Arctic Issue Puts Chill on U.S., Canada

Canada’s new defense budget giving priority to maritime forces represents a vigorous reaction to the United States’ challenge to Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage.

The United States brought the issue to a head in August, 1985, when it sent the icebreaker Polar Sea crashing through the narrow straits between the Canadian islands in the Arctic. While Canada’s decision to diminish its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and concentrate on building a fleet of nuclear submarines to defend its waters may seem incomprehensible to most Americans, the policies of the Reagan Administration, which precipitated the action, seem even more inexplicable to Canadians.

Why, Canadians ask themselves, does the U.S. government abuse friendship and violate common sense by deliberately provoking its closest ally, against its own national-security interests? Precisely when the Soviet challenge in the Arctic is growing, the greatest threat to Canada’s territorial sovereignty is coming not from Moscow but from the United States.

Canada’s response has been to send a clear signal that it intends to be the master of its Arctic waters. The beefed-up forces will include as many as 12 nuclear attack submarines, electronic under-ice monitoring devices and stepped-up air defenses.

Not surprisingly, the sovereignty question has an immediacy in Canada that is lacking in the United States. The Arctic makes up much of the Canadian land mass and is deeply embedded in the national self-image. The archipelago of islands and inter-connecting frozen waterways reaching northward toward the Arctic Ocean between Greenland in the east and Alaska to the west is internationally recognized as geographically unique. The harsh climate blends ice and land in this vast, environmentally sensitive region into a seamless unity. The control of the lands and waters of the Canadian Arctic is therefore indivisible. Canadians for generations have taken Arctic sovereignty for granted.

Canadian sovereignty also coincides with U.S. and Western security interests. The Northwest Passage, traversed only 45 times, is obviously not an international strait, and is vital to North American defenses. Neither Canada nor the United States wants the passage open to Soviet warships, as it would be if recognized as an international waterway.

Canadian defense planners were therefore astonished by the brutal challenge to Canadian sovereignty. Washington was blunt: The islands, it conceded, were Canadian, but the Northwest Passage remained an international strait. But not too international--Soviet ships were not to be admitted. According to then-U.S. Ambassador Paul Robinson, the United States essentially wanted an international strait reserved for itself--an oversized Arctic Panama Canal.

Even the new pro-U.S. government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney bridled at this unkind Banana Republic comparison. Canadian sovereignty was proclaimed in Parliament, and Ottawa advised Washington to take any objections to the International Court of Justice.

By laying the keel for the world’s most powerful icebreaker and strengthening its Arctic defenses, Canada is finally putting its money where its mouth is. But Washington is not budging, thus creating an unpleasant and probably lengthy standoff.

From the U.S. perspective, the Arctic is of growing importance. Superpower rivalry is driven by new military technology, above all by developments in submarine warfare and strategic doctrine. The U.S. Navy wants unimpeded mobility everywhere. It argues that recognizing Canadian Arctic sovereignty might set a precedent in the Pacific, where key sea lanes could be claimed as internal waters by island states like the Philippines and Indonesia.

This is a far-fetched analogy on geographic grounds, and neglects elementary long-term defense realities. Canada is not the Third World, and North American security depends on cooperation.

There is an obvious solution. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense agreements, represent a model of bilateral cooperation; they have safeguarded the security interests and sovereignty of both countries for the past 30 years. Canada recognizes the U.S. stake in the northern defense, and would welcome a cooperative defense arrangement--an acceptable maritime NORAD, so to speak. But it takes two to make a deal, and Washington so far remains set on a course of unilateralism.

From Canada’s perspective, the conflict over Arctic sovereignty reflects U.S. priorities under the Reagan Administration. Endless attention is lavished on the Nicaraguan contras , Grenada, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and the like, but urgent problems with Canada are glossed over.

The Canadian-U.S. relationship surely represents one of the great international achievements of the 20th Century, and can withstand much heavy weather. The impasse over Arctic sovereignty will only damage, not destroy, bilateral relations. But friendship works both ways, and it should not be burdened by an issue with the explosive potential of the dispute over Arctic sovereignty.