cooperation beyond coordination with NATO, especially for joint capability development with governments and commercial partners to plug gaps in situational awareness and presence. Recent noteworthy projects are the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission, being conducted with Space Norway, and a trilateral arrangement among the United States, Canada, and Finland to collaborate on the production of polar icebreakers.

Alliances are one of the United States’ most important assets and strategic advantages, especially as China and Russia work to establish an alternative international order. Leveraging partnerships with key allies and partners, in the Arctic and beyond, is the best path forward for the United States. But even as the DoD seeks to avoid an arms race in the Arctic, it needs to ensure that it contributes sufficient national resources to this strategically critical region.