SACRED ICE
On 16 September 2013, Russia brilliantly carried out a small victorious war.[6] In the Kara Sea the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) forcibly seized the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise. Greenpeace activists had been trying to carry out a peaceful protest on the Prirazlomnaya drilling platform in the Pechora Sea. People armed with automatic weapons landed by helicopter. In the course of the operation warning shots were fired from an AK-74 Kalashnikov rifle and from the gun of a coastal patrol vessel. Then the eco-warriors’ icebreaker was towed into Murmansk, where thirty activists were sentenced by the court to two months’ imprisonment and the Prosecutor’s Office opened a case under article 227 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, ‘For Piracy’, which carries a prison sentence of up to fifteen years.
No one was bothered by the disproportionate nature of the proposed sentence for the crime. If a year earlier three girls from Pussy Riot could each receive two years in prison for singing a punk-prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, then in this case the ecologists had encroached on something far more sacred than a church: a gas platform belonging to Gazprom! This was a clear case of blasphemy! Never mind that the Prirazlomnaya platform was a decommissioned Norwegian platform, had faulty equipment, and was infected with radionuclides; or that they hadn’t been able to use it for two years because of safety violations or its general unprofitability: none of that mattered at all. In the eyes of the siloviki[7] and patriots, the oil platform was a national treasure, a symbol of energy security, of the sovereignty of the state and a forward post in the battle for the resources of the Arctic. This is what explains the cruel actions of the siloviki, the patriotic hysteria whipped up in the press and the typically Russian conspiracy theories which claimed that Greenpeace was acting in the interests of Russia’s Western competitors for the Arctic’s oil.
A resources war has been under way in the Arctic for decades: over the oil and gas deposits on the Shelf, over fishing grounds and over commercial shipping routes. As global warming increases and the Arctic ice continues to melt, the appetites of both states and corporations are being sharpened. The pinnacle for territorial claims so far has been the triumphal planting of a titanium flag of the Russian Federation on the bottom of the Northern Ice Ocean, on the Lomonosov Ridge, to lay claim to Russia’s part of the continental shelf.
The problem is that the biggest loser in this war is Russia itself, irrespective of the volume of Arctic waters it manages to appropriate. The threat to Russia’s future comes not in the territorial claims of competitors, but in the ecological disaster happening right now in the Arctic. If mass industrial mining of hydrocarbons begins there, along with busy commercial shipping, this disaster will quickly turn into a total catastrophe, which will affect Russia most of all because of its extensive Arctic coastline and its reliance on the Arctic ‘air-conditioning’. Oil exploration is the dirtiest sector in Russia (principally because of gas-flaring), and were there to be an accident the tragedy would be many times greater than the explosion that took place on the oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010: in the Arctic waters, it would be possible to collect no more than 10 per cent of the oil which would be spilt.
What’s more, the proven reserves of ‘black gold’ on the Arctic Shelf will last for no more than three to five years. In the Barents Sea, for example, proven reserves are five times less than Russian companies currently produce annually. The oil on the Shelf is ‘heavy’, of inferior quality, and its production cost is significantly higher than oil produced on land. If the global oil price falls lower than one hundred dollars a barrel, then drilling for oil in the Arctic becomes unprofitable.
The real reason for the pursuit of oil in the Arctic, and the way in which this is defended by helicopters and coastal protection vessels, has nothing to do with sovereignty or Russia’s national interests; instead, it is all about the mercenary aims of the oil corporations. The entire Arctic infrastructure, including ice-breakers, exploratory drilling and auxiliary vessels, is paid for out of the state budget. In the same way, tax relief is given for the mining and export of natural resources. Russian people never see any of the oil, since it goes straight from the well-head for export; nor do they see any benefits from the tax deductions from the almost zero profitability of the product.
When questions of the Arctic and the incident with Greenpeace are raised, there’s often talk about sovereignty, about the sacred borders of Russia, about the generations of Polar explorers, about victories and sacrifices. The point is that you can’t put sovereignty into your pocket. Russia can seize huge Arctic territories, but expanding economic activity there simply for the good of a few individual corporations could prove exceedingly costly to the country. Sovereignty means not simply having judicial control over a territory, but having the ability to use it in a rational manner, nurture it and pass it on to future generations. In this understanding of the term, Russia has already lost sovereignty over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of territory, which is saturated with oil, or polluted by radiation or the results of all manner of economic or military activity. Furthermore, as is well known, the fragile nature in the Arctic takes centuries, not years, to recover. Take Novaya Zemlya, with its high background radiation levels; or Wrangel Island, where lie hundreds of thousands of empty fuel barrels that have been spilt over the years. These are shown on the map as Russian territory; but in reality, for the foreseeable future, they have been lost not just to Russia but to all mankind. These sovereign territories have suffered an ecological catastrophe on a global scale.
Beyond the territorial waters of a few individual states, the Arctic is the property of all mankind. A global movement has already existed for several years calling for the Arctic to be regarded as international territory with special conservation status, with economic and military activity prohibited and only science or tourism allowed. Greenpeace’s ‘Save the Arctic’ petition has been signed by more than eight million people. There is already a precedent for this in international law: the 1959 Antarctic Agreement, and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), from 1982. For the preservation of Planet Earth and of the future of Russia, it would be worth extending such a regime to the Arctic.
We’re not talking here about states giving up their sovereignty within the confines of existing borders or territorial waters. And we’re not talking only about Russia, but about all the countries bordering the Arctic. We do mean the possibility of giving up exclusive economic zones and, in general, military activity; about stopping mining for natural resources; about industrial fishing and the transit of commercial shipping. It’s one thing to consider using the Northern Sea Route at present rates and for present tasks, such as supplying Arctic ports or supporting scientific activity. But it would be a completely different matter if, even as the ice continues to melt, a commercial route were to be established through the Arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, providing a waterway for container ships and supertankers, thus turning the Northern Ice Ocean into a busy transport highway with all the high risks this brings for shipping. This must not happen. Like the Antarctic, the Arctic must be turned into an international nature reserve.
6
This is a phrase that has been used to signify a short conflict aimed at distracting the public’s attention from problems in society. It was first used to describe the war against Japan in 1904–5, which went horribly wrong for Russia and ended in defeat. The need for a ‘small victorious war’ was said to be one of the reasons why President Boris Yeltsin started the ultimately humiliating conflict in Chechnya in December 1994, which ended in June 1996 with the Russian Army forced to retreat in shame and disarray.
7
Putin and many in his circle come from the secret police (FSB or its Soviet predecessor, the KGB); the Ministry of Defence; the Armed Forces; or the Ministry of the Interior. Collectively, these are known as ‘the power ministries’, ‘power’ in the sense of strength –