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The Lawfare Podcast
Lawfare Daily: Conversations from Aspen, Part 1: Shashank Joshi on European Security and Iris Ferguson on the Arctic
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- [00:01]
Lawfare Host
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Shashank Joshi
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- [02:08]
Shashank Joshi
But in the very long run, you know, let's say 2000s, if you do have a seriously more capable Europe, I think it's inevitable that it will give European leaders a certain confidence to defy Americans and defy American presidents in ways they haven't in the past. Or at least only some of them have.
- [02:24]
Scott R. Andersen
Thinking of the French over Iraq, it's the Lawfare Podcast.
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Iris Ferguson
I'm Senior editor Scott R. Andersen, and today I'm sharing some of the conversations I had with leading policy experts and practitioners on the margin of this year's Aspen Security Forum, which took place last week. The first conversation you'll hear is with Shashank Joshi, the defense editor for the Economists. We discussed the new dynamics surrounding European security and the path towards and implications of a Europe less dependent on the United States for its defense.
- [02:53]
Policy Expert
Could there be a deal on the Arctic to help build economic prosperity between the United States and Russia and have the Arctic be a place of cooperation? That's one angle. And then the other side is to say, like, we don't need to give any favors to Russia because they don't deserve to be partnered with at all.
- [03:11]
Iris Ferguson
You'll then hear me talk with Iris Ferguson, who was until recently the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience and is now at the center for Strategic International Studies. We talked about the strategic significance of the Arctic and how it plays into the modern dynamics of major power competition. This is only part one of two, so be sure to tune in later this week for more conversations from Aspen. Here's my conversation with Shashank Joshi, defense editor for the Economist.
- [03:39]
Scott R. Andersen
So, Shashank, let me start with this. You moderate a phenomenally interesting panel to kick us off for this weekend with a number of European officials talking about Ukraine. What comes after Ukraine? Ukraine is a seminal moment. It's proven to be a turning point for how Europeans think about security and their collective security. It's no longer Western security. It's not NATO, still a big part of it. It's not necessarily the driver idea that we need to have a European security model. What surprised you from that panel? What did you take away from it? What did it tell you about the trajectory of European thinking on defense, collective defense, and where we think it might be headed in this moment, where the Trump administration's commitment to European security, while still there, is nonetheless in doubt because of his past statements and rhetoric about Europeans alliances, et cetera.
- [04:26]
Shashank Joshi
Well, hi, Scott, thanks so much for having me back on. Great to be back on in these beautiful alpine surroundings. Look, let's take a step back. I was at the Munich Security Conference in February, and that was a strangely traumatic moment for Europe because you had Pete Hegseth in Brussels telling European allies, look, you're on your own. You need to lead on conventional defense. Then you had J.D. vance giving his incredibly pugnacious speech at the Munich security conference telling Europeans that they were feckless effect repressive societies that needed to get over themselves, causing, you know, conniptions within among European Europe security elite. And then you had Donald Trump the same day, opening talks with Russia over Ukraine, which we sort of knew was coming, but shocked everyone. So the mood was mutinous, panicked, traumatic. We know, where is America going? Could America just walk out of Europe? Could he walk out of NATO as he came close to doing in his first term? Could he withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops from Europe? Could he abandon Ukraine at a stroke and sell Ukraine out to Putin? Fast forward several months. You know, we're talking here now in July, the mood is totally different in Europe. It's much, much more assured, much more calm. The NATO summit at the Hague, which I attended, was seen as a very positive event. Donald Trump attended. He didn't cause great ructions. He praised NATO as he left allies agreed a new defence spending target of 5% of GDP on defence, 3.5% on defense, plus 1.5% on infrastructure and defense related spending. So there is this collective sense of things changing. There is much less acute concern about America's posture in Europe and its abandonment of the continent. There's a recognition that we now maybe have a number of years to have an orderly transition in European security, rather than a chaotic, disorderly transition, which would be much harder to manage, and a sense that we're stepping up to make that transition serious. However, I think there is a trust deficit. And whilst Ukraine policy for European, European perspective is moving in a good direction, with Donald Trump saying that he will keep selling weapons to Ukraine through Europe, that he will stay involved, the intelligence to Ukraine is still flowing, we should say there are still some US weapons flowing that are contracted under the Biden administration that I understand are still flowing. So that's all for the good. But nobody quite understands whether that will remain the case, whether after Donald Trump's 50 day deadline, he will change his mind again. And finally, within Europe, as we saw on this panel, where I had contrasting views from the former Icelandic Foreign Minister Tordis Gilva Dotir, and from Wolfgang Schmidt, who was the former head of the German Chancellery, very close to Olaf Scholz, this view that on Ukraine, Ukrainians must win, we must help them win, we're still too weak. And the more German view, which was, let's be realistic, we need to think about a settlement. I think those two strands of thought still coexist and they are yet to be reconciled in Europe, if that makes sense.
- [07:37]
Scott R. Andersen
So we've got this new plan where the Europeans have bought in to be funding American arms sales to Ukraine. I'm dramatically simplifying the overall rate, essentially European money, American arms. There's a Strong logic to that because Americans have certain unique capabilities. They've got already provided a bunch of equipment to the Ukrainians. So you have the classic supply tail problem that you have with any sort of arms sale arrangement, but that still means a lot of spending. I'm assuming that falls in the 5% cap for a lot of the countries that are contributing to that. Whatever the fund is that's going to go to Ukraine is still being channeled through the United States. It's not building an indigenous defense industry or capability, something we've heard talk about the need for time and time again. What are the barriers to that indigenous capability and what are the drivers for it in relation to Ukraine? Is it a Ukraine problem? Is there an absent Ukraine? Is there going to be a motivation to develop that capability within Europe? Are we seeing real steps in that direction?
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Shashank Joshi
First of all, I think it's important to understand that whilst Europeans will buy some American weapons, that that is still a minority of overall European spending, I would guess. The French, I think, have said they will not be buying American weapons. This is quite understandable from a French perspective. Very proud of their indigenous defence industry and would like to prioritize it. The Brits are spending about 3 billion a year on support for Ukraine that is embedded within our defence budget. We count it as defence spending, rightly or wrongly, and I would imagine a lot of that is on British weapons. A lot of that is on paying for a drawdown of capabilities we had in our stockpiles and then replacing it. But I think it is true that there is an ongoing debate as to should Europe be buying whatever it takes to get weapons into the hands of its own armed forces, which is an acute problem given that the British army has given away all its artillery to Ukraine. Should it be buying European weapons at whatever it takes to get it into the hands of the Ukrainians? And in some cases stuff we can't make, like Patriot anti ballistic missile interceptors because it's so urgent you buy it from wherever it is, whether that's South Korea, the United States, Turkey, or do you say this is a historic opportunity to put more money into a European defence industrial base and prioritize that. And that's what the French would like to see, that's what the European Commission would like to see, to say let's build shell capacity here so we're not buying it from the outside. The problem is twofold. One of them is if you need it now, there is stuff you just cannot buy in Europe. There's a capacity constraint. It's not a money constraint. You could throw billions of dollars at the problem. You are not going to buy lots of highly effective anti ballistic missile interceptors from a European company. It isn't going to happen. So you have to buy it from outside if you want it now. If you want lots of tanks right now, you know, Rheinmetall and, and, and others are not going to be able to give you the whole stock that you need. You'll have to look to the outside world, which is why Poland is buying so many South Korean tanks. They need it now, not because they love South Korea. The second problem, Scott, as you probably know very well, is that, you know, we're not a single market when it comes to defence. We're effectively a, a coalition of what, 30 plus countries if you, depending on how you count the United Kingdom, Turkey, non EU powers who are developing their own tanks, their own air defense systems, their own guns. And there are some common projects. You know, we're building in the UK a sixth generation combat aircraft with the Italians and the Japanese. The French are building one with the Germans and the Spanish. There's a future main battle tank being collaborated with the French and the Germans. The so many, many examples of collaborate, collaboration, stitching together defence industry. And the European Union is trying to encourage that by saying, you know, you need to do more of this in house production, incontinent production, but ultimately we have a fragmented industry and it's easy to say from the outside, hey, why don't you guys just agree on building one type of submarine or one type of frigate until you go to the countries and the French say, sounds good, we'll build most of it, right? And you can build the propeller at the back. And others will say, the Spanish will say, no, you do the propeller at the back, we'll do the rest of it. So these defence industrial disagreements are very natural in a fragmented continent of 30 powers, many of whom have big mature defence industries of their own. Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden in the case of Saab and air power and very good jets. So again and again you run into these fragmentation problems.
- [11:49]
Scott R. Andersen
So arms is one part of the equation for a stronger indigenous European defense capability, but another part of it is funding, which we see is maybe the most progress being made, at least so far in its commitments. The third point we haven't heard a lot talk about is cultural. It's the idea of military service. Levels of military service, voluntary participation, size of the military is unique in Europe in that you have a lot of different cultural perspectives on this, you have the Baltic, Scandinavian states, where there is a strong program for mandatory public service and military service in most cases, although I know there are outs in various capacities. Particularly you look at Finland, you know, more recent NATO member, strong, strong tradition in that regard. For most of Europe, that's become a pretty alien idea. Military conscription, participation rates historically low, although I know they've kind of ticked up in the last few years, as I understand it. Are we seeing progress in that direction about moving towards finding new ways to develop a stronger military personnel capability, either as a standing military or as a reserve capacity, which is obviously something that is really central to the American defense sort of capabilities that I'm not sure is as prevalent a concept in a lot of European countries. I don't believe it is. Oh, I'm not sure.
- [12:53]
Shashank Joshi
I think you're absolutely right to identify the east, west split. And there are countries outside of Eastern Europe that are renewing that old debate on, look, we're looking at Ukraine. We know that our regular army, regular armies can get queued up in the field in a year of conflict. Something has to replace them. So we need to think about this. Boris Pistorius, the German defense Minister, has tried to initiate a conversation on this. He struggled, I think, in the uk, Patrick Sanders, one of the former army chiefs, talked about. He didn't use the word conscription, but the press portrayed his words as implying conscription. And it caused a huge public ruckus that spooked Downing street and the political leadership, and they panicked. So it's hard to have a mature conversation on this without panicking societies that don't feel as though they are imminently at war, unless, of course, you are a frontline state where you feel the war is very close. So there's that problem, and I think we're a very long way from solving it. Very long way from solving it. The British army, you know, we. In the latest Defense Review published a month ago, there is an aspiration to grow the army for the first time in years, but from 73,000 to 76,000. Tiny amount, but we're not even able to meet current target. So there's a recruitment problem here as well. How do you fix this? Is it more money? Is it a culture of service? We do not have the answer to this. But one thing I want to say is I think I like the way you frame this as the culture, because it's not just a culture of service, military service. It's the whole culture of the military as a whole, of military power and the utility of military Force. And I want to give some credit where it's due. In other places like the Germans are deploying a full brigade of forces, an armored brigade to Lithuania. Now, to people who are not familiar with European history, that's a big deal. The German army is in the Baltics. There is some history there. Right. You just have to look at the evening with the passing familiarity of World War II, knows the map and knows the history of Eastern Europe, will know that that's a sensitive thing. Some dark things happened. So now to see them welcomed with open arms enthusiastically, and the Germans willing to do this, a country that, you know, the first major, I think, post war operation was the Luftwaffe flying missions over Kosovo in 99 in the airside, for example. This is not easy for the culture of Germany. It's not easy for the culture of others to welcome this. That's a huge change. I think we really have to identify that now. Some places you talk to Baltic ministers and they'll, they'll openly say, yeah, the aim is to kill Russian, we want to kill Russians. You wouldn't get, you know, a British defense minister saying it in quite those terms. The culture's different. But I think we have to grow comfortable with the idea that war could happen to us, it could happen here. It's not something that just happens far away. And the other way this is manifest is much, much more thinking on domestic resilience. What happens if we get hit by missiles and cyberattacks like Ukraine? Do we have bunkers? Do we have redundancy? Do we have redundancy of communication and cabling? Do we know how to communicate to our public on staying calm? Those conversations are happening to a far greater extent, more than even just 18 months, two years ago. And I count that as part of the cultural shift that you're alluding to.
- [15:51]
Scott R. Andersen
So we've seen this question of the European defense capability really rise to the fore since the first Trump administration and doubled down amplified massively since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when for the first time in a generation, war on Europe's threshold is major war. It was really a reality that people had to confront. In both cases, the driver for it was an idea that the American commitment was waning because of the Trump administration's kind of eccentric views towards alliances and towards Europe, because of the political constraints on, even under the Biden administration, continuing support for Ukraine at the levels and then genuine disagreement to some extent about the types of support we should give the Ukraine. But as you noted at the beginning of our conversation, there's A little bit of pressure has been alleviated there. There's a sense that even under the second Trump administration, the United States is not going to run away from its security commitments in Europe. US Troops are still stationed there. There's no signs of major shifts in that regard yet, although we have three and a half more years, so that could change. Still talk of withdrawing from NATO. That sort of thing has really waned. We've got this big 5% target that checks a lot of boxes for the Trump administration, frankly. My sense is that European diplomats and NATO diplomats understand how to work the Trump administration more than they used to. And they do still have a couple quiet allies on high levels of the inside of the Trump administration, helping to kind of echo their message and get it to the president and get it through. Dim does that leave any that pressure? Particularly if the Americans really remain committed to supporting Ukraine, as the Trump administration, at least this week seems to be inclined to do, is that going to undermine the quest for European defense capability? Are those the drivers for that indigenous capability that you need, that sort of pressure to get through all the fractious national politics that Europe inherently has without the external pressure? Can you bridge this?
- [17:37]
Shashank Joshi
I think it's a really useful point because you started our conversation by saying Ukraine was an inflection point for Europe, and it was, but it cannot be avoided. We can't avoid pointing out that Ukraine's been going on for three years. There's European Zeitenwende. The kind of collective turning point is not really occurring in 2022 or 2023 or 2024. It's the re election of Donald Trump. Some might argue that that shames us, that it takes a US President to trigger that rather than the Russian invasion of the continent. So that's interesting, isn't it? And you're right. If Trump is less scary, to put it simply, and we are less scared, maybe we take fewer dramatic steps. I think hopefully that's not the case because we all understood we were kind of paralyzed by the magnitude of the task. We all know how important America is to European security, not just in terms of raw and fruit numbers, but critical enabling capabilities. Right? We all know them by now. Air to air refueling, intelligence, geospatial capabilities, airlift, sea lift, air power, suppression of air defenses, the whole things that we can't do ourselves. Air defense, another one. We need about 10 years to build all that up. So on the one hand, you can get complacent and think, yeah, Trump's okay, he'll stick around, it'll go back to normal after he's left. We can have to worry about this. But I think the mood today is we have bought ourselves a bit of time. We must use this window to generate momentum. I think the spending commitments at NATO are real. Three and a half percent of defense GDP on defense is a big uplift from current levels, a huge uplift. You know, just to give you a picture of this, by the end of the decade on current trajectory, Germany will be spending twice as much on defense as Britain. Like, I can't tell you how remarkable that is from the perspective of the last 30 years in Europe. And by the way, all of that will go on conventional capabilities, whereas we spend in the UK 20% of that on nuclear capabilities. So this is a real shift. So to directly answer the question, I don't know whether momentum will be lost as we have a more pliable administration, but I think that something has really changed in Europe this time.
- [19:53]
Scott R. Andersen
So one last question for you. Looking further ahead, and this is a little bit of a hypothetical, but I think it's an interesting kind of thought exercise. Assume Europe gets closer to having an indigenous defense capability that meets its security needs against Russia, against other threats. Maybe it's not a rival for the United States massive military capabilities, but does enough that they no longer feel beholden to the American security umbrella. What does that do politically for Europe and Europe's foreign policy? There was an idea early in the post war era of Europe having an independent foreign policy. The idea of the west wasn't the natural concept. It seems to so many now, being a joint US European, broad vision of the world, that in fact, the United States was on one flank, the Soviet Union at the time, the other flank, and Europe had kind of a different vision, probably leaning a little bit toward the Americans than Soviet Union, but an independent vision of foreign policy that has not really been a reality for most of the 20th century. Europeans don't agree with Americans, obviously, on lots. There's lots of points of disagreement, but they nonetheless have gone lockstep with each other on the big questions. And that has sometimes been painful for a number of Europeans because that's entailed a lot of compromises or a lot of working with Americans, even though Americans do things they don't like, like invading Iraq, and sometimes they pull some European allies along with them as well. Is more indigenous defense capability a vehicle for a truly independent European foreign policy? Or are there other factors that are gonna lead to a continuation of US European close coordination around the sort of issues? I mean, is that was it a major power competition or something else? I mean, what does a truly independent Europe on the defense side mean for your political and diplomatic?
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Shashank Joshi
If we agree with the premise that we have a long period of transition in which there is still considerable European dependency on America, I think that would be quite a constraining factor here. So I don't think that this gives Europe the license to say we can break with you on everything because we are self sufficient now until we get to the 2000 and 30s and we really feel like we're in a new world. I also feel like even in that situation of greater European self sufficiency, it isn't going to be a clean break. We're still going to have a lot of American involvement in Europe and I think these are going to be joint theaters. If there's a war in Asia, there are genuine concerns that Russia may take advantage in Europe and there will need to be a sort of joint approach to these kinds of questions in a conflict scenario as well. So that gives me pause. But I don't think we can isolate that conversation to defense because what we have seen is not just an America that is pulling back on its role as the primary guarantor of European security, we're seeing an America more broadly that is redefining its place in the world and is basically not only abandoning that aspiration to a rules based order, but views it as actively hostile to American interests on any number of things. From the role of the United nations, the role of the ICC on trade particularly. And on trade you see Europe very concerned basically at war with America over that issue, regardless of its dependency on defense. So I suspect that despite those defense dependencies, you will see a little bit more of this. And the way it will manifest in the most interesting way is China policy. Do we see Europeans collectively say, should we be hedging more by reaching out to the Chinese particularly to mitigate our trading dependency on America? Or actually is China just as much of a trading threat to us on these issues? But on core issues like the Iranian nuclear program or Gaza on the Middle East, I think you are already seeing the Europeans break with the US a little bit. But in the very long run, you know, let's say 2000 and 40s, if you do have a seriously more capable Europe, I think it's inevitable that it will give European leaders a certain confidence to defy Americans and defy American presidents in ways they haven't in the past, or at least only some of them have. Thinking of the French over Iraq, and I wonder if sometimes, if the Americans have fully thought through what that looks like because you have the Biden administration that viewed allies as basically critical to its ability to compete with the China to have that scale. And the Trump administration views ally as this irritant, you know, nuisance free riding, you know, parasites. And I don't know if they're prepared for that world where Europeans may break with them more sharply and aggressively. But maybe that simply won't be a problem within the lifespan of this administration. Eight years. Sorry, excuse me. Four years. Three and a half years.
- [24:22]
Scott R. Andersen
We'll see.
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Shashank Joshi
I hope given the future of your constitutional system, over which period there will still be considerable dependency. So I think these questions, as you say, are for the very long run, perfect.
- [24:33]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, I think that's a great note to end on. Shanjiang, thanks for joining us here today on the Lawfare podcast.
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Shashank Joshi
Thank you so much for having me back on.
- [24:40]
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- [29:08]
Iris Ferguson
Now let's go to my conversation with Iris Ferguson, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience.
- [29:16]
Scott R. Andersen
So Iris, you are now at the center for Strategic International Studies. But you were, until recently, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Arctic and Global Resilience. I believe I have the sequence of those. Right. That's an interesting thing to have a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for, I think. Talk to us about why you have somebody committed to the Arctic and its relationship to global resilience, why those two concepts are joined in this one position in the agency responsible for our military strategy.
- [29:42]
Policy Expert
Yeah, really great question. So the position came about, I think, through a couple of different drivers. One was a growing recognition within the department about the increasing strategic importance of the Arctic and the fact that if you didn't have an office dedicated to it specifically to integrate across the various components of the Department of Defense that deal with the Arctic, all the different commands, the different services, and also the allies and partners, that you would not necessarily have a cohesive strategy or be able to execute on a cohesive strategy. The second is a huge congressional demand from specifically the Alaska delegation. And they actually wrote in to one of the NDAA several years ago, the requirement to create some kind of office in a DASD like for the Arctic. And when the Biden administration created this office on Arctic issues, they also wanted to fold in global resilience as a whole. So I think you can make the argument DASDI offices are unique. There's also only so many of them. And so if you're going to create one, you want them to do as much as they possibly can, and so you often have as much mission thrown into office as possible.
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Scott R. Andersen
Spoken of somebody who held one of those positions, obviously.
- [30:54]
Policy Expert
Indeed, in the global Resilience part of the portfolio was really about trying to identify risk globally for our combatant commands from an environmental perspective, thinking about different climate risk and drivers and instability that could be created, but also about leveraging energy technology that was coming into market and how you could do so with your allies and partners, with an eye towards interoperability, but also ensuring that the United States had, in the Department of Defense, had a strategic advantage in trying to leverage technology in a rapid and fast way, we also were looking very closely at critical minerals and defense diplomacy as part of that side of the office as well.
- [31:29]
Scott R. Andersen
So those seem like, on the surface, three pretty distinct concepts. You know, energy resilience, climate. I'm sure if it's in there to some extent, critical minerals and the Arctic. But they are intricately interwoven. Talk to us about how they're interwoven and. And why that makes the Arctic such a ripe space for major power competition, as has really proven to be over the last two to three years.
- [31:52]
Policy Expert
In particular, the Arctic is one of those places where it kind of has all of the things that's what makes it exciting place to spend time intellectually, but also be a practitioner. You've got homeland defense issues, you have national security issues, you've got missile defense, you've got allies and partners, and you also have environmental issues, and you also have large numbers of resources at stake. So that, you know, getting to your question, I think this interconnectivity of where they all overlap and what is US Interest in trying to secure those? That's the premise, right, of. Of some of these offices and certainly of US Interests for the Arctic. It's part of our homeland. It's where we see a location that can be vulnerable to our adversaries who can hold our homeland at risk by having missiles that could come over the Pole and attack us. It's why we have a lot of our missile defense architecture in the Arctic. It's also a place to project power from. That's why we have an immense amount of our fighter capability in and around Alaska. But it's also a place where we want to make sure that we have a strategic stronghold, that we don't allow our competitors to break the vulnerabilities that may exist there. And so ensuring that we are showing that we have the right defenses in place, ensuring that we have the right protections in place to protect our territory, is really critical component. And so this is why we want to make sure that as we're posturing or putting forward resourcing decisions or various policy positions that we're thinking about, not only the military part of that, but also the broader, like economic security and diplomatic security that the follow us.
- [33:19]
Scott R. Andersen
So the Arctic's a more dynamic environment than a lot of people might realize because we have climate change that's opening new waterways, opening new land that's accessible access to critical minerals, among other resources, new maritime routes that. That can open up whole new corners of the world that aren't in the Arctic otherwise previously didn't have routes too. And importantly, the Arctic is one of those domains where two of the three big major powers, plus Europe, a major power in its own way, although a little not necessarily the same unitary concept, all have a seat right around the Arctic. So talk to us about what we've been seeing in the major power competition domain in the Arctic in the last few years. That's really change. As we've seen this dynamic environment. We know the Trump administration has talked a lot about Greenland, which, despite some criticisms of the way it's approached, it did successfully identify in the first term Greenland being a major strategic interest, something the Biden administration doubled down on to some extent, a lot of ways reflecting this broader Arctic interest. But we're hearing a lot about in the context of Greenland and other Arctic issues, competition with Russia. So talk to us about what Russia is doing and why that's a source of concern for the United States and Europe to some extent.
- [34:26]
Policy Expert
Well, I think these changes that you're seeing in the Arctic are part of kind of a broader global, like, look at some of our competitors and what they're up to. But you kind of see it like, perhaps most acutely in the Arctic region. Russia, you know, has a significant amount of territory in the Arctic region. Some 25% of their GDP comes from the Arctic. They have real economic security issues, but also national security concerns that they have for the region. They have continued to invest heavily in the Arctic region, including looking at refurbishing of their military bases and a lot of their potentially offensive assets, despite the attrition in Ukraine. So you. I think there was an expectation that, well, maybe with the war in Ukraine, they wouldn't be able to invest as much, but we haven't necessarily seen that. It might have slowed, but there's still a heavy, heavy emphasis on building up the Northern Sea Route in particular. And that's where China has come in pretty aggressively in terms of financing a lot of the activity and a lot of the extraction of natural resources that have come out of the Northern Sea Route area, and including some recent deals that were announced with Russia and China on doubling down on trying to develop the Northern Sea Route. China is an interesting character for the Arctic region. They've tried to insert themselves into larger governance mechanisms and trying to really exert their view of the world and that it being a global commons versus a place of national sovereignty, which obviously is Arctic States. Arctic States really want to kind of keep that close to their chest. They say, like, we should only be the ones that are deciding what's going on in the Arctic. We don't want others to be dictating what is happening in the region. But China has tried to make the case that this is part of the Global Commons, and therefore we should have a seat at trying to dictate what's going on in the region. We've seen them, like I said, have pretty heavy economics partnership with Russia. We've also seen them try to have access to many of the Arctic states through various port infrastructure or mining possibilities in Greenland. A lot of that has been turned down. There's actually a really good report out of Harvard in the last month that really shined a light on where there has been Chinese investment in the Arctic. And it's actually not been that much outside of Russia. And that's largely due to the Arctic allies pushing back in, having an eyes wide open approach, or a little bit more of a cautionary approach as to the motivations from for China and what they would want to be accessing there and maybe the potential for a long term foothold in the region versus it just being a simple transaction where there's been increased security challenges is the cooperation that we've seen between Russia and China. And that was something that has been a bit eye opening, especially for the Pentagon. We released the DoD Arctic Strategy, the first one in a number of years, last summer in 2024. And just one week after that strategy was released, we saw the first ever combined bomber campaign between Russia and China off the coast of Alaska. Prior to that, we've seen joint naval patrols. There's also a coast guard in Maranda. Understanding that kind of military cooperation has been very startling to the department. And also I think it's one of the few areas in the world where you've seen that kind of partnership in and around the Arctic in particular, but globally, you have not seen that kind of partnership between the two of them. So there's been a little bit of thinking, I think, happening within the department about how you respond to that effectively. And that's why we put out a DoD Arctic strategy to try to get after it.
- [37:51]
Scott R. Andersen
So that's a wonderful picture you've painted about Russian Chinese coordination around a fairly consolidated strategic mission for the Arctic for a long time. I think it's fair to say the Biden administration really emphasized working, coordinating with other Arctic allies. Europe and I neglected to mention Canada, of course, very important Arctic power as well. Traditional allies of the United States, close allies of the United States. But we have seen some friction with that in the new administration. Greenland being a point of friction, obviously, friction around trade issues, other issues with Canada. How does the Trump administration's vision of advancing US Interests in the Arctic differ from the Biden administrations in good ways and bad? Are they less reliant on allies? Is it just a different type of relationship with allies? And what are they doing instead of working through allies to advance U.S. interests?
- [38:38]
Policy Expert
Yeah, I think this is, it's a bit of a, like, murky picture so far. It feels like from someone who's Kind of on the outside looking in at some of the rhetoric that we've seen. I think, you know, on one hand, you see a real emphasis on homeland defense and on protecting American interests and on actual investments. And so in that sense, like, I want to give credit to the Trump administration for really moving quickly to some extent and putting some real money behind homeland defense beyond just rhetoric. And that's including through potentially golden dome. There will always have to be priority trade offs within the department to kind of see some of that come to fruition. They've hood investments into icebreakers, which has long been a challenge to get across the budgetary line. They're looking at added infrastructure within Alaska and in the Arctic in particular. Those are, I think, welcome additions to ensuring that the United States is actually looking after its homeland and Arctic priorities. On the same another turn, I think some of the rhetoric towards our allies and partners has not been incredibly helpful. I mean, anyone that looks at the Arctic region recognizes that it's incredibly expensive, it's very hard to operate, and you really can't.
- [39:52]
Scott R. Andersen
I hear it's a little cold there.
- [39:53]
Policy Expert
It's a little cold, yeah. And it's just, it's really tricky from a material perspective, but also from a survivability perspective. And then the build times and the cost, there's like four times what is normal. And so you need to rely on your allies and partners not only for potential capability, acquisition and trying to have interoperability, interoperability with one another, but they have a lot of experience operating in the region that you can leverage there also is that they can hold down the fort in other parts of the Arctic that you might not be able to get to, and you can kind of rely on them when there's rhetoric that tries to erode at that trust that I, that's not helpful. Right. And so I, you know, I think that there needs to be a hard look in what is of like what we're achieving by some of the rhetoric and making sure that we're, that I think we're still maintaining the partnership that's really requisite to ensure US Arctic security because it's heavily reliant on our allies and partners.
- [40:45]
Scott R. Andersen
So we have a clear sense the Arctic is a priority. I think everybody seems to recognize that kind of across the political spectrum, Trump administration certainly does has for a while now, since Trump won out where there was a real emphasis there. We know we have China and Russia prioritizing it. And any place where you see these countries entering into a new territory, a question that comes to my mind maybe because I'm international lawyer by training. So it comes with is the question of governance. How do you channel competition, conflict, competing claims in a way that can avoid having to resort to force of arms, among other priorities, hopefully achieving some of your social justice and other objectives as well. So talk about the governance structure in the Arctic. What do we have that works? What do we have that doesn't work? And how did the Biden administration. Is the Trump administration engaging in it?
- [41:34]
Policy Expert
Yeah, the governance of the Arctic is a little bit tricky, and it's evolved over time. And the preeminent governance structure for the region is the Arctic Council, and that's primarily led out of the State Department, and it's primarily around safety and science and environmental safety. And it's really critical for information sharing and for working on a myriad of projects, also building trust with all the Arctic partners. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it really caused a pause to the efficacy of the Arctic Council. They were not allowed to basically participate in Arctic Council meetings. And there's been a heavy look at what the Russian participation should look like going forward. It's hard because I think that there are a lot of Arctic followers and advocates that really want the Arctic to be exceptional. They want to have it be a place of peace and stability. But the reality is that it's just part of the globe. We're always competing with other nation states. And so I think you want, on one hand, to keep the region stable and secure and leverage existing governance mechanisms where they can be, but also recognize the realism of what other countries are doing. And so I think the Arctic Council will continue to play a role in building rapport and have scientific projects that go forward with one another. Unclear, quite frankly, what this administration's policy is towards Russia. It seems to evolve quite frequently based off of the level of trust between Putin and between Trump. And so that's a bit of an unknown where Russia will fall and where Arctic will fall in the broad equation of partnerships that I think you even saw in some of the Ukraine talks early on. Could there be a deal on the Arctic to help build economic prosperity between the United States and Russia and have the Arctic be a place of cooperation? That's one angle, and then there's the other side, is to say we don't need to give any favors to Russia because they don't deserve to be partnered with at all? So unclear where this administration falls with that. What has been challenging about the Arctic Council is that it doesn't include security. Security. And it very intentionally doesn't have security as part of the conversation. The military is not allowed in. And so one of the things that we did when I was in the dad's ship position was to build a forum that could actually talk about Arctic security. And we built the Arctic Security Policy Roundtable, which was my counterparts from the other Arctic allies to be able to talk about the threat picture, be able to share intelligence, to be able to say, are you seeing what we're seeing? And I think that's increasingly important because the European Arctic is not the same as the North American Arctic. The European Arctic has more population, it's a little bit warmer. They also don't have the same types of activity as what happened is happening over in the North American Arctic. I remember very vividly several years ago going to one of the Arctic forums and talking to some counterparts from Arctic nations, talking about what we were seeing in Alaska, this cooperation with Russia and China, that China was actively doing a lot of research off the coast of coast of Alaska. And I remember one of the my counterparts from another nation saying, what do you mean China's not active in the Arctic? And I was thinking, wow, you are not seeing the world the same way that we are. We have a very different vantage of what the Arctic means. And so that forum was meant to try to build a common picture and look at where we can start to work with one another. And I think NATO is a great, you know, another game changing geopolitical change was the accession of Sweden and Finland, NATO and NATO really starting to grapple with what it means to protect the northern flank. And you heard here at Aspen Security Forum that Condoleezza Rice confessing herself that as Secretary of State, she didn't spend as much time on the Arctic as she probably could have. But that one of the silver linings of the invasion of Ukraine has been a really hard concerted effort in and amongst the European partners to take a look at what we need. And I think that NATO has a real possibility to start to think about exercises and planning and capability advocacy that kind of benefits not only the European nation, but also obviously Canada and the US by getting after some of our collective security interests.
- [45:43]
Scott R. Andersen
So I'm going to do the thing that I know policymakers and think tankers hate the worst sort of question, which is, I want you to look into the future and predict things. They'll feel free to plead the fifth on any part of this. We have a certain trajectory around the Arctic. It's one towards enhanced competition. Nothing hot yet, but you do hear about tensions, incidents increasing Incidents of kind of gray warfare, particularly, I would say, on behalf by the Russians seeking to exercise influence, push back, disable certain activities. Meanwhile, you've seen the United States and its allies use economic sanctions to severely delay, although not stop, LNG development in the Arctic by Russia as part of kind of the broader effort to target energy infrastructure. I'm sure its military buildup has been slowed by sanctions to some degree as well. So there clearly is a strong element of direct competition happening. Where does that lead us in 10 years? Is it that the Arctic ceases to be what it has been thus far for a lot of the 20th century, which is something like a global commons, primarily, like you said, a focus of scientific research, but instead it becomes another territory where there are resources and maritime routes and these sorts of tensions. How complicated does that get? How sustainable does that get? Where is our current trajectory leading and how big a problem is that? Could that be? Or is there kind of a natural equilibrium to settle into among the Arctic states that they might be able to return to? Like I said, it's a question everyone hates. So feel free to plead the fifth on every part of it.
- [47:13]
Policy Expert
But I appreciate it because it's. You kind of have to grapple with those kind of questions as you think about, like, what is. What does right policy look like to get you to your end, state that you want it to be right. I think that there's a couple of drivers that are like, unstoppable, and one of those is climate change. Right. I think we've tried as a globe to prevent it, but it's still happening. So there's a bit of climate realism happening about what is going to happen when inevitably ice starts to break faster. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world. There's still a lot of lack of clarity around some of the predictive modeling. I don't know. The cuts that recently have been announced to some of the scientific efforts by the Trump administration are not great for our security interests in the sense that we don't necessarily know or have as many sensors out in and around the region to be able to accurately predict changes. That being said, some of the studies have shown that by 2050, it will be ice free. And that's obviously, there's nuance to ice free. There's still ice. It's just a matter of it being more navigable year round versus it just being in parts of the year. And the Transpolar route is the one that goes across the Pole, which is kind of. That's the game changing route that if that were to come to fruition, that is game changing for global trade routes just in general, what does that infrastructure look like that surrounds that opportunity? I think that's, that's what we'll, we'll see what happens in the next 10 years. What's game changing, and this is somewhat partially due to the Trump administration and the rhetoric around allies and partners, is that there's a real emphasis from our partners in taking a hard look at what they need themselves domestically. So you see obviously the increase in spending from our European partners in NATO, but you also see that with Canada, see a dramatic declarations of like increasing defense spending and infrastructure spending by, you know, three, four, four times what it was predicted to be before. So I think a lot of that potential funding will go towards infrastructure and capabilities in the Arctic region in particular. And so you'll be able to access the region with greater ease and with higher levels of safety than you have, especially in the North American Arctic before. If I were to look 10, 20 years down the line, and I think for us to make sure that we're protecting our interests, we need to make sure that we have the right domain awareness assets, that we're seeing threats effectively, but that we're also investing in the right communications architecture and the right search and rescue styles of architecture, understanding how to detect potential environmental disasters which inevitably, with higher human footprint, there's a higher likelihood of that happening. So my hope is that this region is able to develop peacefully and stably where every actor is cognizant of what one another is doing and so that there's a lack of misinterpretation that could lead to escalation. I will say that no one wants to go to war in the Arctic.
- [50:01]
Scott R. Andersen
It would be terrible, very few places to go to or would not be terrible. But fair enough, but particularly terrible perhaps in the Arctic. Well, a phenomenally interesting part of the world and a phenomenally interesting conversation about it. Thank you, Iris for joining us.
- [50:13]
Policy Expert
Yeah, thank you. Pleasure to be here.
- [50:18]
Iris Ferguson
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- [51:01]
Carol
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Shashank Joshi
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