The Economist May 16th 2020 pp42
Naval Strategy “Northern fights”. “America and Britain mount a show of force in the arctic”
At the top of the world, the Barents Sea “is not a hospitable place for visitors”. Until just this May 1stNATO-“American and British warships have not exercised there since the 1980s”. From there the North-east passage runs outward past Severomorsk (Russian Northern Fleet HQ) towards Norway and the Northern sea route (NSR), which is increasingly accessible as ice melts, along the Northern Russian border to the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. Russian interests are partly defensive but NATO’s concerns are protecting Atlantic undersea cables and reestablishing freedom of navigation “in the face or Russia’s imposition of rules” on the NSR. As the planet warms, the world gets colder.
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