New Wikileaks revelations shed light on Arctic oil “carve-up”

Greenpeace: …New revelations by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks show how the scramble for resources in the Arctic is sparking military tension in the region – with NATO sources worried about the potential for armed conflict between the alliance and Russia.

The release of previously unpublished US embassy cables also shows the extent to which Russia is maneuvering to claim ownership over huge swathes of the Arctic, with one senior Moscow source revealing that a Russian explorer’s famous submarine expedition to plant a flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole was ordered by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. One cable details the lengths to which the U.S. is going to carve out a strong position in Greenland, and the concerns Washington has over Chinese maneuvering on the Danish autonomous island.

The dispatch states: “Our intensified outreach to the Greenlanders will encourage them to resist any false choice between the United States and Europe. It will also strengthen our relationship with Greenland vis-a-vis the Chinese, who have shown increasing interest in Greenland's natural resource.”

Tensions within NATO are also exposed, as Canadian leaders privately express disquiet over the alliance’s mooted plans to project military force in the Arctic in the face of perceived Russian aggression. Recently re-elected Canadian PM Stephen Harper is quoted by diplomats as saying that a NATO presence in the region would give non-Arctic members of the Western alliance too much influence in an area where “they don’t belong”.

Meanwhile the Norwegian foreign minister relates privately how, during his March 2009 visit to Moscow, he sarcastically thanked his Russian counterpart Lavrov “for making it so much easier to justify the Joint Strike Fighter purchase to the Norwegian public, given Russia's regular military flights up and down Norway's coast.”

In another cable U.S. diplomats refer to “the potential of increased military threats in the Arctic.” A further U.S. diplomatic dispatch states that “behind Russia's (Arctic) policy are two potential benefits accruing from global warming: the prospect for an (even seasonally) ice-free shipping route from Europe to Asia, and the estimated oil and gas wealth hidden beneath the Arctic sea floor.”

The cables were published today on the website www.wikileaks.ch....

An Arctic scene, shot by Viajeropolar2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported