Ice Station Zebra

The Arctic Circle is one of the most threatening and intimidating environments in the world,

remaining continually dark for months at a time, never rising above 50 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer, and consisting of a barren, frozen landscape. The Circle is a treacherous area that is incredibly hostile to humans and makes basic living nearly impossible.

However, the Circle is an important economic asset, with precious minerals and oil being among the region’s key resources. The region stands to become even more important with the construction oftelecommunications lines and the development of new shipping lanes from Europe to Asia.Due to its’ growing importance in the global economy and the various countries whichclaim ownership to specific regions, the Circle is an area that must be analyzed for potentialmilitary conflicts. In recent months, Russia has become a serious military threat in the Arctic.Within a three-month period in 2021, three Russian ballistic-missile submarines broke through the ice and satellite photographs revealed an extensive military base and airfield capable of accommodating long-range bombers in addition to performing a rotation of military aircraft.

In April of 2021, the Russian government began drafting an official memorandum “meant to

combine economic and military aspects of the country’s power projection in the northern

region”. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has identified Russia’s increased

presence as part of a plan to obtain three large-scale objectives, namely to “Enhance homeland defense, specifically a forward line of defense against foreign incursion as the Arctic attracts increased international investment...Secure Russia’s economic future...Create a staging ground to project power, primarily in the North Atlantic."

It has become very apparent that Russia is a serious geopolitical threat in the Arctic.

Given the global change from conventional to unconventional warfare (UW), it is also becoming more evident that Special Operations Forces (SOF) units will become key in any armed conflict.Combating such a threat in the Arctic Circle requires the improvement of multinational collaboration in the area. Collaboration between foreign militaries is imperative in the fight for the Arctic. The United States is not the only nation within the Circle, with six other nations (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway) all laying stake to specific areas in the region.

Collaboration with these six other nations would significantly assist in the overall goal of

maintaining safety and security within the Arctic Circle. Maintaining alliances with these foreign military forces and governments will ensure a sense of cooperation amongst the nations and a union that would promote collective security. Already, efforts of collaboration between the U.S. and associated Arctic nations can be seen with the signing of the International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research (ICE-PPR) in late 2020. The Program “enables the fullspectrum of research, development, testing, evaluation, experimentation, acquisition, fielding,and personnel exchange” while also allowing for “provisions to enable each nation’s defenseorganizations to tap into talent and expertise from their domestic scientific, homeland defensand border security, and environmental monitoring communities”. The United States should utilize these provisions to improve their security cooperation within the Arctic and their relationswith foreign nations, also benefiting domestic and foreign economic and political goals. Using this agreement as a basis for Russian deterrence and extensive joint military training wouldsignificantly improve the level of security desperately needed in the Arctic.

One area which would be extremely helpful in accomplishing the goals of this agreement

would be by implementing SOF operators within foreign militaries as specific liaisons on the

Arctic situation. These operators must be staffed with persons knowledgeable on sensitive kindsof military operations (including special reconnaissance, combat search-and-rescue, aerial/naval insertion, UW) but also must be well-skilled in Arctic warfare and their specific country ofassignment. Having teams of operators from all across the special operations field of the U.S.Armed Forces who each contain one of the enumerated skills and are fluent in arctic warfare would allow for these foreign nation’s SOF to become more skilled in these areas.

Furthermore,this promote cooperation between militaries, improving the level of effectiveness amongst these groups in the event of a conflict within the Arctic.

Russian special operators have already been performing high-altitude jumps and

performing exercises and drills in the Artic Region. The Russians, as previously mentioned with the Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command, have an entire military command which only deals with Arctic military affairs. Given the fact that the U.S. has seriously undervalued the Arctic’s ability in the post-Cold War, the Arctic has been seriously neglected; to quote former commander of U.S. Northern Command, General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, “You can’t justtake people, and aircraft, and ships, and ground troops and all the equipment that that goes with that and deploy it to the Arctic and expect to be successful if you haven’t

trained there, if you don’t have the right kit, the right gear. It’s such a harsh

environment”.

Creating a special operations command within the Alaska Command would be anextreme benefit, allowing a clearinghouse for tactics, information, and ideas within the military command explicitly meant to deal with Arctic warfare as well as allowing members of all branches of the U.S. military who are trained in Arctic warfare to become familiar with one another and develop new methods of training for winter conflicts. Through a multi-national collaboration with Canada, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and the other countries which lay claim to the Arctic Circle (in addition to the development of a sub-command within ALCOM), the United States will improve its ability to deter Russian and foreign power aggression in the Arctic while expanding security and the preservation of Western

interests in the Arctic region.

Alan Cunningham is a graduate of Norwich University and the University of Texas at Austin. He plans to join the U.S. Navy in the Summer of 2022. He was accepted to a PhD in History program at the University of Birmingham and aims to pursue a JD from St. Mary’s University School of Law. He has been published on various blogs and news websites focusing on national security affairs, military policy, and intelligence studies. He can be reached on

LinkedIn.