IRIA News

United States Department of Defense (DoD) has established Arctic Strategy and Global Resilience Office to protect U.S. interests and project power in the region.

“[The Arctic] is a critical region for power projection and also for homeland defense,” newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Arctic and global resilience Iris Ferguson said in an interview.

U.S. DoD highlighted that the importance of the Arctic region will grow in the future as the climate change impacts continue to accelerate and temperatures in the Arctic rise at least three times faster than anywhere else in the world.

“It’s important to have an office like this now to try to start laying the groundwork for how we can best prepare ourselves and to know what the challenges of the future may be… There might not be conflict now — and there hopefully will never be conflict in the Arctic — but we need to be prepared to operate there,” Ferguson said.

Iris Ferguson stated that “We’re seeing a lot of geophysical changes that have dramatic impact on our operations and our infrastructure… We’re working to mitigate that.” She further added that “There’s also coastal erosion that has the potential to impact our radar sites.”

Ferguson also stressed that the United States is “seeing increased geopolitical activity by Russia, as well as China, in the region.” Russia has the largest land mass in the Arctic, and Russian leaders think of the country as the region’s preeminent power, the deputy assistant secretary said. “They have been refurbishing a lot of their airfields and renewing much of their defense architecture across the Arctic region,” she added.

Although Russia continues to assert that its bases and assets in the region are for defensive purposes only, the U.S. is increasingly concerned about Russian icebreakers with Kalibr-K missiles. The U.S. defense official said that the U.S. is closely monitoring the Russian “activity that’s happening in the Arctic region”.

Ferguson further stated that the U.S. strategic competitor China is thousands of miles from the Arctic, however, the Chinese leaders have “been trying to insert themselves into the Arctic… They have called themselves a near-Arctic nation, even though they aren’t even remotely near the Arctic.” Therefore, the U.S. is “very mindful about their activity and in wanting to ensure that our interests are protected in the region,” she added.

The Arctic is often overlooked, “but it’s a place where we have immense territorial equity, actually, for our homeland defense needs, our ability to monitor and respond to threats, and our capacity to project power,” Ferguson said.

According to the U.S. DoD release, the Air Force has based its aircraft in Alaska so that they can be easily deployed to respond to crises throughout the Indo-Pacific. “The Army has established the 11th Airborne Division in the region to develop expertise in Arctic mobility and extreme cold weather operations,” the statement read.

“From a military standpoint, the region is a key defense node for the homeland, with missile defense facilities, radars, early warning sites, and more throughout Alaska and Canada as part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command,” the statement added.

The Arctic is a huge area with segments in three geographic combatant commands’ areas of responsibility: U.S. Northern Command; U.S. European Command; and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The DoD office in the region is a focal point for Arctic policy. “Its initiatives include helping the services prioritize capabilities for the region, developing deeper partnerships with allies and partners, and enhancing Arctic education across the department through its oversight of the newly created Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies on Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska,” the DoD statement highlighted.