Russia, China push back after U.S. Arctic strategy flags military cooperation

Russia and China defy U.S. warning on Arctic cooperation amid climate change impacts and growing military presence.

Russia and China on Tuesday pushed back against a U.S. warning over their increasing military and economic cooperation in the Arctic, where climate change is opening greater competition.

Russia has in recent years beefed up its military presence in the Arctic by reopening and modernising several bases and airfields abandoned since the end of the Soviet era, while China has poured money into polar exploration and research.

“We have seen growing cooperation between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia in the Arctic commercially, with the PRC being a major funder of Russian energy exploitation in the Arctic,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defence Kathleen Hicks told presspersons on July 22.

There is also growing military cooperation, “with Russia and China conducting joint exercises off the coast of Alaska,” Mrs. Hicks said as the department released its 2024 Arctic strategy.

“All of these challenges have been amplified because the effects of climate change are rapidly warming temperatures and thinning ice coverage, and it’s enabling all of this activity,” she said.

The rapid melting of polar ice has sent activity in the inhospitable region into overdrive as nations eye newly viable oil, gas and mineral deposits as well as shipping routes in an area with a complex web of competing territorial claims.

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