Some American writers look upon the Arctic Ocean, those waters north of the Arctic Circle, as a buffer between America and the Soviet Union, with both nations having similar minor strategic interests in the area. In fact, however, control of the Arctic Ocean is central to the Soviet Union's defense network. Soviet strategic and commercial interests in the region are so great as to make U. S. interests there seem minuscule by comparison.
Geographically—but, more important, demographically—the Soviet Union is a far more northerly land than the United States; populated Soviet Russia is infinitely closer to the Arctic Ocean than is populated America.
A Russian "wedge" is described by Warren B. Walsh in his Russia and the Soviet Union. The wedge is the most populated and industrialized area of the U.S.S.R. The wide side of the wedge runs from Leningrad, which lies at the same latitude as Seward, Alaska, southward to Odessa on the Black Sea, which lies at approximately the same latitude as Seattle, Washington, or Portland, Maine. The blunted eastern point now rests near Kuibyshev on the Volga, but Walsh suggests that it might be extended along the Trans-Siberian Railway toward Lake Baikal.
The side of the wedge facing Europe is protected from the West by the East European satellites. Siberia is an enormous shield between industrialized European Russia and the Far East. To the south are the mountains of Anatolia and the Hindu Kush. For most of the year Siberia's Arctic coastline is protected by the polar ice cap. But, along the bleak, northern Murman Coast there is no buffer, only the Barents Sea, which is easily accessible from the Atlantic.
Murmansk and the Murman Coast
On the entire Arctic Basin, there is only one city of consequence: Murmansk, situated on the Murman Coast. With a population of about 310,000, it is almost eight times as large as Tromsp, the largest town on the Norwegian Arctic, and 160 times the size of Barrow, on the U. S. Arctic Coast.
Closely related to Murmansk is the White Sea city of Archangel, which, like Murmansk, is the heart of an industrial complex and is connected by rail with the highly industrialized sector of European Russia to the south. Unlike Murmansk, the slightly smaller Archangel is connected by canal to Leningrad and the Baltic.
Both Murmansk and Archangel support manufacturing, shipbuilding, and ship repair. Both are major centers of commercial shipping, and Murmansk is the homeport of a huge fishing fleet which operates throughout the Atlantic. The Barents Sea, just north of Murmansk, has long been, and is today, an international fishing ground.
Owing to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, one branch of which swings along the Norwegian coast and over the North Cape of Europe, Murmansk is completely ice-free. Even in the most extreme conditions, the ice-pack never creeps closer than 360 miles from the Murman coast.
Since access to the open ocean can never be taken lightly by Soviet naval planners, Murmansk possesses a strategic eminence matched by no other Soviet port. Ships moving out of Murmansk have relatively unimpeded access to the Atlantic, being able to pass through the channels of the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap. Egress from Baltic ports, on the other hand, is restricted, since ships must move through Denmark’s Skagerrak and Kattegat straits. Similarly, the only exit for Black Sea ports is via the Dardanelles.
In the Pacific, Soviet ships home-ported in the vicinity of Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan, are hemmed in by the Japanese island chain. Their exit must be via one of the narrow straits such as Tsushima, Tsugaru, or La Perouse Strait. The port of Petropavlovsk, on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Pacific, serves as a base for Pacific Fleet submarines and other units. But, since it is not connected by either road or rail with the rest of the Soviet Union, it cannot be considered as a first-line naval base.
Murmansk, then, is the only major Soviet port with ready wartime access to the world's oceans. Its only rival in this regard is Archangel on the White Sea. Archangel, however, is icebound for part of the winter which, no doubt, accounts for the fact that, although it houses naval construction and repair facilide5r Archangel is not a naval operating base.
The Northern Fleet
Murmansk, which embraces the bases of Severomorsk and Polyarnii, is the homeport of the Soviet Navy's Northern Fleet. The size of this fleet is astonishing. In its issue for 18 October 1971, Time magazine reported:
"…the northern fleet, the smallest in the Soviet Navy at the end of World War II, is now the biggest—the superfleet of a supernavy.
"…the northern fleet has an estimated 560 ships, including 160 submarines, more than 65 of them nuclear-powered…By contrast the entire U. S. Atlantic Fleet has 358 ships, of which 40 to 50 are assigned to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean."
The Murmansk naval complex is not only the largest naval base in the Soviet Union, in terms of the number of naval ships it supports, it is also the world's largest naval base, exceeding in number of ships supported, all the U. S. Atlantic ports combined. And, as might be expected, it is by far the largest submarine base in the world.
Soviet Submarines
During the early 1960s, as the Soviet submarine force reached an all-time high of some 510 units, the number of submarines based at Murmansk increased from 30 to 145 ships. It was during this period that the landmark Soviet Military Strategy, edited by Marshal V. D. Sokolovskii, proclaimed attack on shipping as second in priority as a naval task only to coastal defense, pointing out that:
"In the event of war, 80 to 100 large transports would arrive daily in European pores. 1,500 to 2,000 ships would be concurrently enroute not to mention escort vessels."
Soviet Military Strategy stressed the obvious point that the submarine is an ideal weapon for interdicting lines of communication.
Today the Soviet Union has a growing number of submarines equipped with ballistic missiles, anti-ship missiles, and antisubmarine warfare equipment. Nevertheless, of Russia's current inventory of 400 submarines, Some 150 are of the "W" class built in the 1950s, primarily for the anti-shipping role. Obviously, later classes of nuclear attack submarines can be used to attack shipping as well as for the more demanding tasks of ASW and anti-carrier warfare. Considering the very large number of conventionally-armed, diesel-powered Soviet submarines, however, attack on shipping remains a major naval mission of the U.S.S.R.
Murmansk is Soviet Russia's best port for submarines intended to attack Allied lines of communication. Obviously, Murmansk's primary purpose is to support naval operations in the Atlantic; however, with the advent of nuclear submarines which can travel under the Arctic ice cap, Murmansk can straddle two oceans. The distance by sea from Murmansk to Japan is approximately equal to that from San Diego to Japan.
Just as submarines intended for commerce interdiction must first gain the open seas, so, too, must ballistic missile submarines. For identical reasons, then, Murmansk is also an ideal port for both ballistic missile submarines and ASW submarines intended to counter American ballistic missile submarines, most of which are based in the Atlantic.
Missions
Let us now examine an inconsistency to the purported main mission of the Soviet Navy. As we have seen, Soviet Military Strategy lists coastal defense and interdiction of shipping as the two primary Navy missions. Since the U. S. development of a ballistic missile submarine fleet, several Soviet military authorities have assigned to the Soviet Navy a primary mission of antisubmarine warfare.
Other Soviet military writers disagreed.
Meanwhile, highly colored versions of Soviet ASW exploits have appeared in the Soviet press, Writing in Investia in 1963, for example, V. Gol'tsev described a cruise: "The main mission of the ship lay in quickly reaching the North Pole and there barring the path of enemy missile-carrying submarines which had been penetrating the Barents Sea."
On the other hand, Commander Robert Herrick, writing in 1967, devotes a sizeable portion of his book, Soviet Naval Strategy, to his contention that the Soviets are not seriously contemplating an ASW role, at least not in search of U. S. ballistic missile submarines. Since then, however, an increase in Soviet ASW-capable submarines has been reported, a high percentage of which are said to be stationed in the Murmansk-Barents Sea.
Most naval experts seem to agree with David Fairhall, the British naval authority who, in his Russian Sea Power, published in 1971, states:
"But Royal Navy experts—who reckon that their ASW technology is unmatched by even the Americans—indicate that the Soviet Navy still has some way to go. It is true that a technical breakthrough which would make the Polaris detection problem tractable could happen at any time: but for the moment, and probably for years to come it stands out as one mission the Red Fleet cannot accomplish."
The Murman Coast is one of the Soviet Union's most vulnerable coastlines and consequently has become one of the U.S.S.R.'s most heavily defended borders.
Sokolovskii's Soviet Military Strategy repeatedly stresses the Soviet Navy's coastal defense mission, particularly in the Murman Coast/ Barents Sea area.
In Soviet Naval Strategy, Commander Herrick agreed that the main mission of the Soviet Navy was coastal defense. According to Herrick, the Soviet naval defense around a coastal area is divided into three concentric zones. The inner zone extending out to about 150 miles from the coast is protected by fast missile-launching patrol craft and anti-shipping missiles located ashore. This area may be assumed to have complete air protection by shore-based aircraft. The next zone is the realm of the surface-to-surface, missile-firing destroyers and cruisers. These units operate where continual air superiority is not guaranteed; and, therefore, some of these ships must be equipped with surface-to-air missiles. This central zone was defined by Herrick as extending as far as about 300 miles from the coast; but its radius varied with the capabilities of available shore-based aircraft, with the capabilities of the destroyer anti-aircraft missiles, and with the geography of the coastal area. The zone most distant from the defended coast may be guaranteed neither surface nor air superiority. This is the domain of the submarine equipped with anti-shipping missiles. Soviet surface ships could not venture into this area in wartime because of lack of air cover. The width of this zone is determined by geography and by the number of submarines available for the mission. If, however, it is placed too far from the defended border, too many submarines are required to patrol the extended arc.
Herrick's thesis of a Soviet defensive naval strategy was not concurred in universally by American strategists. The U. S. Naval Institute, which published the book, pointed out in a publisher's preface that not all of their Board of Control concurred in Herrick's concept of a defensive Soviet naval strategy. Dissenters argued that the Soviets were even then shifting to a global naval strategy.
Nevertheless, Herrick's scholarly work and its conclusions have stood up well even during the recent rapid expansion of the Soviet Navy. In its issue for 31 January 1972, Time magazine's naval expert David Tinnen called Herrick's thesis still valid but warned that, were the Soviets to produce an attack aircraft carrier, a profound shift in Soviet naval strategy would occur. Tinnen also warned that the "defensive" zones were being extended farther to seaward.
If Herrick's thesis is applied to the Murman Coast, the inner defense zone would be the immediately adjacent Barents Sea. The middle zone would extend around North Cape deep into the Norwegian Sea toward Iceland and the Faeroes. Beyond that would be the patrol area of the cruise-missile-firing submarines. Presumably they would watch the entrances to the Norwegian Sea between Greenland and northern Scotland.
There are several factors which lend credence to a defensive Soviet naval strategy at least insofar as the Murman Coast is concerned. One is the typical naval exercise which the Soviets conduct in the North Atlantic. An aggressor force patterned to operate as an American carrier task force might steam past Scotland and the Faeroes into the Norwegian Sea. As the force heads northward toward the Barents, it is opposed consecutively by waves of submarines, missile-firing destroyers and cruisers, and, finally, in the Barents, by missile-firing patrol craft. Typically, the exercise ends with an amphibious landing somewhere on the Murman Coast opposed by coastal defense forces. (The fact that they can conduct these exercises confirms that the Soviets have at least a modest amphibious landing ability in the Murmansk area.)
Another factor lending credence to a strong defensive mission of the Murmansk fleet is the mix of ships based there. Since Herrick's book was published in 1968, the Soviet Navy has expanded considerably, principally in helicopter carriers and ballistic missile submarines. Nonetheless, a current inventory of Soviet naval vessels in the Arctic still contains predominantly the same defensive elements: short-range patrol craft, longer range missile-firing destroyers, and surface-to-surface missile-firing submarines. The number of ships in each of these classes has increased and the large number of submarines suitable for attack on shipping has been there for nearly two decades. The addition of numerous ballistic missile submarines at Murmansk does not alter the nature of the majority of ships based there; indeed, it emphasizes the importance of their role.
Finally, Western naval officers are frequently frustrated to note that Soviet Navy missile-firing destroyers and cruisers invariably seem to have a knot-or-two speed advantage over their American counterparts. Furthermore, they generally appear to have more missile launchers on deck. It is unlikely that Soviet naval designers have achieved some breakthrough in conventional ship design unattainable by their American competitors. It is far more probable that these ships carry less fuel, and fewer stores and missile reloads below decks than their longer-legged American counterparts. The Soviet surface navy is admirably designed for the short reaches of the Norwegian and Barents Seas. It might be noted in passing that the Soviet Navy has no need for aircraft carriers for this mission. Air cover is supplied from the Soviet coast.
What the Soviets have done is to develop a defensive maritime buffer zone which extends from their Murman Coast across the Barents Sea and deep down into the Norwegian Sea. In an article in its issue for 18 October 1971, Time noted:
"Johan Jorgen Holst, research director of the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute, warns that the Soviets intend 'to push their naval defense line outwards to Iceland and the Faeroes,' which could turn the Norwegian Sea into what he calls a 'Soviet lake.'"
Let us now consider the Murman Coast's defenses against long-range strategic bombers and missiles. As is generally known, the United States and Canada operate an early warning system (Dewline) across northern Canada. There is a corresponding American operated ballistic missile early warning system to warn of missile attack, with great radars located in Alaska, Greenland, and England. Soviet Russia is less well off in this regard in that its homeland is closer to the Arctic Coast. Its defensive system must be at the very edge of the Arctic basin and, if possible, farther north. Most military analysts concerned concede early warning systems on the outlying islands of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land and credit the Murman Coast with surface-to-air missiles. Both assumptions are believable. The Soviet Union has weather forecasting stations on Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land to support its northern commerce. Moreover, it is safe to assume that the heavily industrialized Murmansk and Archangel area merits its own air defense system.
In addition to its anti-surface-shipping missiles ashore, Murmansk's in-depth defensive system has fixed surface-to-air missile launchers, and the Soviets are believed to have planted listening sonar systems on the bed of the Barents Sea.
Whether the Murman Coast is Soviet Russia's most heavily defended border is academic. It would be difficult to compare numerically the airborne and maritime defenses of the Murman Coast with the Soviet armies in the Eastern European satellites which, in effect, are defensive units on the Soviet European border. However, the Murman Coast military and naval complex is infinitely stronger than anything else in the maritime Arctic and is a vital part of the Soviet defense system. Writers on military affairs who for long nearly ignored Soviet military power in the Arctic are now aware of the massive Murmansk defensive system. For example, an article in the Washington Post for 16 October 1971 warned:
"In that region which comprises the White Sea and the western Arctic ports of Murmansk, Archangel and Petsamo, the Soviet Union has built what is believed to be one of the biggest complexes of naval and air force bases in the world. Intermediate range and possible intercontinental ballistic missile systems have been installed in quantity, and Soviet naval activity in the western Arctic has risen substantially."
Robert Herrick and Admiral Arleigh Burke, who wrote the foreword to Herrick's book, may see the Soviet forces on the Murman Coast as primarily defensive, but Norway, whose coastline meets Russia's only a few score miles from Murmansk, sees it completely differently. Norway's situation is anomalous. The powerful (if short-range) fleet at Murmansk has established a Soviet defensive zone which extends nearly to Iceland and the Faeroes. The number of warships at Murmansk (even discounting the submarines clearly intended for other purposes) far exceeds that in the U. S. Atlantic Fleet. Much of Norway, especially the northern portion lies clearly within the Soviet defensive zone.
Twice, Captain O. P. Araldsen of the Royal Norwegian Navy has pointed out in the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings that in case of war Norway would be a primary objective of the Soviet Arctic fleet. With the recent increase of Soviet naval forces in the Mediterranean troubling NATO's southern flank it seemed logical that military authorities would point our that NATO's northern flank was also threatened. In the fall of 1971, this long-poised other shoe fell and the thud was quickly echoed in the American press. In an article entitled "The Soviet Threat to NATO's Northern Flank," Time for 18 October 1971 noted the Barents Sea amphibious landings and the fact that Norway was at the mercy of whatever power controls the Norwegian Sea.
Late in November 1971, General Sir Walter Walker, head of NATO's Northern European Command, was quoted as saying Norway and Denmark were no longer defensible. General Walker's concern was that the Soviet naval forces at Murmansk were strong enough not only to dominate completely all of the Norwegian Sea bur also to link with Soviet forces in the Baltic where the Soviets have had a hegemony for years. The Norwegian government immediately went on record that the Soviet forces in the Arctic were "part of a global pattern and nor directed against Norway." The Danish Minister of Defense called the press interpretation of the General's remarks regrettable, and two Norwegian newspapers immediately called for General Walker's prompt retirement from the post.
General Walker called it as he saw it and few military analysts have argued that he saw it wrong. Although primarily defensive, Soviet naval power based at Murmansk, has long been able to overwhelm northern Norway. The normal dividing line between the European Arctic and the Atlantic is the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap. Norway lies to the north of the line.
The Northern Sea Route
Extending eastward for thousands of sea miles from Murmansk and Archangel, the Northern Sea Route is a summertime means of moving ships and their cargoes along Siberia's Arctic coast.
On the Pacific side, the terminus of the route is Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan. North of Vladivostok, which is also the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, along the Pacific maritime coast, are major ports supplied neither by road nor rail. Among these are Petropavlovsk on the Kamcharka Peninsula and Provideniia in the vicinity of the Bering Strait. These ports, although technically not part of the Northern Sea Route, are supplied by it. However, most Northern Sea Route traffic does not go all of the way. Its main use is not as a shortcut from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but as a means of servicing Siberia from the two extremities of the route, Archangel-Murmansk and Vladivostok.
The Northern Sea Route can be used for only 130 to 150 days each year and even then the assistance of icebreakers is required. To the west, there is a wide expanse of water between the North Cape of Norway and the permanent ice pack. But this expanse narrows as one proceeds eastward along the northern Siberian coast, though in summer for the entire length of the Siberian coast there is a considerable gap between the mainland and the ice cap. In fact, this summertime ribbon of navigable water extends for a short distance along northern Alaska and Canada to a point just beyond the Mackenzie River. Even so, in summer, only 4% of the ice-free Arctic Ocean lies north of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland; the other 96% lies above Eurasia and in the North Atlantic approaches to northern Norway and the Murman Coast.
In winter, there is still open water in the Norwegian Sea, and normally the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland is also open, but, beyond the ice-free Murman Coast, the entire Siberian coastline merges into the Arctic pack. So does the Bering Strait. And the ribbon of water that is open in summer north of Alaska and western Canada, disappears in the ice. Thus, navigation along the Siberian coast is a seasonal venture, possible only in summer and early fall.
The route along the Siberian coast is not a continuous expanse of water bur, rather, a series of seas connected by straits through island chains. Just east of the Barents is the Kara Sea. Moving from the Barents Sea into the Kara Sea, ships must either pass through the Kara Gates south of Novaya Zemlya (two islands), north of Novaya Zemlya, or through Matochkin Shar, a narrow passage between the islands. Similarly, the Kara Sea is separated from the Laptev Sea by Severnaya Zemlya. The most important of the three straits that pass through the Severnaya Zemlya chain is the Vilkitskii. The Laptev Sea is separated from the East Siberian Sea by Novosibirskiyi Ostrova (the New Siberian Islands); the East Siberian Sea from the Chukchi Sea by Wrangel Island. Each of these seas, except the Chukchi, which is shared by northern Alaska, is a more or less closed sea bordered on the south by Siberia, on the north by the ice pack, and on the east and west by the island chains and their straits.
The straits through the island chains are important for two reasons. First, clogging ice tends to make them the primary points where icebreaker assistance is required. Secondly, because most of the straits are narrow, the Soviet Union can assert a legal claim to the entire Northern Sea Route by establishing control over certain of the straits.
Without Siberia's huge northward running rivers—the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Lena—the Northern Sea Route would not be as important as it is. All three are navigable for more than 2,000 miles upstream from their mouths on the Arctic. These rivers are the north-south link between the Arctic Coast and the parallel Trans-Siberian Railway some 1,500 miles to the south.
The northward running rivers, in no way dependent upon the Northern Sea Route, are navigable longer each year than the sea route and, in conjunction with the Trans-Siberian Railway, are capable of serving nearly all of Siberia. Nor do the ships which service the Northern Sea Route normally go up the rivers. It has proven more efficient during the short shipping season to drop cargo off at ports near the river mouths where river craft pick it up and deliver it upstream. Each river, too, may be used as a winter ice road and its valley provides natural avenues upon which to build conventional roads.
Owing to the length of the three rivers, the higher elevations to the south thaw first in spring. This free-flowing water tends to clear out the ice at the river mouths even before the summer thaw, and is in part responsible for the extent of navigable water along the Siberian Arctic Coast.
Several lesser rivers which empty into the Arctic are both navigable and economically important to Siberia. Notable among these are the Kolyma, the Indigarka, and the Yana.
The Inception
Shipping in the Kara Sea, the western part of the Northern Sea Route, came into its own in the last half of the 19th century when farm produce and lumber were shipped directly from central Siberia via the Ob and Yenisei rivers and the Kara Sea to Western European markets, notably to England. For a time, English shipping companies dominated the route, except for domestic traffic. The route was used to transport rails and equipment during the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway which began about 1890, and, during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, it took part of the load off the still-incomplete railway by absorbing some of the traffic to central Siberia.
In the 1920s, the Soviets began developing the Northern Sea Route in earnest. There is every reason to believe that the Soviets intended the Northern Sea Route to be a main commercial artery into all of northern Siberia and, by 1935, they had developed the entire route. Yet, there were still some years when the Convoys were forced to winter in the ice pack. Moreover, the administration of the Northern Sea Route was not unaffected by Soviet purges.
Use of the route continued to increase during World War II, when Liberty ships with Russian crews brought in lend-lease supplies across the Pacific and via the Siberian route.
Since World War II, the Soviets have declared hard data about shipping on the Northern Sea Route to be state secrets. Although there is clear evidence that the Soviets have continued to broaden their efforts in the Arctic, the amount of freight carried there is difficult to ascertain precisely.
Still, from a purely economic standpoint, Western authorities generally agree that the Northern Sea Route is a failure. It is, they conclude, more economical to service Siberia via the Trans-Siberian Railway and the northward running rivers. One writer, Terence Armstrong, attaches a caveat that with better icebreakers and ice forecasting the picture might change considerably. In his The Northern Sea Route, he states:
"Although it may be a very long time before convoys can negotiate the ice in winter and spring, fuller utilization of the marginal periods at the beginning and end of the season would become possible if more complete ice reports were available and the ships were ready to sail at the time required. With even a slightly longer season, the economic importance of the route would be greatly increased."
Constantine Krypton, the Russian-born American authority on Siberian transportation, thinks that the route can economically service only the smaller rivers and the coastal ports themselves.
The main ports along the route are Amderma, Dikson, Dudinka, Kozhevnikova, Tiksi, Ambarchik, Pevek, and Provideniia. All have alongside berthing; many have automated freight-handling equipment.
In 1965, Richard Petrow, a writer preparing for an Arctic excursion on a U. S. icebreaker, interviewed Professor Krypton at Fordham and, in his Across the Top of Russia, quotes him as follows:
"'It is no longer the Northeast Passage, he informed me, 'The Russians now call it the Northern Sea Route. In the early 1930's, when the Soviets decided to open the route on a regular basis, they hoped it would prove an economical way to supply their Siberian ports. As it turned out they found it was cheaper to supply their Siberian cities by rivers from the interior of Siberia, rather than by the polar passage. But they keep the route open-for a limited amount of merchant shipping and for military purposes.'"
It is noteworthy that both Armstrong and Krypton, while agreeing that the initial Soviet development was for commercial purposes, state that the Soviets' current purpose is military and strategic.
To assess the current assets of the sea route it is necessary to use fragmentary information. In the 1960 season, it was reported that 270 ships, few of them larger than 6,000 tons, used the route. They are believed to have carried over a million tons of cargo. The limiting draft along the route was said to be 20 to 25 feet. Jane's World Railways, 1970-71 states that the tonnage-miles of all domestic Soviet freight doubled between 1960 and 1968. At the same time the percentage of this freight carried by water went from 12.3% to 21.7%. These figures when compounded say that between 1960 and 1968 internal water-borne Soviet freight nearly quadrupled.
Writing in 1965 in Soviet Life, Victor Bakayev, who recently retired as U.S.S.R. Minister of the Merchant Marine, stated that "hundreds" of ships ply the sea route each summer, and that it was still the only way of supplying the northern coast and eastern provinces.
Icebreakers
Additional evidence of the growth of the sea route is the recent remarkable buildup of very large icebreakers. There are now 41 Soviet icebreakers in commission or building, not including the numerous freight-carrying ships with icebreaker bows that ply the route. Included in the 41 are the 16,000-ton, nuclear-propelled Lenin and five Moskva-classicebreakers of 12,840 tons. At three or four knots, the Lenin can force a 100-foot, ice-free path and move continuously through eight feet of solid pack ice.
In April 1970, the Soviets ordered from Helsinki three diesel-powered, 21 ,000-ton icebreakers—by far the largest diesel-powered icebreakers in the world. Concurrently, the Soviets are building two additional nuclear-powered, 25,000-ton icebreakers of the Arktika-class. (In contrast, the United States has nine icebreakers in commission, six of them being of the old Wind class with a standard displacement of 3,500 tons.)
Soviet Russia has a need for icebreakers beyond the Arctic. The Soviet Baltic and Black Sea ports suffer some ice-blockage in the winter. So do the Pacific ports in the Sea of Japan and on Kamchatka. However, the huge icebreakers now either in commission or building are too large for harbor work. These ships are obviously in tended for the Arctic. Of the 41, some 20, including all the very large icebreakers, are estimated to be working the sea route in the summer and fall. This unprecedented number of icebreakers plying the sea route is strong indication that a great effort is being made to extend the shipping season. Other possible roles for these behemoths could be to increase the average speed of the convoys and to allow them to transit further from the coast, thereby permitting vessels of deeper draft and greater tonnage to use the route.
The key to successful transit of the route is good ice pack information. There are some 50 airfields and numerous weather stations along the route. In addition, the larger icebreakers carry helicopters to assist in spotting ice conditions ahead. Depending on the wind, ice tends to pile up in one strait while, unaccountably, it is missing in another.
Along the route are scores of lighthouses and hundreds of smaller aids to navigation . The lighthouses are modern and automated, incorporating fog signals, radio beacons, radar reflectors, and underwater acoustic signals.
Siberian Industry
To assess the part the sea route plays in Siberian commerce we should look briefly at industry in Siberia itself. Siberia contains 80% of the Soviet Union's power resources in oil, coal, natural gas, and hydroelectric power. Of note is the developing Arctic oil field in the northern Ob basin, characterized by George St. George in his Siberia, the New Frontier, as "the greatest single oil strike in the history of geology." The oil is being piped southward to refineries in the vicinity of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
There is a growing ability in Siberia to reverse the ancient necessity to ship raw materials out and finished goods and supplies in. Since power is available, the goal is to produce finished items in Siberia. Examples of this effort are the cellulose and wood product plants along Lake Baikal and the metallurgical plants at Irkutsk and Yakutsk. The constant hope is the production of consumer goods in Siberia for Siberians. One reason for this may be the official desire to lure the Soviet population out of the densely populated west. Another, and compelling, reason is that Siberia is transportation poor. By manufacturing on the Spot, the need for two-way transportation is eliminated. Soviet railways are by far the busiest in the world and, of these, the busiest are those in Siberia. The Trans-Siberian railroad carries more ton-miles per day than any other railroad in the world.
Every authority on Siberian economics stresses the Vast potential of coal, oil, natural gas, and minerals yet to be exploited. The main obstacles are not only the extremely limited Siberian transportation system, but also a continuing lack of workers.
Although there has been a net population increase, Siberia's population is not growing rapidly. Indeed, there is a large emigration Out of the area. Understandably, Siberia is not a popular place to live. Hence, Siberia's population increase is less than its birth rate minus its death rate.
With the modestly expanding population, industry is growing largely through increased automation. There is a growing manufactured goods industry along the Trans-Siberian Railway, a rapidly expanding power source industry (oil, natural gas, coal and hydroelectric), and everywhere an effort to hold down transportation costs by scientific economic means.
East-West Freight
The percentage of Siberia's east-west freight carried by the sea route is impossible to ascertain with available data. There is, however, a wealth of data available on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Studying the tonnage of the Trans-Siberian, it would seem that in a season the sea route could handle no more than two weeks' worth of this tonnage.
The Northern Sea Route can alleviate supply problems in some areas, particularly in the far north. It can and does carry hard-to-handle and bulky equipment—e.g., new generators for a hydro-electric plant, even one near the Trans-Siberian typically comes via the shipboard Arctic route. The sea route can service the shorter rivers and the north coast and, no doubt, it is a valuable commercial adjunct, but its part in developing and supporting interior Siberia's industry is a distant second behind the railway.
As a final economic use of the sea route the Soviet Union operates a shipping line from Europe to the Far East via the route, but so far this has been of minor consequence.
As noted earlier, ever since World War II the Soviets' main interest in the sea route has been strategic. A secure northern border is as important to the Soviet Union as are its borders elsewhere. The U.S.S.R.'s northern Siberian border must seem more vulnerable to Soviet military planners than it does to Western experts, who are aware of the radar sites, air fields, and surface-to-air-missile installations along the entire Siberian coast. It would be wrong to characterize these installations as anything but defensive.
The Northern Sea Route is also strategically important because of the vulnerability and fragility of the Siberian transportation system. In the confused civil war period of 1917 to 1920, the Trans-Siberian Railway was nearly synonymous with Siberia. Whoever controlled the railway controlled that section of Siberia. Consequently, a small force, such as the Czech Legion, could establish virtual control over a large part of Siberia.
Today, the Trans-Siberian is still vulnerable. Although double-tracked, it still stands alone and exposed for most of the way. Indeed, for a considerable section it runs very close to the Chinese border. The sea route, then, is a vital backup.
The vast weather forecasting system along the Arctic coast is also of considerable strategic value. It is important to areas not themselves in the Arctic, for the Arctic can be looked upon as a huge weather factory. Because weather in the northern hemisphere moves from west to east, weather stations along the Siberian Arctic coast are valuable for forecasting conditions in China and the Pacific.
The most obvious, but perhaps overrated, value of the Northern Sea Route is a means to shift Soviet naval units between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in waters under complete Soviet control. The other chief advantage of the route is the short distance to be traversed compared with that steamed by Admiral Rozhdestvenski's ships around Africa during the Russo-Japanese War.
The rub, of course, is that the route can be used only in summer and fall. Soviet submarines with the ability to Steam under ice, however, need not necessarily use the route in its entirety. There is evidence to show that the Soviets use the route to redistribute their naval ships, sending one or more naval convoys through each summer. Richard Petrow describes one as observed from the U. S. icebreaker, Burton Island, in the strait between the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas:
"The Navy icebreaker had been in the strait south of Wrangel Island near the eastern tip of Siberia when a giant Russian military convoy was sighted headed east for Bering Strait. The convoy included major naval units of the Russian Pacific Fleet—including several submarines cruising on the surface—and a flotilla of merchantmen tagging along behind the Soviet icebreakers that were leading the parade."
Petrow described how the Soviets would not allow a Burton Island helicopter to observe them. They repeatedly forced the American helicopter away by hovering one of theirs close above it—an extremely dangerous maneuver, especially for the lower helicopter.
In case of war, the sea route could be vulnerable to opposing submarines but not nearly as vulnerable as might be imagined. The route for much of the way runs through very shallow water, at least very shallow in terms of a submerged submarine. The route also runs very close to the coast. However, there are several sections of the route which could be approached by a hostile submarine if the submarine could get into the Arctic proper. German submarines in World War II did operate in the Kara Sea; as did, for a time, the German armored ship, Admiral Scheer.
The shipping that transits the Northern Sea Route, then, is not necessarily vital to the Soviet Union-but it will become so when other transportation across Siberia is threatened.
Soviet Sovereignty in the Arctic Ocean
Tsarist Russia was never a great maritime nation; it did engage in fishing and the hunting of sea mammals in the Arctic and Northern Pacific. Both factors favored a wide territorial sea. Since the time the Dutch jurist, Van Bynkershoek, first popularized the three-mile "cannon-shot" rule in the early 18th century, Tsarist Russia had· been the least enthusiastic in its support.
Soviet law books and histories are consistent in describing the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas, as indisputably Soviet property. Soviet maps consistently label all Arctic waters north of the Soviet Union as the "Polar Domain of the U.S.S.R.," and the Soviets see them as closed seas, encircled by Soviet land, by Soviet islands, and by the impenetrable Arctic ice pack. The Soviet citizen, accustomed from childhood to think that much of the Arctic Ocean is indisputably Soviet territory, must wonder what right, really, does another nation have in these seas? The fact that fast ice is solidly attached to the Siberian coastline and, especially the Siberian islands, detracts from the credibility of the concept of the freedom of the seas in the Arctic. To the hunter on the Chukchi Peninsula, the concept that by stepping across an invisible line on the ice he can be on the "high seas" has little meaning. There is little doubt that the Soviet citizen and especially the Soviet naval or military man, who has been instructed to prohibit foreigners from violating the Soviet domain, often is somewhat offended when his government has not been as forceful as he would have liked it to be in dealing with some impetuous foreigner in these waters or on this ice.
Americans, too, have equally strong feelings about sovereignty, and the most informed among them have especially strong feelings about freedom of the seas and the width of the territorial seas. The same kind of gut reaction their forebears felt about infringements of the Monroe Doctrine has created a strong, if not always well-informed, public opinion which has been reflected in American foreign policy. The implementation of this policy in the Arctic Ocean, however, can create the kind of special problem others find amusing. Foreign texts delight, for example, in the story of a gambling house that had been set up four miles from Nome on fast ice in international waters. The local American authorities eventually decided to establish jurisdiction anyway.
In terms of sovereignty in the Soviet Arctic, then, the contemporary Soviet citizen, naval officer, military man, and politician and their American counterparts march equally resolutely-bur to the beat of completely different drummers.
Currently the Soviets claim a 12-mile width of territorial sea, but that is but a small measure of the problem. On all of their maritime borders, the Soviets resort to the 12-mile limit only in the Barents, an international fishing ground, and the Bering seas. The Bering's borders are, of course, shared with the United States. Everywhere else, the Soviets have made special arrangements and have somehow contrived to claim more than 12 miles.
In the Arctic Ocean, the Soviet Union bases its sovereignty claims on either the sector principle, the territorial sea, internal Soviet waters, or sovereignty over the Northern Sea Route.
The Sector Principle
Of all the Arctic sovereignty rationales, the sector principle is at once the most simple and the most sweeping. Each nation bordering the Arctic draws a line to the North Pole from its eastern and westernmost extremity on the Arctic coast. The pie-shaped wedge thus described is that country's sector.
The idea of dividing ownership of the earth's surface by drawing lines north to the pole is an old one. The "Papal Bull" of Pope Alexander VI did just that in 1493 to separate the territories of Spain and Portugal. When America acquired Alaska in 1867, the Bering Strait's boundary between the United States and Russia was described as proceeding "…due north without limitation, into the same Frozen Ocean."
Only two countries, the Soviet Union and Canada, have officially proclaimed the sector principle in the Arctic. Let us look at the Soviet words of a decree promulgated in 1926 by the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R.:
"All lands and islands, both discovered and which may be discovered in the future, which do not comprise at the time of publication of the present decree the territory of any foreign state recognized by the government of the U.S.S.R., located in the Northern Arctic Ocean, north of the shores of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics up to the North Pole…are proclaimed to be the territory of the U.S.S.R."
Clearly, the intent of these words was to extend Soviet sovereignty to all lands and islands in its sector, whether those lands and islands were as yet discovered or not and populated or not. The decree does not claim the water and ice in the sector.
The unpopulated nature of their frozen archipelagos has long bedeviled both Canada and Russia. According to the rather murky international law in this regard, discovery may give only temporary title, which must be perfected subsequently by other means. Generally, the other means necessary was population and activity under the claimant's control on the real estate involved. It is understandable, then, that both Canada and the U.S.S.R. would want to safeguard their northlands from enterprising foreigners, and solve this problem once and for all with a sweeping sector decree.
The Soviet Union has had some cause for concern. In 1921, the irrepressible Canadian Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson mounted an expedition which founded a settlement on Wrangel Island (just north of the Siberian coast) and laid claim to it as British territory. The first party all died, presumably of hunger. In 1923, a second group was landed. It took the Soviets, who had been rather busy elsewhere, three years to get around to reaching Wrangel Island by icebreaker and evicting the Canadians.
The United States, too, had occasionally set foot in unpopulated Siberian territory in the Arctic. A telegram sent from the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs in 1924 is worth quoting. The addressee is the U. S. Secretary of State:
"Local Union authorities have delivered to Moscow a round brass mark discovered by them on Chukotsk Peninsula on Emma Bay, Cape Puzino. The said mark, set in a rock, bears the following inscription: 'United States Coast and Geodetic Survey magnetic station.'…Emphatically protesting to the United States Government against such lawless acts of their officials, who were obviously unable to distinguish where their own state territory ends and other sovereign country's territory begins, I am obliged to notify that such violation of legitimate rights of the Union Republics, if repeated, will be sternly repressed by the Soviet Government.
Chicerin"
Although the published Soviet "sector claim" claimed land only, many Soviet jurists have since argued that the claim should embrace water and ice also. Most of the Soviet and Canadian writings in this regard are strikingly similar, asserting that Arctic ice is far more similar to land than to water.
There has never been an official Soviet announcement claiming the entire Soviet sector-water, ice, and all. Indeed, the sector principle as applied to land in the Arctic has never been brought before a world tribunal. All islands within the Soviet sector have now been discovered. We ought to be able to dispense, as far as the Soviet Arctic is concerned, with the "sector principle" as being outdated-except that it appears on nearly every Soviet map of the Arctic region and remains as a principle occasionally voiced by Soviet jurists. The concept is also firmly implanted in the minds of the Soviet citizenry along with the history of the Wrangel Island affair and similar episodes.
The Territorial Sea
The "territorial sea" was well defined in the Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone of 1958. Article I states:
"The sovereignty of a state extends beyond its land territory and its internal waters to a belt of sea adjacent to its coast described as the 'territorial sea.'''
Both the United States and the Soviet Union were signatories to the Geneva Convention, which entered into force on 10 September 1964. Two Convention items are noteworthy. First, no consensus was reached on a width of the territorial sea; so no width was set. Second, the convention explicitly permits the innocent passage of ships, including warships of foreign states, through any state's territorial waters. (The Soviets did not accept this provision without a caveat.) The Convention further states that foreign submarines in territorial waters should proceed on the surface.
In regard to the first item, at the Convention the Soviets had requested a 12-mile territorial sea, stating that Tsarist Russia had established that claim half a century earlier. The Soviet Union has reiterated this claim to the United Nations. Officially, then, the Soviet Union has explicitly proclaimed its 12-mile limit to the rest of the world. This does not necessarily mean that the rest of the world recognizes this claim.
In regard to the right of innocent passage of warships, immediately after the Convention the U.S.S.R. rewrote its internal legislation so that clearly innocent passage by a warship required "previous authorization by the government of the U.S.S.R…" It further stipulated that the authorization had to be requested through diplomatic channels 30 days in advance of the passage. The world "authorization," of course, made it clear that the requestor was not merely giving advanced notice of intentions but, instead, was submitting a request for permission which, obviously, might be denied.
With these domestic details taken care of, the Soviets then officially proclaimed their reservations regarding the Geneva Convention article pertaining to innocent passage.
In world opinion, the extension of the width of the territorial sea-or at least an extension of a nation's jurisdiction over the ocean bottom on its borders—it is gaining wider acceptability. The Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf of 1958 gave each nation jurisdiction over its continental shelf to a point where the depth of water was more than 200 meters. The Convention denies other countries the right to explore or exploit the ocean bottom in these areas. In one of their Notices to Mariners in 1960, the Soviets interpreted exploration of the ocean bottom rather narrowly, prohibiting even the taking of soundings except for navigational purposes in their territorial waters.
Internal Waters
The Soviet Union being on record as claiming a 12-mile territorial sea would seem to clarify Soviet claims on the Arctic Ocean. However, the 1958 Geneva Convention definition to which the Soviets subscribed defines the territorial sea as a belt around "land territory and internal waters." In the Arctic, the Soviets consider all of the Siberian Arctic seas; the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi as "internal waters."
International jurists generally accept the principle that there can be no claim of innocent passage involving inland waters. A state may totally prohibit foreign navigation in its internal waters.
In Article 4(c) of the "Statute of the Protection of the State Boundary of the U.S.S.R. the Soviet Union defines "inland sea waters" as including "…waters of bays, inlets, coves, and estuaries, seas, and straits historically belonging to the U.S.S.R." While the Statute does not name these historical waters, the Soviet international law textbook, published in 1951 and other authoritative tomes—e.g., The Large Soviet Encyclopedia, published in 1950-specifically place the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas in this category.
It should be stressed that the Soviet Union has not officially proclaimed to the world that the Siberian seas are Soviet internal waters. However, in one instance in 1964, an Aide Memoire to the U. S. government, in regard to the U. S. icebreaker Burton Island, then in the Siberian Arctic, stated that the straits between the Laptev and East Siberian seas were Soviet internal waters. The straits named were the Laptev and the Sannikov, alternate passages through the New Siberian Islands. Both are about 30 miles wide; however, fast ice considerably narrows the width. The Aide Memoire did not voice the well known Soviet claim that the Laptev and East Siberian Seas, themselves, were Soviet internal waters. It only specified the straits between.
Soviet Claims over the Northern Sea Route
Superimposed over other claims in the Arctic is the Soviet claim that the Northern Sea Route is a national commercial artery belonging solely to the Soviet Union.
The Soviets base their claim on historical precedent, on the fact that they developed the route at considerable expense, and on the fact that ships using the route must normally have the icebreaker assistance and ice-forecasting services that are available only from the Soviet Union.
The historic precedent goes back to the 1616-1620 period when the Tsar issued four edicts curtailing commercial navigation in the Kara Sea. These edicts went unchallenged by foreign nations for more than 300 years. British trade through the Kara Sea to the Ob and Yenisei Rivers in the late 1500s and again in the late 1800s was by permission of specific grants by the Tsarist regimes.
The Soviets have made an enormous investment in navigational aids, weather stations, and airfields in the area. Although many nations have installed navigational aids along their coastlines, the costs really cannot be compared to those of the extensive Soviet installations, which were developed in an extremely hostile environment.
In 1967, the Soviets announced that, for a fee, the Northern Sea Route was open to foreign commerce. They opened an office in Murmansk to handle the liaison with foreign countries seeking to use the route.
Why did the Soviets offer the route to foreign nations? World acceptance would unmistakably show the route to be under Soviet jurisdiction. Possibly, too, the Soviets desired to generate foreign currency to help defray the considerable expense of maintaining the route. Finally, there is the possibility that the area has become less sensitive, that the Soviets have less need for surface-to-air missileinstallations on the Arctic coast since the strategic threat has shifted somewhat towards ICBMs.
To date, foreign consideration of the Northern Sea Route as a through shipping route has been minimal. David Fairhall reports that the Soviets have raised their fees a bit and have not been cooperative with Japanese companies attempting to conduct their own research of the route. Fairhall tells of a rumor that the Soviets have decided to stall lest they appear to be taking advantage of the closure of the Suez Canal.
Naval Encounters in the Siberian Arctic
An ominous statement, appearing in a 1966 Soviet international law manual, states that the Soviet Ministry of Defense has issued instructions to destroy submarines violating U.S.S.R. boundaries in a submerged position. This instruction was allegedly necessary because of observed instances of foreign submarines entering Soviet territorial waters. Since the Soviets have domestically published their boundaries so as to include the "historic" Siberian Seas, it would appear that the Soviets have ordered the sinking of submarines found in these seas plus those found within 12 miles of the Soviet coast in the Barents Sea area.
To my knowledge, no specific case of an American or other foreign submarine intruding into alleged Soviet waters has ever been cited in the Soviet press or journals. Nor has note of any such instance appeared in American journals, except the marginal case described in the book, Surface at the Pole, by Commander James Calvert. Describing the nuclear submarine Skate's winter of 1959 polar exploration, Commander Calvert made the following statement:
"By Sunday morning we had reached a point roughly 100 miles from the New Siberian Islands. Here we rook a sharp turn of more than 90 degrees to the right to continue our exploration of the polar basin. We were plotting our route carefully so as to remain well within the international waters of the great ocean we were exploring."
The New Siberian Islands divide the Laptev and East Siberian Seas. Assuming—Commander Calvert did not say—that the Skate was 100 miles north of the islands, he would have been just to the north of the permanent ice cap. The trip rook place in March when the winter pack ice, in fact, extends all the way to the Siberian Coast in that area. There is an interesting acknowledgment in the book that the Navy Department of the time considered this a delicate issue. On the inside of the front cover is a chart showing the route of the Skate's 1958 summer polar cruise. As the route is laid out, it lies entirely outside of the so-called "Soviet Sector." In the caption under the chart are the words: "The precise route of the March 1959 cruise has not been released by the Navy Department." From Commander Calvert's book we may conclude that during his winter cruise he did go into the Soviet sector and fairly close to the Laptev and East Siberian Seas.
There have been several cases of American icebreakers venturing into the Siberian Arctic seas. On one of these in 1965, Richard Petrow rode the Coast Guard icebreaker, Northwind, in an attempt to pass from west to east all of the way across the top of Eurasia. Petrow documented the voyage in the book, Across the Top of Russia. The Northwind's purpose, although somewhat camouflaged both before and after the voyage, was evidently to cross the top of the Soviet Union collecting scientific data en route.
While in the Barents Sea, before entering the Siberian seas claimed by the Soviets, the Northwind was closely shepherded by Soviet naval ships and aircraft. One Soviet aircraft in the Barents signaled to the icebreaker that she was a "violator." A Soviet destroyer in the Norwegian Sea signaled the Northwind to "stop immediately" even before she had entered into the Barents.
The Northwind entered the Kara Sea by passing north of Novaya Zemlya thereby obviating a dispute over the right to pass through the Kara Gates or Matochkin Shar. A Soviet destroyer, which previously had signaled that she would escort the Northwind into the Kara Sea, turned back because of ice around Novaya Zemlya.
Throughout the Kara Sea, the Northwind acquired much scientific data, including bottom samples. Predictably, the Soviets protested these actions through diplomatic channels, but they did so, not on the grounds that the Kara Sea was Soviet internal waters, but on the basis of the Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf, since much of the Kara Sea is less than 200 meters deep.
The Soviets would not allow the Northwind to pass through the Vilkitskii Strait into the Laptev Sea on the grounds that the straits were Soviet territorial waters. In this case, the Soviets did not call the Vilkitskii Strait internal Soviet waters as they had in the case of the icebreaker Burton Island in the Laptev and Sannikov straits in 1964. The Vilkitskii Strait is just under 24 miles in width, which means, considering. the overlapping 12-mile zones, that the entire Strait is in Soviet-claimed territorial waters. Apparently, the Soviets used the most legitimate objection available to them.
Turned back from the Vilkitskii Strait, the Northwind attempted to go over the top of the entire Severnaya Zemlya Island chain, and, in fact, made it to a point due north of the islands at a Latitude of 81° 30' North, the very top of the Eurasian land mass. At this point she was called back by the U. S. government. Had she been able to cross into the Laptev Sea, she almost certainly could have made it all of the way. However, no doubt she would have encountered very severe ice on the eastward side of the Severnaya Islands as she beat her way back to the southward into the Laptev Sea…
Petrow's reaction to the Northwind's inability to make the through passage is a typical American reaction to the situation in the Soviet Arctic:
"…Our primary mission had been passage through the strait itself, to forge a way for the American flag through waters hitherto restricted to Russian vessels. That mission had been aborted as much if not more by the timidity of the United States State Department than by the intransigence of the Soviet Union.
"In the event that the Soviet Union ever does reverse its policy and declare its polar seas open to all, the point nevertheless will have been made: In the year 1965, the Soviet Union objected to an American vessel making the voyage from one great ocean of the world to another, and the United States bowed to that objection…
"How far the Soviet Union would have gone to stop Northwind we shall never know, for the United States pulled back before finding out."
Petrow concludes by deriding the 1967 Soviet offer to share the Northern Sea Route with foreign merchantmen. The State Department, he says, should have reminded the Soviet Minister of the Merchant Marine that "you cannot sell what is not yours."
The Northwind's aborted voyage was made in 1965. Two summers later, the United States decided to attempt to demonstrate the international character of the Soviet Arctic again. Two icebreakers, the Edisto and the Eastwind, were sent once more from the Atlantic side. Evidently, encouraged in retrospect by the Northwind's experience, they went immediately to the northern coast of Severnaya Zemlya and attempted to cross over. It was not a favorable ice year, and a path could not be forced through the ice-flows packed against the islands. Failing there, they turned southward and declared to the Soviets their intent to "make a peaceful and innocent passage" through the Vilkitskii Strait. Their message cited "instructions from the Coast Guard Commandant as approved by the U. S. Department of State."
The carefully worded message quite plainly did not ask permission to pass through Soviet territorial waters, stating only an intention to do so. The Soviet concept of a required prior permission to pass through Soviet territorial waters was being challenged. Further, the message required no answer. Unless the Soviets acted quickly, the two icebreakers might slip through Vilkitskii Strait and be on their way. But Moscow had evidently been at work in other channels. Before a Soviet response was received by the Edisto, the U. S. government called the icebreakers back owing to lateness of the season and schedule problems. Moscow sent its reply direct to the icebreakers anyway:
"FROM MOSCOW
HIGHLY URGENT
BT
…VILKITSKII STRAITS IS WITHIN USSR TERRITORIAL WATERS THEREFORE SAILING OF ANY FOREIGN NAVY SHIPS IN THE STRAIT IS SUBJECT TO REGULATIONS OF SAFETY OF USSR FRONTIERS. FOR PASSING THE STRAIT ACCORDING TO THE ABOVE REGULATIONS MILITAR Y SHIPS MUST OBTAIN PRELIMINARY PERMISSION OF USSR GOVERNMENT THROUGH DIPLOMATIC CHANNELS ONE MONTH BEFORE EXPECTED DATE OF PASSING. USSR MINISTRY OF MERCHANT MARINE."
From the foregoing accounts, it is clear that in the 1960s, U. S. icebreakers operated in every sea north of Siberia. They have not been able to transit the entire coast because of inability to pass through, or go around, the Vilkitskii Strait. In the case of the slightly wider Sannikov and Laptev straits, the Soviets have had to use the concept of internal Soviet waters. This seems to suggest that the Soviets would somehow find grounds to bar passage through the Northern Sea Route no matter what the specific situation-excepting, of course, merchantmen which pay the fee and meet other requirements.
On a ship-to-ship and plane-to-ship level, attempts by the Soviet military to show their American counterparts that they are not welcome have been blatant and commonplace. This situation is quite understandable since Soviet naval and coastal forces have been officially informed that the Siberian seas are within Soviet territorial boundaries. The Soviet naval officer must assume that the Soviet government has tolerated these American icebreakers in Soviet waters only because of their innocuous nature.
America's Stance
Owing to the trend in world opinion in most countries which favors the extension of maritime boundaries, there will soon be little argument against the Soviet-claimed 12-mile-wide territorial sea.
The U. S. position has always favored maximum freedom of navigation on the high seas, as is obvious from its own three-mile territorial belt. However, the United States recently submitted to the United Nations Seabed Committee draft articles stipulating 12 miles. The United States suggested in the draft articles that international straits between one part of the high seas and another should be considered high seas as far as transit through them is concerned. This means more than innocent passage through territorial waters. The words, for example, would allow the passage of submerged submarines. Straits already covered by international agreement would not be affected. The point is that, with a 12-mile territorial belt, all of any strait less than 24 miles wide falls within one nation or another's international boundaries. This could preclude passage of warships-and certainly submerged submarines—in many parts of the world. This problem is the more complex because often very small islands, indeed sometimes—merely exposed rocks, exist in key straits and channels. These chunks of land are normally the property of one or another bordering state and being sovereign territory, of course, merit having a 12-mile circle circumscribed around them. This "small island" effect, unless international law is carefully tailored, would make vast areas of the world's oceans and certainly many of the most used straits and channels the sovereign territory of individual states.
The United States has consistently considered the Arctic to be the same as any other part of the high seas. Even so, America's persistent efforts to operate ships in the Siberian Arctic in the face of Soviet opposition merits scrutiny as to motivation. A truly international trade route through the Siberian Arctic might be useful to European nations or to Japan, but would be of little use to American trade.
It may be that our government considers that it is deleterious to American interests for another great power to claim jurisdiction over a wide expanse of the world's oceans. The United States may feel, too, that the Soviet Union is setting a bad example at a time when many small countries of the world are claiming ever-widening territorial belts.
Another American motive might be to deter the Soviet Union from unilaterally incorporating the entire Siberian Arctic Ocean area into its defensive system by default. After all, except for the operation of the U. S. icebreakers, the Soviet Union can say that its claim to sovereignty over the four Siberian seas has not been contested. And, of course, the longer it goes uncontested, the more U. S. silence is likely to be regarded by Russia and the world as acquiescence.
The Soviet Rationale
Why are the Soviets attempting by diplomatic means to extend their Arctic Ocean boundary northward and to deny its use to U. S. naval ships? There are no known natural resources of great importance in the ocean area, either to be gained by the Soviets or denied to other nations. It is doubtful, too, that there is Soviet concern over the United States or any other nation obtaining purely scientific information. Although it has been speculated that the Soviets have strategic ballistic missiles near their Siberian Arctic coastline, at this stage of ballistic missile development it is very doubtful they would need to locate them in so remote a region.
Perhaps the Soviets' primary purpose is merely to establish a wider buffer north of sparsely populated Siberia. Siberia's strategic vulnerability, because of its sparse lines of communication, is better understood by the Soviets than it is by Western military analysts. The Soviet motives are defensive. A wide buffer in the Arctic north of Siberia matches neatly the buffer supplied by Mongolia south of Siberia. Through diplomatic means, the Soviets are attaining this buffer as cheaply as it is possible to do so.
In the European Arctic—the Barents Sea-Murman Coast areas—the Soviet tactics have been different but their motives are the same. Since the sea is used internationally, the Soviets have been unable to claim it. They have, though, maintained their buffer by building up an undisputed naval supremacy in the area. They have also, by-ship-to-ship confrontations, attempted to discourage the navies of other nations from operating there.
Obviously, the Soviet military stance in the Arctic is hardening. Because of American unfamiliarity with the area and the double standard (at home and abroad) which the Soviets have applied, there is always a strong possibility of an inadvertent encounter here. That the Soviets allowed U. S. icebreakers (normally under close Soviet escort) in the Kara Sea does not mean that they would treat U. S. warships similarly.
The Arctic Exits
To the south of the Arctic basin are the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Across these go the vital American lines of communications. To be effective, the Soviet ballistic missile submarines homeported in Murmansk must exit the Arctic and attain position off the U. S. coast. Soviet attack submarines, too, must exit the Arctic to get at those maritime lines of commerce.
This coin has two sides. The Russian planner, working out the defense of either the Murman Coast or the Northern Sea Route and Siberia, would not want to wait until the opposing hostile submarines had gained the expansive shelter of the Arctic ice cap. If there are gates into the Arctic he would want to stop the opposition at the gates. Thus, both America and the Soviet Union have strong motives for wanting to patrol the gates between the Arctic Ocean and the rest of the world's oceans. In case of war, certainly, both would like to be able to close the gates.
There are three gates between the Arctic Ocean and the oceans of the world: The Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap (G-I-UK Gap), the Davis Strait, and the Bering Strait.
The Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap
By far the most important passages between the Arctic and the Atlantic Ocean lie between the chain of islands between Kap Ravn, Greenland, and Calais, France, known as the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap. They are the only year-round ice-free entrances into the Arctic and are the normal approaches to, and exits from, Murmansk and the Murman Coast.
Between Greenland and Iceland is the Denmark Strait, not to be confused with the Danish Straits which make up the exit from the Baltic. The Denmark Strait is the only part of the G-I-UK Gap which suffers icing in winter. Normally, the Denmark Strait is open all winter; however, it is narrowed by fast ice on the Greenland side. On an occasional severe winter, the entire strait is blocked with ice for short periods. The water is several hundred fathoms deep.
Between Iceland and Northern Scotland lie the Faeroe, Shetland, and Orkney islands. This water is much shallower than that in the Denmark Strait, but even in its shallowest end, near Europe, it is sufficiently deep for shipping. Its depth, though, makes it susceptible to anti-shipping mining. In fact, these waters were mined extensively during World War II. Between Britain and the European mainland is the extremelyshallow North Sea. This area was heavily mined in both World Wars.
England is so positioned that it can easily control or prevent passage from the North Sea into the Atlantic. It has used this position to its advantage since the Anglo-Dutch wars in the 17th century.
In World War I, Britain contained the German High Seas Fleet within the narrow limits of the North Sea. The boundaries were the Strait of Dover to the south and a line from northern Scotland through the Shetlands to southern Norway in the north. Although the High Seas Fleet could make an occasional foray against British North Sea ports, breaking out of the North Sea was not seriously attempted except by submarines.
The entire G-I-UK Gap became a barrier to the German Navy during World War II. Britain's blockade of Germany started along World War I lines. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, who commanded the German Navy until 1943, complains in his memoirs:
"England's strength rested on two foundations. First, the British Isles lay squarely across the exit from German ports and the North Sea into the open seas beyond, and the British Fleet, aided by the British Air Force, could seal off the exit most effectively, even if not 100 per cent hermetically. Secondly, that same British Fleet could operate everywhere at sea. Without even firing a single shot it had cut us off almost completely from all communications overseas."
Germany could not allow the blockade to remain. According to Admiral Raeder, the most essential item was iron ore from Sweden. The Swedish port of Lulei on the Gulf of Bothnia was icebound in winter; therefore, Germany's only year-round supply line was via the Norwegian Arctic port of Narvik. As soon as Britain threatened to intercept the German ore imports which for hundreds of miles were carried south through Norwegian waters, the Germans took Norway. In Admiral Raeder's words:
"As a result the British, who had stretched a defense line across the exit from the North Sea between Norway and Scotland, were now pushed back to a line stretching from Scotland to Iceland—a 200-mile wide passage, much farther from British bases, and hence much harder to seal off. Any idea the British had of sealing off Germany's exit from the North Sea to the Atlantic by a continuous minefield now had to be dropped as the great depth of water off Iceland made such a minefield impracticable. To squeeze the Iceland exit passage for German ships as much as possible, the British forcibly occupied the Danish Faeroe Islands and Iceland on 10 May 1940; but on the whole the German exit to the Atlantic was now infinitely easier than it had been before the occupation of Norway, as the British now had no chance of blocking off our submarines."
Typically, German submarines, and for that matter surface commerce raiders from the Baltic, entered the Atlantic via the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland.
It is essential to note that in relation to the G-I-UK Gap, Germany was the Arctic power. Indeed, with a far inferior fleet, it was able throughout most of the war to maintain air and sea dominance north of the G-I-UK Gap. A review of the story of the hazardous Murmansk convoying underlines the fact that these waters were essentially under German control until near the very end of the war. Germany could maintain this control with a small force because of the ideal location of its bases along the long Norwegian coast extending to within a few miles of Murmansk. (For a time before war commenced between Germany and Russia, Germany had acquired the use of a port on the Soviet Murman Coast in the Russo-German nonaggression pact. Germany could make voyage repairs on its submarines here before and after they had passed through the British North Sea Barrier.)
The current strategic parallel is obvious. The Soviets have tailored their surface naval units based at Murmansk to exercise control in the Norwegian and Barents seas—that is, in the waters north of the G-I-UK Gap. These ships have sacrificed endurance and ammunition reload capacity for economy and speed. They are meant for the short distances required in these northern waters.
There are several items worthy of special consideration concerning the G-I-UK barrier. First, in the event of naval warfare, strategically Iceland and the Denmark Strait would be just as important today as they were in the summer of 1941 when America took over the defense of Iceland and U. S. destroyers began patrolling the Denmark Strait.
Second, in any scenario of naval warfare in the Atlantic with the G-I-UK Gap as a dividing line between areas of control, the position of Norway, especially northern Norway appears untenable. On the one hand, ships and aircraft operating from the Norwegian ports, such as Hammerfest, Tromsp, and Narvik, control the entrances to the Barents Sea. On the other hand, it would be difficult to foresee a situation in which Soviet naval power would not be absolutely predominant in the same area. Stated in another way, if the G-I-UK Gap is truly the dividing line between those seas controlled by U. S. and those by Soviet naval power, northern Norway definitely lies on the Soviet side.
The shallow, narrow stretch of water of the North Sea between the Shetlands and southern Norway is also strategically important. If the Atlantic powers can maintain the eastern extremity of the G-I-UK Gap here instead of at the Strait of Dover, some important advantages are gained. The Soviet sea line of communication between the Baltic and Barents forces remains unusable. The bulbous part of southern Norway, where the population lives, stays in communication with the West. Perhaps most important, a shield is formed which permits shipping across the North Sea from Britain to Belgium, Holland, and West Germany.
Troublesome to U. S. naval planners contemplating the G-I-UK Gap (which, it must be remembered terminates at Calais on the Strait of Dover) is the fact that NATO supply lines to West Germany lie on the Arctic Side. As noted, in a conventional war involving NATO, northern Norway is all but indefensible. The loss of southern Norway would mean the isolation of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Germany unless communications across France were possible.
Finally, the geography of the polar ice cap is such that for much of the year a nuclear submarine can transit from Murmansk through the Denmark Strait staying under the ice pack or at least in the ice fringe area. Let us imagine a nuclear ballistic missile submarine transit in April. If this submarine traveled a few hundred miles north of Murmansk to the edge of the polar pack, she could follow the pack edge west-southwest until she emerged from the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland having passed beneath the fast ice along Greenland's eastern shore. The limit of the polar pack for much of the year extends in a gentle great circle curve from the western edge of the Denmark Strait to a few hundred miles north of Murmansk. The contradictions of great circle navigation are such that our hypothetical submarine went less than a few hundred miles out of her way. To a considerable extent modern antisubmarine warfare, whether American or Soviet, concerns itself with the denial of passage between the Atlantic and the Arctic. Even in the nearly ice-free G-I-UK Gap this variety of ASW is moving into the fringe ice.
The Davis Strait
There is another route between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. It has no wartime history and has never been a viable commercial route. Indeed, except for Arctic explorers and developers, it has never been used. Today, with the vastly increased capability of the nuclear submarine, the Davis Strait route, between Canada's Baffin Island and Greenland, can no longer be ignored.
North of the Davis Strait is Baffin Bay. Continuing northward, there are two known submarine routes into the Arctic Ocean. One is the historic Northwest Passage to the south of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. The other is via the narrow Kennedy and Robeson Channels, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. The latter route is not farfetched as a path from Murmansk to the Atlantic. The distance from Murmansk to New York City via the Kennedy/Robeson Channel is 4,100 miles as compared to about 3,700 via the G-I-UK Gap.
Even in summer, the best of seasons, the Davis Strait route is not a friendly one. Baffin Bay is a great, deep pond of cold water. Around the sides of this pond in counter-clockwise fashion march the world's largest concentration of icebergs. They are spawned from the enormous glaciers of northern Greenland whose ice cap in places exceeds a thickness of 10,000 feet. The Humboldt Glacier (the world's largest) is here. Now and then an iceberg spins out of the procession and passes down through Davis Strait to the Atlantic, there is terrorize shipping. These icebergs melt, roll, and calve in the warmer waters. The real giants are in Baffin Bay; mammoths weighing millions of tons, sometimes towering hundreds of feet in the air, and extending at least that far below the surface. Icebergs in the Baffin Bay are not a chance occurrence; to encounter one every mile or so is typical. Just to the left of center of Baffin Bay is a huge raft of pack ice, the "middle pack," which remains even in summer. The icebergs travel in counterclockwise fashion around this middle pack. Baffin Bay's middle pack is distinctly different from the ice pack of the Arctic basin. Frozen into it are large icebergs which sometimes reach more than a thousand feet into the depths.
In winter, pack ice covers all of Baffin Bay and Davis Strait to a point below Cape Dyer at the narrowest part of the straits. The icebergs are still there and continue their ghostly march barging their way through the pack ice.
The narrow part of Robeson Channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island is nearly permanently bridged with pack ice. For submarines, this passage is rather like a subterranean aqueduct. The Northwest Passage route goes through Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Viscount Melville Sound, and McClure Strait. In winter, the entire Northwest Passage is bridged by ice. In summer, the western portions normally are.
It might seem unrealistic to suggest that the Davis Strait route could be a practical submarine passage between the Arctic and the Atlantic, however, its practicality was confirmed years ago.
Commander George P. Steele transited the route by nuclear submarine in August 1960. He thoroughly documented the voyage in his book, Seadragon: Northwest Under the Ice.
Steele's Seadragon departed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and exercised first under the middle pack of Baffin Bay. Commander Steele's description of his maneuvers around and under the icebergs frozen into the middle pack is one of the best descriptions of the nuclear submarine's under-ice ability. The Seadragon passed directly under icebergs 22 times, her sonic ice-detecting equipment measuring the iceberg's girth as she passed. Demonstrating that submarines could operate under an iceberg-infested pack, Commander Steele operated at full speed under the middle pack. Testing the ability of his sonar equipment to see the icebergs well from underwater, when he encountered bergs too large to pass under, he charged as close as 700 yards before turning away.
Commander Steele next took the Seadragon through the Northwest Passage. His was not just one lucky pass. Alternating at the conn with his executive officer, he steamed back and forth through Barrow Strait, the narrowest part of the passage, several times. From there he took his submarine deep and passed on through Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait without even coming shallow to check his navigation. This final leg of his entry into the Arctic Basin was carried out in poorly-charted, essentially virgin waters.
The Seadragon must have been able to "see" under water very well. Commander Steele made his voyage more than 11 years ago. In his book, he was careful to point Out that his path through the Northwest Passage was not for everyone, and his exact route remains a secret. However, precise underwater submarine operation is obviously possible-even in uncharted waters. By this time, there is little doubt that Soviet submarines must be able to do it, too.
The more direct route from Baffin Bay to the Arctic is via Smith Sound and the very narrow Kennedy and Robeson Channels. Captain Joe Skoog and his submarine Skate threaded it in 1962. For good measure, the Skate came back via the Northwest Passage. Captain Skoog didn't bother to write a book about it. The laconic Skoog told reporters on his return that he and his crew had "had a ball" and that certainly his voyage was "routine and not a feat of derring-do." When asked what on his trip had interested him most, he gave two items; meeting and surfacing with the Seadragon (which had come back to the Arctic from Hawaii) at the North Pole, and returning to his berth alongside the submarine Halfbeak at State Pier in New London, Connecticut. It probably wasn't as easy as all that, but one gets the impression that it could be done again.
The American submarines have long ago shown the way; but, ironically, it is to the Soviet submarines that the route is most significant. It is, after all, the Soviet missile-firing and attack submarines which must exit the Arctic basin to gain the high seas. With a globe and a navigator's compass, the reader can demonstrate to himself that the nearest center of naval power to the northern passages of the Davis Strait route is in fact Murmansk. The distance from Robeson Channel to Murmansk is almost exactly equal to the distance between Robeson Channel and the southern tip of Greenland.
Of course, the Canadians have military outposts in this northern area. One of the leading ones is Resolute on Barrow Strait in the Northwest Passage. Commander Steele described it from the air: "At the end of the airstrip the wreck of an airplane rested. A handful of Quonset huts, a road, a little pier and that was Resolute." Not really the type of facility to bar the passage of submerged nuclear submarines, is it?
Soviet military writers have not ignored the area. Quoting their American counterparts, they have discussed the possibility of Soviet nuclear submarines passing under the ice into Hudson Bay from where their missiles could command America's industrial heartland.
The Bering Strait
The Bering Strait is 45 miles wide from Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, to Cape Dezhneva on Siberia. In the middle of the strait stand Little and Big Diomede Islands, two miles apart. The former is American; the latter Russian. These huge flat tables of rock tower more than 1,300 feet high. Boiling northward through the Strait is a current often exceeding two-and-a-half knots. Frequently there are high winds and fog. On a clear day the York Mountains on Alaska's Seward Peninsula can be seen clearly from Cape Dezhneva on Asia's mainland.
Throughout the summer and fall shipping season, the Bering Strait is not so much a barrier between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans as a narrows along a busy Soviet commercial artery. The eastern part of the Northern Sea Route runs through the Bering Strait down to Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka and Vladivostok in the Sea of Japan. This shipping, as has been stated before, is vital to the Soviet Union.
Though not at all comparable in either number or importance to the Soviet shipping, a few American ships pass through the Bering Strait to supply Alaska's otherwise isolated North Slope around the corner in the Arctic Ocean. In general, American shipping stays to the American side of the Diomedes and Soviet shipping moves along the western side of the Strait. It is not a navigational feat to negotiate the Bering Strait in summer, for it is free of ice. Navigational aids and landmarks along both sides are good.
By late November, the Strait is shut down by pack ice which stays until June. In winter, the Strait is a navigator's nightmare. Pack ice extends over the shallow water as far south as the Pribilof Islands 500 miles to the southward. The wind shifts to the north; 55-knot winds are commonplace. Driven by the winds the pack ice is continually in motion, piling and telescoping in huge ridges that ground in the shallow spots, swing free, and move again. Ahead of the strong north winds, the ice moves generally southward. The confused current beneath sometimes moves with the ice, sometimes moves in the opposite direction, and sometimes reaches incredible velocities owing to the channeling between the ice ridges and the bottom. North of the Bering Strait the shallow Chukchi Sea extends for over 500 miles, with more high winds, more ice ridges, and a bottom generally 20 to 30 fathoms deep. Beyond is the sanctuary of the Arctic Basin's deep water.
One need not be an expert navigator to visualize the difficulty for a submarine to wriggle her way beneath the pack through this thousand miles of shallow water and ice floes, some of them grounded on the bottom. A submarine going north must disappear beneath the pack 500 miles from the narrow Bering Straits—yet must thread the needle on either side ofthe Diomedes in the Strait's center.
In late winter of 1960 the American nuclear submarine Sargo from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, made the trip through the Bering Strait in the worst part of the ice season. After attaining the relative safety of deep water under the Arctic Basin ice pack, she explored and then returned as she ha d come. This writer has discussed the voyage in some detail with both the Sargo's commanding officer, John H. Nicholson, and her executive officer, William K. Yates. From both, the impression was gained that the winter voyage through the Bering Strait was hazardous, definitely not something to be undertaken on a routine basis. Nevertheless, the voyage was made and the Sargo, having reached the Arctic Ocean, returned as she had come instead of exiting the Arctic via the far safer and easier G-I-UK Gap. Her commanding officer obviously felt confident of his ability to make the return trip. Technology for submarines operating under the ice must have improved in the 13 years since the Sargo's voyage. If the Sargo's captain was willing to do it twice in peacetime it seems logical that Soviet submarines would be willing to try it in wartime.
The distance from Murmansk to the Sea of Japan is about equal to the distance between San Diego, and the Sea of Japan. Yet, the importance of the Bering Strait as an avenue for nuclear submarines should not be exaggerated. The Soviets have submarines based permanently in the Pacific and industrial bases in the vicinity of Vladivostok in the Sea of Japan to support them. Even so, the Bering Strait route allows a degree of surprise which the Americans cannot afford to ignore. There is the danger that Soviet submarines coming from this unexpected quarter might show up on America's West Coast completely undetected. The Bering Strait route also gives the Soviets the ability in season to redistribute their Atlantic and Pacific fleets fairly quickly and without publicity. In the case of nuclear-powered submarines, this redistribution can take place at any time of the year.
The real strategic significance of the Bering Strait lies in the fact that it controls the eastern end of the Northern Sea Route. This route is the major line of communications of Soviet industries, such as mining and military outposts along eastern Siberia's Arctic coast. This is the reason the Soviets expend a good deal of effort to maintain a naval supremacy in this area from bases such as Provideniia, a port located on the Strait.
American and Canadian Interests in the Maritime Arctic
Perhaps the best way to conclude this article is to reiterate the point made at the outset: Soviet interests in the Arctic Ocean are incomparably greater than those of America.
The navigable and marginally navigable parts of the Arctic Ocean are those parts not under the permanent ice cap. Nearly all of these Arctic waters lie in areas where the Soviets have strong interests and have demonstrated an obvious military supremacy. More than 95% of these waters lie to the north of the Soviet side of the G-I-UK Gap, in the Barents north of the Murman Coast, or in the ribbon of water north of Siberia. There is a narrow short extension of water navigable in summer along northern Alaska and the extreme western portion of Canada to a point just beyond the Mackenzie River. Though this stretch of American and Canadian water lies very close to the major Soviet artery through the Bering Strait, neither America nor Canada has developed any naval bases in the area. The Soviet route is well defended by developed bases such as the one at Provideniia.
Bulk supplies to outposts on Alaska's Arctic coast must come by sea since there are no road or rail connections with the rest of Alaska. Supplies. to Nome, Barrow, Prudhoe Bay, and the entire isolated portion of northern Alaska may be accomplished by a handful of ship visits each summer. None of these villages have port facilities. Ships must discharge cargo from the open seaway into barges. Industry along Alaska's north slope, such as the oil industry at Prudhoe Bay, has not been developed as yet.
Canada's foothold on the maritime Arctic is centered on the Beaufort Sea and the Mackenzie River just to the east of Alaska's north slope. There is a rudimentary shipping system along the Mackenzie River which extends deep into Canada. As along the north slope of Alaska, Canada has villages on the Beaufort Sea which are supplied by ship in summer. There is, though, essentially no industry in the area to be serviced. To the east of the Beaufort Sea, Canada's rugged coastline is frozen into the permanent polar cap.
Throughout its length the Soviet Union looks to the north for access to the open sea. The North American continent has had no need to look to the Arctic, and its Arctic coast is far less friendly. America does not have or need a huge Arctic military base like Murmansk. The seasonal shipping along the Arctic Ocean coasts of Alaska and Canada amounts to a mere handful of ships as compared to the hundreds of ships which ply the Northern Sea Route.
More important, the Arctic Basin area is so remote and inaccessible from industrial America and Canada that its defense is not vital to the defense of either.
Strategically, then, the northern reaches of North America are themselves a buffer for industrial America which lies much farther to the south of the Arctic than does its Soviet counterpart.