Arctic Force Structure: What An Arctic Fleet Might Look Like, by Stephen M. Carmel

ARCTIC SECURITY INITIATIVE
HOOVER INSTITUTION
Arctic Force Structure

by Stephen M. Carmel Arctic Security Initiative www.hoover.org/taskforces/arctic-security
What an Arctic Fleet Might Look Like
The increasing accessibility of the Arctic Ocean is leading to greater commercial activity in that part of the world. In addition, non-Arctic states are beginning to take interest in the potential advantages the Arctic may afford them. The United States finds itself in a position where it does not have the proper government assets to operate beyond a very minimal capacity in that part of the world. Therefore, there is increasing interest in developing a more robust official capacity to operate in the Arctic. In order to make informed investment decisions, a comprehensive survey of the decision environment is required. To date, no such review appears to have been accomplished. The objective of this paper is to provide such a review and, based on the results, propose a potential force structure to effectively execute U.S. responsibilities as an Arctic nation. This review will include an understanding of the types of activity taking place in the Arctic now and likely to occur over the relevant time frame, which government agencies bear the largest responsibilities, and the governance regimes in place now and needed for the future. In particular, it is noted that the biggest security challenge is environmental security and the biggest environmental threats to the Arctic are terrestrial in nature, but regime enforcement must come from maritime assets of a variety of government agencies. Various methods of financing an Arcticforce structure are reviewed which, given the realities of government budgets, is an essential component of any discussion. Lastly, taking all the foregoing together, a proposed fleet force structure is presented. The immediate ship type that comes to mind when contemplating an Arctic fleet is the icebreaker. A proper analysis, however, leads to the conclusion that icebreakers are only one piece, and probably a small one, in the total solution. This paper also urges reviewing activity in the Arctic from a system perspective, which is very different from the normal analysis. When looking at the Arctic, it is
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not sufficient to say that the Arctic routes are shorter and therefore cheaper and more likely to be used, or that the Arctic presents a new race for resources given its quantity of undiscovered oil and gas. The analysis must be much more nuanced and undertaken within the context of a complex global trading system. The term system is critical here: a major mistake that virtually all analyses of the Arctic, and in particular popular press analyses, make is to view the Arctic in isolation.1 These analyses discuss changes in the Arctic as if they were decoupled from the rest of the world. In fact, the changing Arctic is one part of an overall global system that itself is undergoing rapid change. Absolute changes in the Arctic do not matter. What matters is changes in the Arctic relative to, and in the context of, changes across the global system. This means that a critical mission capability for an Arctic fleet is to act as a hedge against uncertainty. For example, while it is common to point out the large amount of undiscovered reserves of oil and gas in the Arctic, the level of proven reserves is never discussed. Proven reserves are what get developed, and are a function of many things unrelated to the region, such as the global price of oil and technology developments. On the other hand, events far from the Arctic, such as an unexpected and prolonged closure of the Suez Canal (given recent events in Egypt nota completely improbable event),2 can have large, nonlinear effects on activity in the Arctic. This review will help to present a clearer understanding of what type ofactivity is happening or is likely to happen in the Arctic; who is conducting that activity;what the role of the government presence is intended to accomplish; andwhich agencies will do what. Other issues include the potential for joint operations with other Arctic states, particularly Canada; the overarching governance scheme; and the range of options for acquiring and paying for an Arctic fleet, recognizing that while the term race is overused sensationalism and not reflective of reality, activity is happening up there now. Therefore, the traditional timeline for designing, contracting, and building a fleet which frequently takes decades isunacceptable.
Part One: Current and Future Arctic Activity 3

A number of activities need to be examined when considering current and future activity in the Arctic. Some of these activities get little press but actually represent the largest volume of activity that is in fact actually taking place. The two principal activities in this broad category are fishing and cruise ship traffic. While these activities do not directly drive international economics on the scale that transportation-related activities do, they represent very important, and in some cases potentially the most important, types of activity as far as government roles and missions are concerned. Fishing is a critical source of food globally and a vasteconomic enterprise, meaning that it is also potentially a source of conflict. Cruise ship traffic represents, first, the only way most ordinary citizens experience the Arctic personally, meaning they are present in the region and represent a
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safety-of-life-at-sea mission, as well as a border security issue. Cruise ship traffic is present in large and growing numbers right now, hence represents a mission that isimmediate in need. The popular press tends to be wildly inaccurate on the subject of shipping in the Arctic, which can lead to public and political misunderstanding of the nature and potential solutions for Arctic problems. Global transportation, and specifically the type that drives globalization today, is an enormously complex subject that requires considering many factors when evaluating the potential attractiveness of any one trade lane over alternatives. When considering shipping through the Arctic, there are two very distinct considerations that must be reviewed. First is route, and the second is the type of shipping. The two routes to be examined in detail are the Northern Sea Route across the north coast of Russia, and the Northwest Passage through the northern Canadian Archipelago. (The Transpolar Route will also be noted but dismissed as irrelevant to this discussion.) There are also two principal types of shipping to be considered.4 These have very different economic drivers and technical considerations as well as implications for governance and the assets needed for enforcement. The first type is destination shippingshipping that occurs with a port in the Arctic as one terminus of the voyage. The second type is transit shipping, which uses the Arctic as a short cut between two points not located in the Arctic. Oil and gas activity is of course a major issue in the Arctic, both in itself and also as a driver for destination shipping. It is occurring now, and represents one of the biggest threats from an environmental security perspective. While this is the area pundits often point to as a potential source of conflict in the Arctic, the oil and gas reserves are almost all within uncontested EEZs (exclusive economic zones), and the legal mechanisms for adjudicating any remaining disputes are well-established and strictly adhered to by Arctic stakeholders. The real discussion of relevance is how much of the oil and gas is actually likely to be developed given the large and rapid changes in the global energy markets that are occurring at the same time that the Arctic becomes more accessible. Once again, absolute changes in the Arctic dont matter; changes in the Arctic relative to changes elsewhere in the system will determine what actually happens there.
Fishing
To the extent that there is a potential for conflict in the Arctic it is fishing, not natural resources such as oil or gas, that would most likely be the cause. Fishing rights have been the source of conflict in the past; in fact, they were the source of a potential armed conflict between NATO allies twice. The Cod Wars between Iceland and the United Kingdom in the 1950s and again in the 1970s and the Turbot War between Canada and Spain represented a real potential for armed (albeit limited) conflict between allies.5
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The general assumption, particularly in the popular press, is that fish populations will move in reaction to changing ocean temperatures and salinity. The science is far from settled, and there is no conclusive evidence that these migration patterns are happening or likely to happen. However, the speculation is not unwarranted. Currently the Arctic Council estimates that 50 percent of all marine activity in the Arctic is related to fishing. Certainly the ability of fishing vessels to now operate in areas where they previously could not represents a governance challenge, regardless of where the fish migrate. While its expected that Arctic countries havefishing fleets operating in that area now, in reality any country that has a robust fishing industry (China, Japan, Spain, among others) will view the Arctic with great interest. Therefore, from a roles and missions perspective, fisheries patrol and enforcement should be given high priority. While the United States may have banned fishing in Arctic waters north of the Bering Strait, for example, it takes assets to enforce that ban, and without sufficient assets, the ban is meaningless.
Cruise Ship Trafc

Cruise ship traffic, on the other hand, represents potentially the most significant safety aspect of the Arctic. Distances in the Arctic are vast with very limited infrastructure of any type. There are no resources to conduct any type of largescale rescue operation in a timely mannermost resources are located several days transit time away. In case of an accident, treatment options for the injured would be minimal at best. The Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic was entered into by the eight Arctic states under the auspices of the Arctic Council, in May 2011.6 That document produced a binding agreement among the agreeing nations about establishing search and rescue infrastructure, as well as setting forth areas of responsibility. It is important to recognize that this agreement is just thatan agreement, not a treaty. Were it a formal treaty all signatories would be bound under international law to provide the assets needed to fulfill their respective responsibilities. As an agreement,the imperative to fulfill responsibilities is a moral one, but not a legal one. Hence, despite this agreement, there is still virtually no search and rescue capability in theArctic and will not be for some time to come. The United States provides a prime example. The time and costs to develop such an infrastructure are very high and very politicized meaning it will be a long time before the United States is capable of fulfilling any sort of search and rescue responsibility in the area. For example, in January 2012, the Costa Concordia, a large cruise ship, ran aground and sank off the west coast of Italy. The accident happened in well-charted waters and in an area where aids to navigation, including electronic aids (radar, satellite) provide positional accuracy within yards. Because the accident occurred in the relatively warm waters of the Mediterranean close to shore (many passengers simply swam ashore) and was located very close to significant response capability such as medical facilities, of the 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew, only thirty perished. Compare this to the Arctic, where charts are rudimentary, often non-existent and, where they do exist, often inaccurate and based on data of questionable quality.
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Aids to navigation are few and electronic aids much less useful due to very low coasts and the presence of fast ice that changes the shape of a shoreline in relation to a chart, which makes radar less useful. Satellite navigation is also limited due to the effects of high latitude on satellite quality. On top of these factors, the water is cold, meaning survival time is short, and there are no facilities to treat victims of any sort of casualty beyond a small one. Rescue assets are often days away. It is not difficult to imagine how quickly an icebreaker would be overwhelmed if it was tasked with rescuing and caring for over 4,000 people, many elderly or injured. In truth, a cruise ship would not be operating in waters where an icebreaker would be necessary therefore it is highly unlikely that one would actually be nearby. Even such basic things as food, water, medical care, shelter, and sanitary facilities would not be available, even if the icebreaker was right beside the passenger ship when it went down. A Costa Concordia type of accident in the Arctic would therefore lead to a catastrophic loss of life. Cruise ship accidents should be a special concern for the American government, given that U.S. citizens would no doubt be the dominant type of passenger for cruises in the Alaska area. Should a major cruise ship accident occur in the Arctic, Congress and the American people would expect that the government, and particularly the United States Coast Guard, would be in a position to rescue its citizens. The Coast Guard is not in any way capable of fulfilling that mission now. Therefore, from a safety perspective, robust and persistent search and rescue capability, both surface and aviation, with the ability to handle very large events is a priority. These safety issues are not in the distant futurethey exist now and the United States does not have the response capability to handle them.
Destination Shipping vs. Transit Shipping

Destination shipping is shipping that has one of its points in the Arctic. Examples include shipping going into the Arctic to get to the Red Dog mine, the largest zinc mine in the world, which is located in the Alaskan Arctic, and currently represents a significant source of Arctic marine traffic.7 Another example is oil and gas shipping that originates in the Russian or Norwegian Barents Sea area, but is destined for Asia. This type of shipping also exists now and will probably grow in the future. While this type of activity is clearly increasing in nature, its volume is still relatively small when compared to the scale of traffic that goes through canals or other traditional routes. In 2012, there were forty-six transits of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), all of them destination in nature, compared to the twenty thousand transits through the Suez Canal.8 The Suez Canal averages more transits in one day than the entire volume of traffic along the NSR in the 2012 season. In 2013, the Northern Sea Route Administration lists 424 ships given permission to navigate in and along the NSR.9 A review of that list shows that all of them are related to industrial activity in the Arcticdestination shippingwith the odd exception (a private yacht is listed there). In fact, as of mid-September 2013, towards the end of the main season, only eighteen of those 424 applications represented end-toend voyages. Since destination shipping is constructed around two specific ports, network effects do not factor into economic outcomes. The materials carried
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are raw materials or basic commodities that are not time sensitive. As will be discussed in more detail in the next section on transit shipping, the Arctic routes, while potentially shorter, suffer from issues such as variability in transit times, ship size/economies of scale, and network inefficiencies that make it unattractive for that type of activity. Destination shipping on the other hand is more amenable to Arctic transit routes since it is not as badly impacted by the issues that make Arctic routes difficult. Transit shipping is shipping that uses the Arctic as a short cut between two places outside the Arctic, for instance, a containership making a voyage between Rotterdam and Yokohama using the Northern Sea Route. The type of shipping that drives globalization today is container shipping and so, from an economic development perspective, container shipping is the most important if the Arctic is to become a major pathway of global commerce. Container shipping coupled with advances in information technology is responsible for the world we see today, including disaggregated supply chains and hyper-low-cost manufacturing.10 The economic development of China, in particular, is a direct consequence of this type of shipping. Therefore, any system change that affects the global container trade, including changes in trade routes, will have consequences for the global political economy. While that study is outside the scope of this work, it bears further inquiry. Were the Arctic to develop into what the popular press projects the effects would be globally significant.11 To the extent that the Arctic is a source of conflict (aside from fishing as previously noted), the conflict is likely to occur because of changes in the global political economy resulting from changes in the Arctic, but not played out directlythere. Container shipping has increasingly made the old concept of interdependent economies obsolete in favor of interdependent production processes acrosseconomies. This type of activity links factory production processes in ajust-in-time manufacturing system that is very intolerant of variability. Predictability is farmore important than speed. Economies of scale are also very important as containerships on the main trade routes are growing in size, with the Asia/Europe trade route being served by ships large enough to carry eighteen thousand twenty-foot containers.12 Lastly, these types of ships operate in networks, serving a large number of ports on a particular route. Networks, both ocean and inland, are integrated in a hub-and-spoke operation which leads to ahighly efficient, tightly integrated system where network economics play a significant role in the overall economic model. For example, while the Arctic may be shorter for specific port pairs, the need to call at a large sequence of ports, including major transshipment ports such as Singapore, and to integrate schedules with other services means the Arctic will not offer a shorter route for the entire network. If ports are eliminated in order to make the Arctic route shorter, then the value of the network is vastly diminished. Services connecting Europe to Asia frequently call at Gioia Tauro, a major intermodal transshipment
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port in Italy servicing central Europe via rail, an option lost via the Northern SeaRoute. This combination makes container shipping much less amenable to Arcticroutes.
Shipping Routes
Any discussion of the Arctic invariably mentions how much shorter a route it provides between two port pairs. (Rotterdam to Yokohama seems to be the popular choice.) But when dealing with the Arctic, shorter is not necessarily faster or cheaper. Also, three potential transport routes must be considered. The first is the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada, the second is the Northern Sea Route (also sometimes called the Northeast Passage) across the top of Russia, and the third is theTranspolar Route, directly across the pole. The Transpolar Route is one area where failing to analyze the Arctic from a system perspective leads to faulty conclusions. The Transpolar Route would, if open, provide a deepwater direct link across the Arctic Ocean between Asia and Europe. Ice projections, however, do not show the Transpolar Route being navigable for commercial traffic in the time frame considered relevant from a system perspective. As noted earlier, a significant mistake made when considering the Arctic is to assume that the Arctic is changing independently of changes elsewhere in the global system. Analyses frequently project a diminished ice level to the extent that the Transpolar Route would be available in the 2040 to 2050 time frame. The analyses then go on to superimpose the current geo-economic situation onto that ice-diminished Arctic, which makes their conclusions invalid. What matters is the geo-economic situation as it will exist at that point in the future: the global system is changing even faster than the Arctic. In a similarly short span of time, for example, the innovation of the container completely transformed the world economy, propelling China from an economic backwater to a global economic powerhouse. There is every reason to believe that such discontinuous advances will occur again, and in fact are occurring. Much can happen in forty years. There are advances in manufacturing, such as 3-D printing, that will transform world trade every bit as much, if not more, than the container did, again re-ordering the global political economy. It is entirely possible that such advances could make a large segment of global shipping obsolete by mid-century, meaning that advances in technology might render the Arctic routes irrelevant before climate change allows them to be practical. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, the focus is kept on the near- to mid-term (2025 time frame), and the Transpolar Route will not be considered further.
Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage The Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage have very different geographical features that, in the context of existing transportation alternatives, require separate analysis and modeling. The Northwest Passage would typically be useful for trade between the eastern part
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of the North American continent and Asia. The Northwest Passage competes with the Panama Canal, which is undergoing an expansion project that will dramatically increase the size of the ships that can use it for transit, effecting relative economies of scale.13 In addition, the Northwest Passage competes with an existing, extensive, and efficient intermodal system consisting of West Coast ports and railroad infrastructure. Roughly 60 percent of cargo destined for east of the Mississippi originating in Asia currently uses that route. The Canadian West Coast port of Prince Rupert, connected by a very robust rail infrastructure to the inland port of CentrePort in Manitoba, Canada, and intermodal connections into North and Central America, is an example of one such integrated ocean and inland intermodal network. These intermodal networks are predictable, efficient, and comparatively inexpensive. The Northern Sea Route would target Asian-European trade that currently usestheSuez Canal. Unlike the Northwest Passage, there is limited competing terrestrial or intermodal route that offers an alternative to the Northern Sea Route. There is a potential for this to change, which should not be underestimated. The Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR) currently carries roughly 13 percent of container traffic between Europe and Asia, and a recently approved expansion project would increase that capacity by 46 percent.14 While still a long way from carrying a significant level of containerized cargo, the TSR has the potential to develop into atrue land bridge, along the lines of the U.S. intermodal system, that would seriously degrade the utility of the Northern Sea Route. The Northern Sea Route also benefits from a Russian government devoted to its development and to the relatively robust economic activity that already exists there. A more detailed discussion of the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route follow. This level of detail is warranted due to the large role these routes play in popular and political discussion of activity in the Arctic. Due to geographical and market factors, it is highly unlikely that the Northwest Passage will ever be useful for international shipping, and certainly not for container shipping. The Northern Sea Route does, however, offer the potential for becoming a viable transportation route, particularly for destination shipping serving industrial activity in the RussianArctic, and warrantsa more detailed discussion.
The Northwest Passage Interest in the Northwest Passage is not new.15 For over five hundred years explorers have been searching for the Northwest Passage, a narrative replete with larger than life characters and voyages of exploration, the documentation of which fills libraries. The most recent attempt at commercialization of that route was in the late 1960s when oil was discovered in the Alaskan North Slope region. At that time, profitable development of the oil fields depended on a less expensive alternative to the North Slope-to-Valdez pipeline in the south of Alaska. That proposed alternative was a direct route from
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Prudhoe Bay to the East Coast across the Arctic Ocean. In September of that year the S.S.Manhattan, a significantly modified 115,000-ton crude oil tanker, madethe journey from the EastCoast to the Pacific side as a test. In order to make thetanker ready for the journey, roughly $40 million in modifications were required (1969dollars).16 In todays terms, that is roughlythe cost to build the ship from the keel up. These modifications included an ice-breaking bow, an ice belt of steel along the waterline, and increased propulsion power, which essentially converted the ship into an icebreaker. In fact, the Manhattan still holds the record for the largest icebreaker ever constructed. The vessel navigated the passage and in fact made one more voyage in 1970, but the damage to the modified vessel on both trips was extensive.17 Despite the modifications used, the Manhattan still required the use of icebreakers and a helicopter to make the voyage. The need to break ice, and search for ice thin enough to break, limited speed of advancement. Thus the trip was not only punishing to the vessel, it was also unacceptably slow and unpredictable. Therefore, it was determined that economically the route was not viable. The current alternative method, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, was instead developed, assisted by changes in oil prices in the early 1970s and advances in pipeline technology that radically altered economic models. A quick review of the Manhattan adventure shows why there is such interest in an ice-free Northwest Passage: a vessel without modifications or icebreaker assistance could theoretically make the voyage, which is significantly shorter than other ocean alternatives. Speeds could approach more normal transit speeds and voyages could be made with more predictability. Currently, the main attraction of such a route is not the transport of Alaskan oil, since such a route could never compete with an existing pipeline structure. The main interest is now driven by manufactures trade between Asia and the U.S. East Coast or Europe. The Northwest Passage route cuts roughly 3,500 nautical miles (nm) off a trip from Shanghai to New York as opposed to the alternate route via the Panama Canal and cuts 2,500 nm off the trip from Shanghai to Rotterdam.18 This represents significant savings in both time and money and has the potential to significantly reduce transport costs. However, the talk about time and money saved is the extent of the analysis presented in the popular or even general academic press. There are rarely efforts to understand the full range of factors that affect the economics of such a route. In order to fully examine the potential utility of the Northwest Passage, it is important to situate it geographically. The Northwest Passage refers to the water route across the Arctic Ocean on the north coast of Canada that connects the Bering Sea on the Pacific side with Baffin Bay on the Atlantic side. There are at least six potential routes across the passage. The differences in route are all on the west side of the passage. On the eastern sidethe entrance is via Lancaster Sound. On the western side, however, there are two entrances that feed several routes around large islands. The deepwater route, which is the only practical route for large-scale shipping, is through the McClure Strait north of Victoria Island and Bank Island. Due to the counter-clockwise circulation in the Arctic, ice is swept up from the Arctic Ocean and pushed directly
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into McClure Strait. Therefore, it is generally ice-choked all year long, even in the years when the passage is described in the press as ice-free. There is no ice projection in the time frame of this study that shows McClure Strait being consistently free of ice to allow regular navigation, so it is not viable at this time. Theother possible routes enter from the south through the Amundsen Gulf. The many small straits that wind through the Canadian Archipelago are very shallow. The waters in that area are not well-charted, at least for surface navigation.19 Smaller, shallower straits are essentially uncharted. Insurance is an issue since exact models to quantify risk have not yet been developed. Emergency response in the event of anaccident is also not yet supported by any infrastructure, not least of which is environmental response in the event of an oil spill. Similar problems have been resolved by the market place and/or international regulation in the past and there is little reason to believe that they could not be resolved for the Arctic in the future, if there was an economic reason for doing so. Resolving these issues, however, still doesnot ensure that the Northwest Passage is a commercially viable passage. When scientists claim the Northwest Passage is ice-free that does not mean there is no ice. A significant amount of ice is, in fact, present. The McClure Strait, for example, is often described ice-free, when thereis in fact still considerable ice in the area which can mean that as much as 10 percent of the surface has ice floating around on it. Importantly, this ice is largely multi-year ice that is harder and more damaging to ships than new ice. Contrary to what some may think, even ice-strengthened ships are not designed to slam into ice at relatively high speed. The hull of an ice-strengthened ship is designed to withstand the pressure of ice squeezing it, not the shock-load from hitting it.20 Therefore, the presence of even small amounts of drifting ice will require ships to navigate slowly. Further, wind can cause the drifting ice to pile up in choke point areas, blocking passage altogether. This is a frequent issue at the western entrance to the passage. Ice is also highly variable from year to year: 2012 was reported often in the press as a record-low ice minimum, however, 2013 saw the ice minimum much larger, with the Northwest Passage remaining ice-covered the entire season. News reports that discuss how much distance an ice-free passage would take off a trip from A to B miss the point that distance is less important than time. To the extent that ships cannot travel at a normal speed through the Northwest Passage, the distance advantage diminishes. In addition, the environmental sensitivity of the region could also necessitate precautionary reduced speeds. As noted previously, aviable Northwest Passage route would take 2,500 nm off the trip from Shanghai toRotterdam. Most reports do not address what that means in terms of time. Thedistance from Shanghai to Rotterdam via Suez is about 10,500 nm, which for amodern containership traveling at 25 knots takes roughly 420 hours (about seventeen-and-a-half days) to complete. The distance via the Northwest Passage isroughly 8,000 nm, but only about 7,000 nm of that is open sea passage where
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FIGURE 1: Time Advantage of Northwest Passage in Hours: Shanghai to Rotterdam

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25knots is a reasonable expectation for speed. The other roughly 1,000miles isthrough the passage, and speed would in all probability be reduced by the presenceof drifting ice, reduced visibility, and other environmental factors. Thetime it takes to transit the passage must be calculated separately from the seapassage portion of the voyage to get a total time. A rough calculation shows thatthe Northwest Passage outperforms the Suez route only at average speeds through the passage above about 7 knots. Figure 1 shows the time advantage the Northwest Passage offers over the traditional route against averagespeeds throughthe pasage. An average speed of 7 knots is a significant assumption considering that a ship would most likely sustain significant damage by hitting multi-year ice at speeds over 3 knots. At an average speed of 3 knots, the passage is actually more than four days longer in time than the traditional longer-in-distance route. The distribution of plausible speeds through the passage is important since, as will be discussed at greater length, it is a key input for transport cost models. Additionally, modern supply chains depend heavily on predictability of shipping times. Predictability is as important as time in overall supply chain management. Transit routes that offer a short mean time but large variability around the mean will be less valuable for containership networks when integrated schedules have tight tolerancesfor variability. Therefore, the standard deviation of the distribution is also an important statistic. There are many other factors that affect the full analysis (e.g.fuel costs, Suez Canal costs, supply/demand balance in shipping) that must also be incorporated into the model to understand the real potential for the Arctic to actually have the impact on shipping that news reports
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imply will occur. It is clear that focusing on a reduction in effective distance, as the popular press does, misses most of the story. Given the shallow nature of the Northwest Passage, the other impediments to container shipping (discussed in the next section) that apply to both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route, coupled with the existence of alternatives routes that are well developed, it is highly unlikely that the Northwest Passage will ever be a viable route for transit shipping, particularly container shipping. Therefore, the effects of a viable transit route are likely to be limited to Europe/Asia trade across theNorthern Sea Route.21
Northern Sea Route The Northern Sea Route is the route across the north coast of Russia. This route is considered by the Russians to be a strategic asset and they have devoted considerable resources to its development including the establishment of a formal Northern Sea Route Administration.22
The distance from Shanghai to Rotterdam via the Suez is about 10,500 nm. The distance via the passage is slightly over 8,000 nm, potentially giving northeast Asia a boost in relative competitiveness as compared to other areas. But as in the discussion of the Northwest Passage, there are many other factors toconsider. The geography of the Northern Sea Route is considerably different from thatof the Northwest Passage. The Northern Sea Route begins on the western side ofthe Barents Sea and exits on the eastern side, passing south of the New Siberian Islands. The Northern Sea Route is actually comprised of three distinct seas (Barents, Kara, and Laptev) connected by narrow straits with Russian territory on either side. Consequently, and similarly to the Canadians with the Northwest Passage, Russia claims the Northern Sea Route as an internal waterway subject to Russian territorial sovereignty (and transit fees). Many of the same problems that plague the Northwest Passage also affect the Northern Sea Route. Variable ice conditions, poor visibility, reduced speeds, and the lack of network economics are all issues with the Northern Sea Route. Unlike with the Northwest Passage, however, these factors are to some extent offset by a Russian government committed to the development of the Northern Sea Route. The Russiangovernment is focused on developing the route to aid in capturing the considerable economic value of natural resources in the Russian Arctic. Roughly 20percent of Russias GDP and 22 percent of Russian exports originate in the Arctic.23 The Russians have the largest ice-breaking fleet in the world, as well as a coherent strategy and sufficient investment funding, to make the Northern Sea Route a commercial reality.24 Another difference between the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage is that the Northern Sea Route also has a primary customer, China, which is equally determined to see the route succeed. The Chinese have
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entered into a strategic partnership with Russia to develop the Northern Sea Route as a transit route for bringing oil and gas from the Barents Sea fields to China.25 The Chinese appear to be interested in the route because, while it could reduce costs of trade, it will certainly make them less dependent on oil imports through the Strait of Malacca (which can be shut down by the United States in case of conflict), which is a well-known strategic imperative for the Chinese. Imports of Russian oil from the Barents region via the Northern Sea Route are much more secure, hence attractive from a national security perspective, than are imports of Middle East oil via Malacca. Therefore, the Northern Sea Route partially solves the Chinese Malacca problem, demonstrating that there are non-economic drivers at work in developing the NSR, a situation that does not exist with the Northwest Passage. The Northern Sea Route is now in use for destination shipping, and there is no doubt that its use for this type of shipping will grow in the future. There are still unresolved issues in terms of the utility of the Northern Sea Route for container shipping, principally related to economies of scale and network economics. Network economics argue against a sustained use of the Northern Sea Route for large-scale international shipping. As noted in the section on the Northwest Passage, container shipping operates in integrated intermodal networks, not simply between two port pairs. The nature of these networks is in itself a source of economic efficiency. Ocean networks intersect at major transshipment ports such as Singapore or Algeciras allowing considerable flexibility in cargo loading. For example, a ship servicing the Asia-to-Europe trade but calling at the transshipment port of Algeciras could alsocarry cargo for the trade lane linking the west coast of Africa with Asia. The ship carrying cargo from Asia drops the cargo off in Algeciras, where a West Africa feeder running down the African Coast picks it up for onward transport to its final port of destination.Clearly a ship using the Northern Sea Route does not have theopportunity to participate in this type of network. Another significant, if not the biggest, issue making Arctic shipping unacceptable from a container-shipping perspective is economy of scale. While conventional wisdom would focus on total voyage cost, it is actually the cost per container that matters. Because both the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage are draft-constrained (12.5-meter and 10-meter controlling drafts, respectively), the largest ship likely to be able to use the Northern Sea Route would be one with a cargo capacity of only 2,500 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit)and even less for the Northwest Passage. The Northern Sea Route also has a beam restriction of thirty meters, given that transiting ships cannot be wider than the icebreakers employed to support them. For the Asia-to-Europe trade on the other hand, containerships can be as large as 18,000 TEU with a beam exceeding fifty meters; 6,000 to 8,000 TEU ships are common. As a back-of-the-envelope example, consider a voyage from Yokohama to Rotterdam, the common benchmark. By the traditional route it is 11,300nauticalmiles(nm)
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with a transit time of thirty-six days. The Northern Sea Route is 7,600 nm and takes twenty-six days (relying on the rather large assumption that the voyage is unhindered by ice or visibility issues). The ship making the Arctic transit would reasonably be carrying 2,000 containers; the ship on the traditional route would be carrying 6,500. Factoring in all expenses such as fuel and daily ship-operation, the cost of the traditional route would be in the range of $3.5million, while the Arctic route would be around $2.5million. And that is as far as most analyses normally go, showing that the Arctic route is considerably cheaper. But as noted earlier, what matters is not total cost but cost-per-container, and when put in those terms that breaks down to $538 for the traditional route but $1,250 on the Arctic route. So in fact the Arctic route is more than twice as expensive as the traditional route, and the Arctic route looks even worse in comparison with even larger ships on the traditional route. The Maersk Line, for example, has recently deployed the new Triple-E class ships with a nominal capacity of 18,000 TEU on the Asia-Europe trade route. It should be noted as well that the Northern Sea Route is claimed by the Russians as an internal waterway. Fees to transit the Northern Sea Route are on par with the Suez Canal, and the Russians also impose a considerable and very formal administrative process in order to transit through the route.26 All that said, it is again necessary to view the Arctic in the context of events in the rest of the world. Recent dramatic changes in the Middle East and Egypt, starting with the Arab Spring and continuing with the turmoil that still roils the region in Syria, Egypt, and the ever-festering problem with Iran, remind us that the Arctic is linked to events in the rest of the world in ways that could rapidly and unexpectedly increase shipping through the region. If, for instance, anything happened that caused a long-term closure of the Suez Canal, such as a renewed conflict between Israel and a radicalized Egypt along the lines of the Six-Day War, or even sustained terrorist activity that makes the Suez, while open, dangerous and unpredictable to use, could lead to a rapid increase in efforts to exploit the Northern Sea Route for trade between Asia and Europe. Therefore, there is uncertainty in the potential forboth near-term and long-term activity in the Arctic. This alone warrants a proactive approach to governance issues so the world in general and Arctic coastal states in particular are not caught responding to events moving rapidly beyond their capability to manage.27 Adequate asset investment is a necessary hedge against theunexpected.
Oil and Gas

Natural resource extraction and destination shipping to support it, as well as localsupport activity on the water, are also activities that the government mustbe prepared to deal with. The extent to which these actually develop remains to beseen. As the failed Russian Shtokman gas field shows, just because the resources
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FIGURE 2: Alaska North Slope Oil Production under Three Oil-price Cases, 19902035
2 1.8 million barrels per day 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 low oil-price case 2020 2025 2030 2035 reference case high oil-price case
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2012.
are there does not mean the economics justify extracting them. The Shtokman field is one of the largest gas fields in the Russian Arctic, holding an estimated 130trillion cu. ft. of gas. The field was being developed with the United States as a principal destination. Then the shale gas revolution transformed the United States into a global natural gas powerhouse and killed the market for the project (another example of the world changing in ways that impact a changing Arctic). Eventually the project was stopped due to a lack of demand and low gas prices in its target markets. There is the potential for shale oil to likewise impact oil extraction in the Arctic, and inparticular the Alaskan Arctic. Rather than a race for resources, Arctic oil exploration is evolving slowly, with projects including the Shell Chukchi Sea project being delayed.28 Under the low oil-price scenario the Energy Information Agency predicts, there will be no oil activity in the Alaskan Arctic by 2025. The low oil case is $100 per barrel, higher than the price of crude in the United States now and higher than that projected for over the next decade. Therefore, there is a very real possibility that changes in global energy markets will make the vast oil and gas reserves in the Arctic superfluous. To the extent that oil and gas activity does occur, the single largest issue to contend with is the ability to adequately respond to an oil spill. The science on oil spills in the Arctic is nearly non-existent, and there are no assets for response and cleanup. The ability to host and support a large cleanup effort at sea, given the total lack of shore infrastructure, is the paramount priority. From a governance perspective, this is an area where viewing the Arctic as purely a maritime domain is a mistake. As noted, the serious threats to the Arctic from an environmental security perspective come from terrestrial sources, mostly industrial activity related to
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natural resource extraction. Any governance regime that fails to recognize this fact, and to provide an enforcement mechanism with appropriate assets, will fail to protect and preserve the Arctic. Regime enforcement is therefore a critical role for any national fleet of assets since, while the activity will be terrestrial, the assets needed for regime enforcement will need to be maritime-based. Lastly, from a law enforcement perspective, environmental groups such as Greenpeace have been a growing Arctic presence, and it is the natural resource industry that is the target.29 Such groups often display aggressive, and potentially dangerous, tactics to make their point or to disrupt legitimate commercial activity. A law enforcement role that will grow as industrial activity increases is the separation of antagonists, ensuring that environmental groups are afforded the opportunity to express their opinions without interfering in legitimate business activity or endangering themselves orothers.
Science in the Arctic

While previous sections focused on what is happening and likely to happen in the near- to mid-term in the Arctic, this section focuses on what is not happening but needs to: science of all types. Successful operations in the Arctic will depend on a much more robust understanding of the environment in which that activity occurs. Charts of the Arctic are either non-existent or woefully out of date.30 Many charts are based on surveys done in the nineteenth century with little in the way of additional work. Only about 6 percent of the navigable Arctic is charted at all. Coastline surveys have not been updated since the 1960s. Because the charts are based on very old surveys, the datums are incompatible with GPS navigation signals. There are few terrestrial aids to navigation, and the combination of geographical features of the coast and outdated coast surveys makes radar navigation problematic. Therefore, developing a full set of modern, accurate navigation charts is a priority. Little is known of Arctic tides and currents and the behavior of the water column. This means that predictions of the movement of ice are also poor, if available at all.This information is critical in order to properly respond to an environmental event such asan oil spill. In the Deepwater Horizon event, much of the oil spill mediation and response was guided by sophisticated models of the Gulf of Mexico marine environment. Complex models of tides, currents, water column, and the behavior of oil in that specific environment aided the development of very effective oil response activities. None of that exists for the Arctic. The fundamental knowledge does not exist to allow construction of such a model, and the behavior of oil in an Arctic environment, including under ice, is not known. For example, if there were a serious environmental event in the eastern end of the Northern Sea Route (a tanker bringingoil from the Barents Sea to China runs aground and spills a significant portion of her cargo), the ability to model where that oil will go in an effort to allow U.S. authorities to properly place oil spill response assets does not exist. Arctic weather is also not well understood, allowing only very short-term
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weather forecasts that are often inaccurate. Bathymetry, hydrography, oceanography, and meteorology are all missionareas requiring immediate attention. Finally, as noted earlier in the discussion on fisheries management, little is known about the way climate change anda melting Arctic will affect marine life, despite the importance of the fishing industry as a critical source of food. The science mission also includes understanding how fish stocks are moving in response to changing water conditions so that appropriate international agreements can be put in place to properly manage them and avoid conflict.
Summary
In summary, large-scale transit shipping is unlikely to occur within the time frame of this study and the Arctic will not become a major pathway for international commerce. Destination shipping, on the other hand, is happening now and will likely to continue to grow. The preponderance of that destination shipping will be along the Northern Sea Route supporting Russian industrial activity in the Arctic. This also means the United States must be prepared for an accident on the Russian side of the Arctic that, due to poorly understood environmental factors, ends up impacting U.S. waters. In addition, all traffic using the Northern Sea Route to Asia must transit the Bering Strait, which the United States shares with Russia. The dominant form of marine activity in the Arctic now is fishing, also likely to continue to grow, and participation by non-Arctic country fishing fleets is a potential source for friction. Oil and gas activity, including offshore drilling, is likely to occur, although the long-term viability of many such projects, in U.S. waters at least, remains questionable. But some level of that activity will occur, and therefore the ability to respond to environmental events such as a well blowout along the lines of Deepwater Horizon needs to be developed. Cruise ship traffic is occurring now and there is no doubt that it will continue to grow, despite the lack of search and rescue response available for cruise ship incidents. Lastly, environmental groups are taking notice and opposing the increased activity in the Arctic. Greenpeace and similar groups have been known to take a confrontational approach in their protest activities and they are actively expanding their work in the Arctic.31 Government authorities need the ability to respond to and mediate clashes between extremist environmental groups and legitimate business activity occurring in the Arctic. Thus a critical, and often either overlooked or insufficiently analyzed, requirement is for a robust but practical governance scheme that takes into account where the Arctic is a unique area and where it is, at least from a regulatory perspective, similar to other special places on the planet. That governance scheme will require assets to monitor (domain awareness) and enforce (law enforcement) therefore is germane to a fleet force discussion. In fact, regime enforcement, which translates to environmental security among many things, is the most critical securitymission the U.S. government faces in the Arctic. Lastly, the Arctic is a poorly understood environment. The lack of scientific knowledge of ice, water column, weather, marine life, among many other things, coupled with a serious need for charting, bathymetry, oceanography, surveying, and cartography highlight the real,
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immediate, and high-consequence need for assets devoted to a science mission intheArctic.
Part Two: Overarching Governance Scheme

The purpose of this section is to review existing governance schemes that apply to Arctic maritime operations. Enforcement of a current and proposed governance scheme is a major mission set for the United States Coast Guard and requires the proper assets to execute. Contrary to common misperception, there is an existing governance regimelargely the International Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS)but as the discussion will point out, that alone is insufficient given the Arctics unique natural environment. However, that does not mean that completely new rules and regulations need to be developed. Existing models that work well in other parts of the world could be applied to the Arctic with equal success. In fact, a potential threat to Arctic activity is that by misunderstanding the existing rule sets, new, overlapping, or contradictory rules are developed that choke off rather than foster responsible Arctic activity. To state, for example, that Marshall Islands-flagged ships operating in the Arctic in themselves represent a threat is simply incorrect. The existing international rule set is more than adequate for addressing issues such as flag states that traditionally do not have a presence in the Arctic, as is explained in detail later in this section. Developing rules that specifically target a specific class of ship or flag state will only lead to regulatory gridlock as legal fighting plays out with the attendant uncertainty that impedes economic activity. There are also some gaps in official capacity that have been identified by users themselves, which have resulted in private efforts to close them, such as the Alaska Marine Exchange, a very effective domain-awareness program. These programs need to be identified and brought into the total governance architecture without destroying the entrepreneurial effectiveness they represent. Potential evolutions in governance schemes that represent new responsibilities for a state fleet must also be understood. Governance schemes also dictate shoreside assets needed to monitor maritime activity and provide enforcement capability, such as flag state and port state control responsibilities. Lastly, governance regimes such as ice navigation rules or traffic separation schemes are areas where cooperation with other Arctic states, and Canada or Russia in particular, would lead toa safer and more effective management of coastal Arctic waters.
The Current Regulatory Landscape 32

The current regulatory framework is actually quite robust. What criticism may be leveled at the current situation has more to do with a general failure of the international community to utilize existing frameworks to account forthe unique aspects of the Arctic. There are three major international pillars in thecurrentArctic governance regime: the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS), and the Arctic Institute.
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The International Maritime Organization is an agency within the United Nations charged with responsibility for the safety and security of marine shipping and the prevention of pollution by ships.33 The IMO is therefore responsible for developing the international rule set that governs international shipping. The IMO is a treaty organization and as such its regulatory process can be laborious and protracted, both at the negotiation stage and at the accession stage. In short, getting things done through the IMO takes a long time. The IMO is the only institution capable of internationally implementing maritime regulations that have the force of law behind them. The three most important IMO conventions are the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL 73/78), and the International Convention of Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW). While all three have elements applicable to Arctic operations, MARPOL is perhaps the most relevant.34 MARPOL has six annexes that address different pollution streams emanating from ships as follows:
Annex I:Regulations for the Prevention of Pollution by Oil Annex II: Regulations for Control ofPollution by Noxious Liquid Substances
in Bulk
Annex III: Prevention of Pollution by Harmful Substances Carried by Sea in
Packaged Form
Annex IV: Prevention of Pollution by Sewage from Ships Annex V: Prevention of Pollution by Garbage from Ships Annex VI: Prevention ofAir Pollution from Ships
MARPOL further recognizes that certain areas are different from the general oceans of the world owing to unique geophysical and ecological features, which means that more stringent regulations should apply. Areas such as the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea are considered special areas under MARPOL and are subject to a much higher level of mandatory pollution prevention regulations.35 While Antarctica is listed as a special area for several MARPOL annexes, the Arctic is not listed at all. In addition, MARPOL provides for the designation of certain areas as particularly sensitive sea areas (PSSA).36 These are areas designated for special protection due to their recognized socioeconomic, ecological, or scientific characteristics. These areas include ones that are highly vulnerable to damage by marine activity. The guidelines for the designation of an area as a PSSA are as follows: if they fulfill a number of criteria, including: ecological criteria, such as unique or rare ecosystem, diversity of the ecosystem, or vulnerability to degradation by natural events or human activities;
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social, cultural and economic criteria, such as significance of the area for recreation or tourism;and scientific and educational criteria, such as biological researchor historical value.37 The definition of a PSSA contained in MARPOL succinctly describes the Arctic region. These essential characteristics are often and properly cited when making the argument that a special regulatory regime is needed for the Arctic since the current one is inadequate as the Arctic does not in fact enjoy any special protection that MARPOLaffords. The Arctic is not designated as either a PSSA or special area under MARPOL. Therefore, the gap is not because a regulatory framework is not present, but rather because the regulatory framework that exists has not been utilized. While it is true that the designation of a PSSA or special area is time-consuming under the IMO framework, it is time-consuming for reasons beyond simple bureaucratic inertia. Such designations impose real costs on local commercial activities and raise real issues of sovereignty for the coastal states and therefore require extensive analysis and political maneuvering. In addition, designation of the Arctic as a special area under MARPOL would place considerable requirements on Arctic coastal states in terms of waste and slop oil reception facilities, which largely do not exist currently. There is no reason to believe abandoning a familiar if time-consuming framework and endeavoring to set up a completely new one will be any more efficient or effective since the fundamental issues remain. The IMO does recognize that aside from the issue of pollution the Arctic is such a unique environment that consolidation of regulatory requirements into a single code, expanded to address the unique aspects of polar operations, is needed. In 2009 the IMO adopted the Guidelines for Ships Operating in Polar Waters, which is an update and revision of the Guidelines for Ships Operating in Arctic Ice Covered Waters adopted in 2002.38 A common criticism of the guidelines is that they are only guidelines and not mandatory. However, as a result of the adoption of the 2009 guidelines, the IMO is currently in the process of developing a mandatory Polar Code which was expected to have been finalized in 2012.39 However, representative of the difficulties of working through the IMO and the glacial pace at which things happen in the organization, it is difficult to predict when it will in fact become mandatory.40 This is also the reason that, where they can, the Arctic five should make robust use of the port state control process to enforce a virtual polar code as explained further in thissection. Designation of the Arctic as a special area or PSSA and the adoption of themandatory Polar Code would appear to satisfy the issues raised by critics that the existing regulatory framework does not adequately address the unique nature of theArctic.
Construction Standards The main responsibility for construction standards for ships rests with the various international classification societies (Lloyds, Det Norske Veritas, and the American Bureau of Shipping being the big three). Classification by a recognized classification society is a requirement for commercial vessels to operate.
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Classification societies conduct inspections and surveys on behalf of flag state governments and issue regulatory documents. Acceptance into a class is a mandatory requirement for placement of marine insurance. For classification by asociety to be internationally recognized, the society generally needs to belong to the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS). Therefore, classification societies play a major role in the standards of construction and safety for ships operating in polar waters. Prior to 2008, each class society had its own scheme for classification of ships intended to operate in ice-covered waters. These rules covered design features such as power requirements, hull-plating material and thickness, ice pressure calculations, main propulsion, auxiliaries, and framing requirements, to name a few. These schemes were not directly convertible so a ship classed under the Finnish-Swedish ice-class rules as an A1 could not be compared directly to a Baltic A1 or American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) 1A. In March 2008 the IACS put into force a harmonized set of rules intended for all ships operating in ice-covered waters (the Polar Class Notation).41 In particular, there is a large difference between ice-covered waters such as the Baltic, where ice melts completely in the summer so that multi-year ice is not present and polar waters where multi-year ice is common. Multi-year ice is much denser, harder, and presents much more of a hazard than first-year ice. The Polar Class system recognizes the special hazards of polar waters as opposed to other icecovered waters, and replaces the previous complex set of differing regulations with a harmonized set of rules covering seven levels of ice capability ranging from yearround operation in all polar waters (PC1) to summer/autumn operation in thin firstyear ice (PC7).42 Therefore, concurrent with advances towards a mandatory Polar Code from IMO, the international bodies responsible for construction standards have also moved forward with more effective mandatory regulations for ships operating in ice-covered waters which will be incorporated into the IMO Polar Code. While it is true that there is nothing that prevents a ship not classed for operation in icecovered waters from attempting to do so, such an attempt would most certainly cause the ship to be considered unseaworthy. This consideration would produce attendant adverse consequences for insurance and liability, as well as subjecting the owners to criminal proceedings. Many critics of the existing Arctic governance regime claim that there are no hard-law instruments with which to impose standards on shipping companies.43 Such critics fail to understand the full depth and effectiveness of existing regulations to which the international shipping community is subject. There is nothing voluntary in complying with classification society requirements. In addition, no regulatory or legal scheme can prevent willful non-compliance; it can only raise the stakes for those who do so. The existing system is therefore as effectiveas any potential new system in that regard. In the United States, it is the Coast Guard that has both flag state and port state responsibilities for enforcing this regulatory regime, including the Arctic. This is a critical responsibility that must be factored intoany discussion of assets and asset investment. A criticism of the current regulatory regime is that enforcement is substantially thepurview of the flag state. With the prevalence of flags of convenience, wherethe
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flag state is uninvolved in any meaningful way in the enforcement of regulations on its flagships, the potential for ships trading in the Arctic (or anywhere else the problem is not restricted to the Arctic) to not comply with either regulatory requirements or guidelines is increased.44 The Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MOU) is an effort to address that situation on a general basis. The Paris MOU consists of twenty-seven participating maritime authorities operating a harmonized port state control inspection process. The MOU maintains a database of offenders, operates a robust knowledge-sharing program, can restrict ships from proceeding pending correction of deficiencies, and ensures that ships within their jurisdiction meet all international regulatory requirements.45 In addition, UNCLOS gives port state control authorities power to enforce violations of IMO regulations that occur on the high seas, in the EEZ, or even in another jurisdiction if requested. Therefore, the port state control process, coupled with advances in remote monitoring and sensing, would allow active enforcement of international regulations at relatively modest incremental cost. All Arctic coastal states are members of the Paris MOU. This process gives Arctic states considerable enforcement authority, especially when the destination nature of most current Arctic shipping is taken into account. Genuine transit shipping, where UNCLOS Article 17 on the right of innocent passage applies, is rare.46 Even shipments of Russian oil from the Barents to China are not transit shipping as they originate in an Arctic port. The overwhelming majority of, if not all, traffic in the Arctic is destination shipping, meaning that the ship either begins or ends its voyage in an Arctic port, subject to port state control visits by Arctic coastal states. A criticism of the current regime is that coastal states have little ability to influence or control shipping activity and have few rights over such shipping.47 Here it is critical to remember that most ships in the Arctic conduct destination shipping, where the purpose of the voyage is to call at an Arctic port, meaning there is great room for use of the port state control process to govern virtually all shipping in the Arctic. In addition to enforcing existing international regulations, port state authorities are free to impose whatever additional conditions they deem prudent on ships calling at their ports without regard to Article 17 restrictions. There is a long history in the United States of not only federal level authorities, but also state and local level authorities, imposing such rules. The requirements of the Oil Pollution Prevention Act (OPA 90)particularly the requirement for double hull tankers and the extensive liability provisions implemented for tankers calling in U.S. ports long before they were international requirementsis an example of flag state authorities imposing local requirements that go well beyond international regime requirements. At the time OPA 90 was enacted, there was a strong reaction in the international shipping community that included predictions that international tanker companies would refuse to comply, boycotting U.S. trade and starving the United States of oil until the legislation was repealed or moderated. But because of the size of the U.S. market and the importance to oil companies of the ability to call at U.S. ports, that threat never materialized and instead double
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hulls became a standard for international tanker construction even though it was not yet an international requirement. The requirements of the liability regime, including previously sacrosanct legalities such as removing the protection of the corporate veil, large to nearly unlimited liability, and the posting of certificates of financial responsibility became standard internationally in a matter of years. Therefore, a coordinated effort by coastal states to enforce a consistent set of requirements for port entry in the Arctic will have the same effect as mandatory international requirements due to the nature of shipping in the Arctic, rendering this criticismmoot. Ship rider programs are another option that Arctic coastal states could consider and that could be effected within the existing construct of international regulation. For example, the state of Alaska has a program called the Alaska Ocean Ranger Program targeted at environmental compliance by international cruise ships operating in Alaskan waters. Under this program, funded by fees assessed against the cruise industry, the state of Alaska places observers aboard the cruise ships for the duration of their stay in Alaska waters to verify compliance with local, state, federal, and international regulations.48 The foregoing is not all-inclusive but intended to illustrate that there are options for a more effective governance regime within the existing framework. Arctic coastal states have a similar ability to implement local requirements that, due to the destination nature of shipping in the region, would become de facto international standards for ships operating in the Arctic. For example, if the Arctic coastal states decided that the IMO Guidelines for Ships Operating in Polar Waters (Polar Code) should be mandatory, they could simply agree that all ships calling at their respective Arctic ports be in compliance as a condition of entry. If all five Arctic states implemented a harmonized version of that requirement and rigorously enforced it, then the guidelines would essentially be mandatory for virtually all ships transiting in the Arctic. This would be especially applicable to those ships of highest concern, such as oil tankers. It is inconceivable that a tanker would be transiting the Arctic with oil that had not been loaded at an Arctic port because of the nature of the trade. Therefore, all tankers in the Arctic would be subject to this or any other requirements the Arctic five agreedupon. Therefore, the most expedient way of developing and enforcing robust measures to protect the Arctic may be through the coordinated actions of Arctic coastal states rather than by trying to form a treaty or going through the even more laborious IMO process. In the latter cases, many non-Arctic Coastal states might have input that would complicate, if not outright impede, the adoption of an effective regime.49 Coordination of action by the Arctic coastal states in enforcing existing rules and regulations in a coherent and strategic way rather than development of binding international regulations or negotiation of new treaties then becomes the most expedient, efficient, and effective way to achieve meaningful regulatory
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advancement in protecting the Arctic environment. This is something the Arctic coastal states anticipated with the Ilulissat Declaration issued in May 2008 wherein the five Arctic coastal states reaffirmed their unique roles and responsibilities for the management of the Arctic and specifically rejected the development of any new, comprehensive, international legal regime for Arctic governance.50 Coordinated action and capacity of Arctic coastal states become the real issue not lack of an effective legal and regulatory framework. Coordination of effort, however, is an issue. As an example, the Canadian authorities have recognized limitations in their ice navigation rules (the Arctic Ice Regime Ice Shipping SystemARISS) and are developing an improved ice navigation regime. The new regime under consideration is the ASPPR Hybrid system.51 A technical report was circulated to subject matter experts for comments with subsequent meetings to review and revise.52 The United States has no comparable (or any) ice navigation scheme nor were U.S. Coast Guard authorities even aware the Canadians were undertaking this effort. The Canadians also enforce the Northern Canada Vessel Traffic Services Zone Regulations (NORDREG),53 a now mandatory vessel transit registration and position-reporting scheme to which the United States also has no equivalent. Given that the western exit from the Northwest Passage and route to the Bering Strait runs through waters administered by the United States, it would seem prudent that U.S. and Canadian Ice Navigation Regimes be harmonized. Therefore, a central component of effective Arctic governance must be coordinated action by the Arctic coastal states, which in the critical case of the United States andCanada is not occurring. The other hard-law pillar of the international regime applicable to the Arctic is the UN Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS).54 UNCLOS has several major sections relevant to the Arctic. Article 17 and the potential limitation that the right of innocent passage places on Arctic coastal states wishing to implement a robust compliance regime outside of the international IMO process has been discussed. Part VI allows coastal states to extend their EEZ past the normal 200 nm limit established in Article56. Claims for such an extension must be based on significant science and submitted to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for approval. Proving that a seabed geological structure, such as the Lomonosov Ridge, is actually an extension of the continental shelf is driving a large amount of scientific work in the Arctic at present. These claims are not trivial due to the implications for the oil and gas deposits they represent. It is this process, which all Arctic nations are adhering to, that will ensure Arctic natural resources do not in fact become the source of conflict that many fear. In addition, UNCLOS Article234 deals with special rights for states with ice-covered areas within their EEZ. This clause gives such states the right to enforce unilateral non-discriminatory rules and regulations for the protection of the environment in their ice-covered waters. It is worth emphasizing that the clause only gives states the right to enforce rules and regulations, it is a proper asset investment strategy that gives states the capacity to do so, and it is capacity that makes a regulatory regime relevant and effective.
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Article 234 is the mechanism by which both Russia and Canada implement regulations in the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route.55 For regulations implemented under Article 234 the question arises as to its applicability if extreme versions of Arctic thawing come to pass where sections of the Arctic are ice-free a significant part of the year. In the end, under no scenarios is theArctic ice-free in the winter, and the potential for the ice to become so minimal that Article 234 no longer applies is slight. It should also be noted that the United States has not acceded to UNCLOS. It is the policy of the country to conform to its tenets and all branches of the U.S. maritime military services support ratification as has every administration since UNCLOS was signed by President Ronald Reagan. There are elements in the U.S. Senate that view UNCLOS as infringing on U.S. sovereignty and specifically theability of the United States Navy to operate unfettered throughout the world. Hence, it remains to be ratified and there is no indication that the current administration, given more pressing issues, intends to bring it forward again anytime soon. The most significant impact of the failure of the United States to ratify the treaty is that the United States cannot submit claims under UNCLOS Article76 for extended continental shelf. There is one major soft-law institution related to Arctic governance. The Arctic Council consists of eight permanent members: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland. There are six additional permanent participants which are associations representing indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Numerous non-Arctic states, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations have observer status, and that number has grown with the recent addition of six new observers states, including China.56 The Arctic Council serves a variety of coordination, knowledge-sharing, and influence roles, but it has no permanent status as a secretariat or permanent source of funding. The Arctic Council can advocate but cannot legislate or produce any sort of binding requirement. The Arctic Council has six working groups, the most relevant here being the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment working group (PAME). In 2009, the PAME working group published the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, an influential assessment of the potential for shipping in the Arctic.57 While the Arctic Council is an influential organization, the presence of many n on-Arctic states, NGOs, and International Organizations (IOs) has led to strongresistance by the Arctic coastal states toward the Arctic Council taking onamore official status. In summary, there currently exists a functioning regulatory and legal regime which is suitable for the governance of the Arctic from a shipping perspective, the area usually focused on in governance discussions. Where gaps exist in the IMO framework such gaps are recognized and efforts are under way to close them. Thelargest unmet requirement for an effective regulatory system in the Arctic, andparticularly the U.S. Arctic, is the proper type and number of United States Coast Guard assets to conduct enforcement operations.
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The UNCLOS is widely accepted as a mechanism for adjudication of disputes by all Arctic states. Resistance by the Arctic States to establishing a different legal or environmental regime is strong. However, there are some entities that call for just that, frequently referencing the Antarctic Treaty as a model. The European Parliament, for example, explicitly called for an Arctic Treaty based on the Antarctic Treaty in 2008.58 Support for that call within the European Union appears to have waned; however, a large number of NGOs maintain that such a treaty is necessary.59 While a new regulatory regime based on the Antarctic Treaty is not appropriate considering the large differences between the two, thereare some elements of similarity between the Arctic and the Mediterranean that areworth exploring for a model to address governance gaps that exist outside ofshipping activity.
The Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Mediterranean

There are significant differences between the Arctic and Antarctic which make the Antarctic Treaty a poor model. Perhaps the most significant from a regime gapperspective is that the Antarctic is an undeveloped and essentially uninhabited land mass surrounded by water. This means there are no terrestrial sources ofpollution running off into Antarctic waters. In fact, while there are seasonal melt-water streams, there are no rivers in Antarctica to carry runoff of any kind into the Antarctic Seas. Also, Antarctica is the largest and driest desert on earth with little precipitation. The Arctic, by contrast, is a body of water surrounded by land with only a few, relatively narrow entry and exit points. A vast number of large rivers in developed, industrial areas, originating in regions that receive considerable precipitation with attendant run off, empty into the Arctic. This means that terrestrial sources of pollution are a major issue and the Arctic has considerably less ability to flush itself clean. The Antarctic has no indigenous population or large-scale non-indigenous population, and no industrial or commercial activity. The Arctic has all of these very significant sources of pollution. In addition the presence of populations, an existing culture, significant commercial activity, and industrial activity means that, unlike the Antarctic, the development and enforcement of regulations will have local costs that residents will demand pass a cost-benefit test. The presence of largescale industrial activity necessarily means there will be significant destination shipping activity to support it. The Arctic has also been heavily militarized for a long time, while the Antarctic has never been so. This is largely because there are no pre-existing sovereignty claims in the Antarctic, whereas the Arctic has had such claims for a very long time. Lastly, the Antarctic is remote. It is not on the way or a shortcut to anywhere from anywhere. Therefore, the Antarctic does not see transit shipping. The only thing the Antarctic and Arctic have in common is that they are both cold and dark for a good bit of the year, clearly not a sufficient basis for modeling Arctic regulatory regimes on that which supports the Antarctic.
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In all the ways the Arctic is different from the Antarctic it is similar to the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean, like the Arctic, obviously has a long cultural history with a record of settlements of indigenous peoples that goes back thousands of years. Both have long-standing sovereignty claims. They are both large bodies of water surrounded by land. That land supports a population with considerable industrial and commercial activity. The presence of populations and commercial activity mean that regulations will impose a cost on some segmentsof the population requiring a cost-benefit approach. Both have extensive systems of rivers that carry man-made waste and runoff into them. This is the area where existing Arctic legal and environmental regimes fall short. All current regimes such as UNCLOS and the IMO are oriented toward marine sources of pollution, largely associated with either shipping or oil production on marine platforms. Arctic legal and regulatory regimes could be strengthened to deal with terrestrial sources of pollution, a goal for which the Mediterranean regime provides a useful model. There are also many areas in which the Arctic is different from the Mediterranean that, while not diminishing the value of a Mediterranean model, must be taken into account. The Mediterranean has been studied intensely from a climate, meteorology, bathymetry, hydrography, and cartography perspective, and there is relatively little left to learn regarding navigation and environmental response. Science understands the Mediterranean environment. The Arctic is in its infancy in these areas, meaning little is known about how the Arctic environment operates and what the corresponding risks are. Moreover the general lack of this basic scientific knowledge means that navigation is far more hazardous in the Arctic. As noted previously, less than 6 percent of the Arctic is charted. Arctic chart datums, being based on very old surveys, are incompatible with datums used in modern satellite navigation/GPS systems, which dramatically reduces their usefulness for commercial Arctic navigation. There is not even agreement on what exactly the Arctic means. There are three primary, and several less frequently used definitionsof the Arctic. The threemost commonly cited are: 1. The astronomical boundary of 66 deg 32 min 51 sec north: the line at which, at thenorthernmost declination of the sun, the sun does not set for one day, and atthe southernmost declination of the sun it does not rise for one day. 2. The 10 deg C July isotherm: the line where the average temperature in July does not exceed 10 deg C. Unlike the astronomical boundary, this boundary is uneven and in general goes far south in Greenland and near the Bering Strait. 3. The outer limit of the continuous permafrost zone. This zone also goes far to the south, below 60 deg in some areas. Unlike the Mediterranean, which has distinct and well-known regional boundaries, the Arctic has no such definitive boundaries.60 This is not a trivial issue because
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any Arctic governance regime will apply to a populated region with substantial commercial and industrial activity. Therefore, exactly where any such regime applies, and where it does not, must be clear for it to be enforceable. Most shipping activity that occurs in the Arctic is along coasts, mostly within Arctic coastal states EEZ, whereas in the Mediterranean there is considerable shipping well offshore. In the Mediterranean, the nation and state are largely the same with a population and political center of gravity that coincide. No one, for example, views the coastal population of Italy as having a separate legal identity from the Italian state itself. In the Arctic the political center of gravity is separate and physically very distant from the population center of gravity.61 In the Arctic, the state and nation are not the same due to the presence of indigenous populations that have a unique culture largely independent of the state in which they live. The Inuit in Canada would claim to have more in common with the Sami in Arctic Europe than with the Canadians that make up the state of which they are a part. Therefore, the interests of indigenous people with separate and distinct issues are heightened in theArctic. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Mediterranean has been exploited for thousands of years and consequently has had a legal regime of one sort or another continuously since trade began. In the Mediterranean civilization, trade and supporting regulatory and legal regimes coevolved. The Arctic will be the first, and potentially only, major trade route to develop inside anexisting, fully functional, international institutional framework.
The Mediterranean Model There is a robust international legal framework suitable for Arctic governance as it relates to international shipping. However, the IMO, UNCLOS, and similar regimes will not address terrestrial-sourced pollution in the Arctic five, regardless of the conviction expressed in the Ilulissat Declaration. Additionally, addressing terrestrial sources of pollution obviously requires the participation and active cooperation of a much larger group including non-coastal Arctic states and many non-state or quasi-state actors. The current framework for addressing marine sources of pollution is not structured to address the interests of this diverse group. The Arctic five in the Ilulissat Declaration specifically rejected the inclusion of any but Arctic coastal states in Arctic governance, which leads to a possible point of contention. Any new regulatory model must give due consideration to the sovereignty issues underlying the position of the Arctic coastal states. Therefore, a regime is needed which takes into consideration the foregoing issues, and given the similarity of the Arctic to the Mediterranean for terrestrial-sourced pollution, that model is worthexploring.
The Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) has been in existence since 1975, and operates under the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) umbrella.62 Twenty-one Mediterranean coastal states plus the UN are members. A significant achievement of MAP is that despite the fact that many of these coastal states are outright hostile
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to each other and armed conflict has occurred between them, such conflicts have not prevented MAP from continuing to work. The original 1975 MAP was focused on dealing with marine pollution. In 1995, in an effort to deal with its shortcomings, the Action Plan for the Marine Environment and the Sustainable Development ofthe Coastal Areas of the Mediterranean (MAP II) was implemented. Specifically, MAP II recognized that, similar to the Arctic today, socioeconomic trends and poorly managed development were at the root of most environmental problems. Goals of MAP II include ensuring sustainable management of marine and land resources, matching environmental considerations to development considerations, identifying and protecting areas of unique ecological or cultural importance, and strengthening cooperation in Mediterranean states in managing their common heritage. MAP priorities for the coming decade are:
to bring about a massive reduction in pollution from land-based sources; to protect marine and coastal habitats and threatened species; to make maritime activities safer and more conscious of the Mediterranean
marine environment;
to intensify integrated planning of coastal areas; to monitor the spreading of invasive species; to limit and intervene promptly on oil pollution; and to further promote sustainable development in the Mediterranean region.63
The Barcelona convention of 1976 is the regulatory component of MAP and contains seven protocols which deal with pollution of any sort from both marine and terrestrial sources, special biological and ecological areas, and coastal zone management. Within the framework of MAP, Mediterranean countries have aligned with the WorldBank and various NGOs to create the Strategic Partnership for the Mediterranean Large Marine Ecosystem.64 The regional seas programs have been criticized for focusing on marine pollution and not on the larger-scale issues of large marine ecosystems.65 MAP II specifically overcomes that criticism, increasing its attractiveness as a model for the Arctic. The partnership had its first meeting inSeptember2009 and has as its goals:
a long-term partnership for joint planning and financing in the Mediterranean,
facilitating effective and efficient use of resources in addressing countries priorities for protection of the marine and coastal environment;
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the improvement of environmental conditions in 15 percent of hotspots and
sensitive areas of national priority;

more sustainable use of coastal resources through use of Integrated Water
Resource Management (IWRM), Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), andaquifer management;
the reduction of pollution from land-based sources through the demonstration
and adoption of environmentally sound technology;

more sustainable use of fisheries resources through the adoption of an
ecosystem-based approach to fisheries, and improved protection of critical biodiversity through the management of a coherent network of marine protected areas; and
the replication and scaling up of investment projects and demonstrations
duringthe five-year lifespan of the project. MAP was the first initiative under the UN Environmental Program in the Regional Seas Program. This program seeks to coordinate the actions of 130countries in thirteen different regional seas initiatives functioning within astrong legal framework with enforceable protocols for specific issues.66 TheArctic is a partner program through the Arctic Council. MAP and the larger Regional Seas Program seem to be well suited to the needs of the Arctic which go beyond marine pollution only. MAP now functions in coordination with the same legal frameworks that Arctic coastal states emphasizeUNCLOS and IMO/MARPOLbut also addresses the broader issues of development, culture, unique ecological issues and, most importantly, terrestrial sources of pollution. Therefore, designating the Arctic as a full Regional Sea Initiative utilizing the MAP model would provide for a legal and regulatory regime that addresses current gaps in the UNCLOS and MARPOL frameworks through a well understood process that is currently successfully in use. Furthermore, the interfaces between the UNCLOS/MARPOL process and the Regional Seas/MAP process are well understood and nothing new. In fact, every Arctic coastal country is already a member of at least one other Regional Sea Initiative. Additionally, the Arctic Council is a partner program to the Regional Seas Program, so integration should be relatively easy. In accessing the applicability and utility of applying the MAP model to the Arctic, the natural question is did the MAP work: was it effective? The effectiveness ofthe MAP regime has been analyzed in various academic studies, but perhaps themost well-known was the study by Peter M. Haas on epistemic communities.67 In that widely cited study, Haas traced the history and functioning of MAP, arguing
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that it is a model of effectiveness and cooperation driven by scientific need and subject matter experts. As Sofia Frantzi and Jon C. Lovett point out, effectiveness canbe defined two ways: Does the regime function effectively as an institution, i.e., are all the rules and norms followed? And does it work from an environmental standpoint?68 They conclude that MAP is a success from an institutional perspective, but it is difficult to assess whether or not the changes in the ecological condition in the Mediterranean are the result of the MAP or some other process. Carsten Helm and Detlef Sprinz echo the notion that regime effectiveness as measured by actual effect on the environment is difficult if not impossible to assess; and a focus on political outcomes versus environmental ones may be the best course of action in assessing effectiveness.69 Because international law is fundamentally a voluntary institution, a regime such as MAP in the Arctic must necessarily tend to the soft-law end of the spectrum and seek to achieve its objectives through influencing state behavior.70 While many argue that a binding region-specific regime is the only effective solution, Oran R.Young notes that the fact is that the current practice of advancing the cause of international cooperation in the Arctic through non-binding agreements has a number of advantages that most of the players rightly regard as attractive.71 Haas argues that epistemic communities (such as the Arctic Council in Arctic affairs) are very effective in this role through identifying issues, developing knowledge, and fostering communication and cooperation.72 These are all critical elements of effective institutional performance and, as Tracy D. VanDeever notes, Highly complex policy areas such as... environmental protection require institutionalized systems of critique and learning if they are to be sustainable over time.73 From that perspective, MAP has been extraordinarily successful, andfor systems as complicated as the climate perhaps institutional effectiveness isenough.
Governance Summary
The existing legal and regulatory regimes applied to the Arctic are focused on maritime issues. Since the Arctic Ocean is a body of water, at first glance this might seem reasonable. The existing frameworks are adequate for that purpose, especially with the designation of the Arctic as a special area or PSSA. Criticisms focused on lack of adequate enforcement mechanisms or lack of stringent requirements do not consider the significant power vested in coastal states through the port state control system plus the rights enumerated in UNCLOS for port states to unilaterally dictate appropriate requirements for entry into their portareas. Coupled with the destination nature of the overwhelming majority of Arctic shipping, the Arctic coastal states have considerable power through coordinated actions to make and enforce de facto requirements for virtually all traffic in the Arctic outside the more formal but very time-consuming IMO process. This ability allows Arctic coastal states to act quickly to at least partially address issues pending the IMO process and before large-scale shipping occurs.
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While the Arctic is in fact a body of water, its most important geophysical attribute is the presence of coastal states for which the Arctic represents a sovereign space and frontier for development. The most significant man-made impacts on the Arctic are terrestrial in nature, which the UNCLOS IMO/MARPOL frameworks cannot address. Therefore, a different regime, which addresses these issues as well as the Arctics unique cultural and ecological issues, needs to be found. There is an existing framework in the Regional Seas Program that is a good fit and, utilizing the Mediterranean Action Plan as a model, the remaining Arctic vulnerabilities can be accommodated. Moreover such a program would be familiar to all Arctic coastal states as they all are already part of one or more regional seas programs, and such programs are already in place and well-coordinated with UNCLOS and IMO/MARPOL. No new regulatory or legal framework needs to be developed, but rather an existing one can be extended and applied to the Arctic. While there are adequate existing legal frameworks for the protection and preservation of the Arctic that also accommodate the legitimate needs of Arctic states to engage in commercial and industrial activity, a framework is only effective if participant states have the capacity to enforce it. Capacity as used here means both the willingness and ability to devote the required resources to the issue. Among other things, this means the availability of assets fit for the intended mission and purpose. All such frameworks impose local costs for global benefits: the tension between the common heritage of man and the specific rights and responsibilities of sovereignty. The willingness and ability of states to enforce such frameworks is key. As mentioned previously, considerable enforcement powers already exist should coastal states have the will to use them. The first step in a more robust and effective Arctic governance regime is notthe development of more rules and laws; it is the development of the capacity, including assets, and the willingness and ability to enforce them to maximum effect that is required.
Part Three: Government Roles and Responsibilities

The foregoing discussed the types of activity occurring in the Arctic now and likely to happen in the future, and discussed the need for a governance architecture. The governance structure will need to both protect the Arctic environment and ensure that whatever commercial activity is viable there is able to develop in a sustainable way. Thus, the mission set that flows from theforegoing discussion would include afocus on: 1. Science 2. Search and Rescue 3. Fisheries Patrol/Law Enforcement
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4. Environmental Security and Governance Regime Enforcement 5. General Maritime Domain Awareness and the Exercise of Sovereignty 6. Hedges Against the Unexpected. Of the above, only science would require a serious, sustained ice-breaking capability provided by the government. There are several government agencies with direct interests in, and responsibilities for, the Arctic that must be analyzed in the context of the missions stated in the preceding section. While there are more than twenty U.S. government agencies that play some role in the Arctic, the three that potentially have the most direct and visible responsibilities requiring fleet assets are the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Navy. Some of the roles and missions of these agencies overlap and are ripe for consolidation. Some roles complement each other and efficiencies can be realized by better cooperation, while some may need to be de-conflicted. One mission that is not directly mentioned in the foregoing is national defense, which of courseis the navys primary mission. The navy did acquire extensive Arctic experience through its Cold War ballistic missile submarine programs, but does not have significant surface ship Arctic experience.74 Given the type of activity currently occurring in the Arctic, that projected to occur in the foreseeable future, and the extremely low potential for serious conflict in the Arctic, an argument could be made that the navy, given constrained budgets and the need to make informed investment decisions among competing priorities, should not invest at all in major assets capable of working in anything beyond sparse ice. In other words, the types of ships the navy currently operates would perform well in the Arctic. The navys investment should be in TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) that support the ability to work in U.S. Arctic waters with the ships it currently operates during thesummer months when there is no or little ice. The navy and Coast Guardshould also make provisions for cross-training naval officers with the Coast Guard for more extensive ice experience. In addition, the navy and the Coast Guard should not overlook the opportunity for their officers to ride as observers on commercial shipping vessels working in the region for the ice navigation experience and also to gain a better understanding of the nature of activity that is actually occurring there, the types of risks that activity is generating, and the policy guidance necessary to deal with those risks. While the navy often claims missions such as search and rescue and the exercise of sovereignty, the CoastGuard properly equipped is more than capable of those missions in conjunction with their other responsibilities. HA/DR (Humanitarian/Disaster Relief) is another frequently cited mission, but given the low population levels in the Arctic the potential for HA/DR on a scale beyond what the Coast Guard could handle is remote. As noted in the governance section, the overriding security mission in the Arctic is environmental
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security, a mission that requires assets far different from those the navy brings to the fight and is a security mission more suited to the Coast Guard. The navy does not have as its core purpose five of the six Arctic missions set forth above, and therefore does not need any investment in specialized assets for prolonged operations in the Arctic. It is important for the navy to be seen there from a national image and sovereignty perspective, but that can be done with existing navy assets. NOAA should have the primary responsibility for overseeing all areas of the science mission. As part of its fleet, it should have ice-strengthened research and hydrographic survey ships, but not necessarily icebreakers. Other agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and research groups such as Woods Hole or UNOLS (University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System), are also likely to periodically have assets in the area which may complement the activity of NOAA. For example, the NSF currently has an ongoing procurement to charter an ice-breaking research ship from the commercial marketplace.75 By chartering that type of ship, the NSF gets the capability it needs when it needs it without having to pay the enormous up-front costs of building such a ship itself. By assigning NOAA full responsibility for the science mission, including procuring ice-breaking research ships from the commercial marketplace, the need for Coast Guard icebreakers is further diminished. The United States Coast Guard has by far the largest mission set for the Arctic. Of the six missions noted as an immediate capability requirement in the Arctic,only science should not be a core Coast Guard function. The Coast Guard should have, as it does now, full responsibility for fisheries patrol and law enforcement, search and rescue, environmental response, domain awareness, and the projection of sovereignty as well as a hedge against uncertainty. There is no question that the Coast Guard requires specialized assets to fulfill those missions persistently in the Arctic. It also has other duties related to seasonal navigational safety such as aids to navigation and port state control inspections, particularly for foreign ships calling at the Red Dog mine and, in the not too distant future, offshore oil rig inspections. While the Coast Guard currently successfully accomplishes these missions, investments in new types of ice-capable assets may enhance the efficiency with which these activities are carried out.
Acquiring and Paying for the Fleet

There are a number of permutations to analyze when considering how to acquire and pay for a fleet. A number of immutable factors must also be recognized for any proposal to have practical effect. The first is that activity in the Arctic is happening now. The traditional fleet acquisition cycle in the United States is unacceptably long and will not provide the United States with the needed capacity in the required time frame. The second is that the traditional fleet acquisition cycle is deeply embedded in the political process with powerful political stakeholders wedded
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tothe status quo. Change must be approached cautiously. Among other issues, the traditional fleetacquisition process has many goals and procuring ships is only one of themand probably a smaller one than most appreciate. There are industrial base issuesand political factors (jobs) that are a significant component in the traditional model that cannot be overlooked. However, the traditional fleet acquisition path is only one avenue for acquiring assets. That process includes a design competition or in-house design, contracting with a U.S. shipyard for construction, and manning and operation by the respective agency (navy, Coast Guard, NOAA). The traditional process is the most expensive, takes the longest, and because of the lengthy process is subject to gold-plating. The longer a ship is in development the more time various stakeholders have to develop must-have capabilities that add to complexity and cost. The traditional model does have considerable political support from areas where shipbuilding takes place due to the jobs impact on local economies. There are certain assets that, due to their mission, should be procured in the traditional manner. For example, United States Coast Guard cutters used for law enforcement and the projection of sovereignty that also have a national defense mission should be procured through the traditional model. A hybrid that would allow the government to own and operate but not go through the traditional building process that might be considered is a bareboat charter. This is essentially a long-term lease that gives the government the rights and responsibilities (e.g. maintenance) of ownershipa despondent ownerbut allows payments stretched out over the term of the charter. The government has full operational responsibility as if it were the owner. Advantages to this method are that it is faster than the traditional acquisition methods and normally costs less since there is no opportunity for gold-plating. The term of ownership is set by the government (although bareboat charters are normally for several years) meaning the government has the opportunity to refresh the fleet without having to go through the great expense of a ship design andconstruction process. Competing alternatives include acquiring the assets from a private company and operating them with agency personnel, acquiring the assets from a private company and then issuing operating contracts along the lines of Military Sealift Command (MSC) government- owned contractor-operated (GOCO) ships, or acquiring both asset and crew from a private company. Questions that must be considered include whether the asset must be constructed in a U.S. yard or are ships constructed overseas acceptable (some overseas shipbuilders are more experienced in constructing these types of ships), or is there some intermediate position (i.e., reflag a foreign-built ship to get immediately available capacity with the requirement that a domestically-built replacement be provided within some suitable time frame). The U.S. government, through MSC, has a long history of this sort of procurement. MSC has a large number of ships suitable for sealift support and special mission ships, such as hydrographic survey or missile-tracking ships, that are owned by the government but operated by commercial companies. These ships perform missions critical to the nations defense on frequently classified
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missions and MSC has been operating parts of its fleet this way for decades. The contracts are generally for five years (one year firm with four one-year options), and a large portion of the operating costs is fixed and the contract operators responsibility. The contract operator performs all duties related to operating the ships under the direction of whoever has operational control of the ship. Some expenses related to port costs, fuel, and maintenance and repair are directly reimbursable by the government in an effort to ensure that proper maintenance ofthe government-owned asset takes place. Another MSC model for acquiring assets is to charter a ship and crew from the commercial market. This is what NSF is in the process of doing now for ice-breaking research ships. Under this model, the government specifies the capabilities needed, contractors propose ships that meet those capabilities, and then the government selects the ship that offers the best combination of capability and cost. Cost to the government is fixed at the charter rate with only fuel and port costs reimbursable. Therefore, the government knows with relative precision what a particular mission will cost. The government does not pay for the ships when they are not available for operation such as for maintenance (dry docking) or breakdown. The length of the charter is at the governments discretion, meaning that it pays for the ship only for the length of time it is needed. This type of charter is particularly attractivefor missions that are relatively short in duration, such as seasonal ice breaking or research work. The procurement path is fast, allowing the government to get needed capability right away as the need develops. It also allows the government to have access to newer generations of specialized ships since they are not bound to the sunk cost of a long-lived asset they own. Under the MSC model, time-chartered ships are considered assets of the state and enjoy sovereign immunity under international law. Under this model the ship is owned and operated by a commercial company, but the mission is still owned by the government and the ship takes direction from whomever the operational commander is. A final option is for the government to contract out the mission. The contractor is then responsible for delivering a final product or service for a specific cost. How the contractor goes about that is up to the contractor, including acquiring assets. For example, ice management at a particular port or set of ports would be contracted for, not icebreakers. This type of contract is particularly useful when considerable commercial experience and capability exists that the government would not need to replicate for the particular mission, and the contractor can offer cost reductions based on economies of scale because it delivers a similar service toboth commercial and government customers.
Notional Arctic Fleet

The intent of the foregoing analysis is to better understand the mission environment for an Arctic fleet as it is now, and likely to be in the near- to mid-term. In other words, what does the nation really want the fleet to do? Given that mission set,
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which of the three primary agencies likely to be operating ships in that region should have responsibility for what? Given the budget environment, where available funds are shrinking faster than the Arctic ice, the traditional acquisition process is too expensive. And given the uncertainties of the mission set in the Arctic, the traditional acquisition process is too inflexible, either saddling the government with very expensive assets it does not need if the call for Arctic capability diminishes, as might be the case if oil and gas exploration diminishes, or catching the government short if a surge of activity occurs as, for instance, in the event of a Suez Canal crisis. The discussion of mission set demonstrates that icebreakers, the traditional asset everyone, including those in the political realm, focuses on when thinking about the Arctic, are actually probably not what the government should be investing in. The more critical missions do not depend on icebreakers, and, for missions that do, there are models for acquiring that capability that are better, faster, and more flexible than the U.S. Coast Guard fighting with Congress for the $1-plus billion icebreakers acquired through the traditional channels. In fact, due to what icebreakers are designed to do, their most efficient employment is likely to be far from where the mostimmediate mission need is likely to bea cruise ship accident, for example.
The United States Coast Guard The Coast Guard has by far the largest mission set, and some of the most immediate needs. Ice breaking, as discussed, while a definite need in the Arctic, is not a mission appropriate to the Coast Guard. While the Coast Guard currently performs ice-breaking science missions for the National Science Foundation, for instance, there are better models for acquiring this capability. Existing intergovernmental MOUs related to the Coast Guard ice-breaking mission are outdated and should be scrapped. The most compelling need for the Coast Guard at present is a relatively large ice-capable platform with significant dwell time from which multiple missions can be executed, and preferably several of such assets to give optimal geographic coverage. This would be a Coast Guard version of the navys Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB). This type of ship would provide the Coast Guard with a robust C3 (command, control, and communications) capability, aviationcapability, small boat capability, and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, i.e.,drone) capability. Large-scale search and rescue, along the lines of a significant cruise ship accident could be executed from this ship, and casualties could be cared for. The ship could facilitate the Coast Guard role with coordinating the response to alarge environmental incident, including hosting a large contingent of surge-response personnel. The ship could also act as a Joint U.S./Canadian command ship covering both nations Arctic responsibilities (a floating, Arctic extension of NORAD). Such a platform would also offer the Coast Guard a base from which to conduct regime enforcement activities such as port state control functions for shipping and rig safetyinspections.
The aviation, UAV, and small-boat capability, coupled with onboard sensors integrated with existing systems such as AIS (automatic identification system)
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data aggregation, would make the ship an excellent platform for maritime domain awareness functions, environmental monitoring, and governance regime enforcement/environmental security. It would also show U.S. sovereignty by being a clear, visible, and persistent presence in U.S. Arctic waters. Such a platform would remove the need to develop shoreside infrastructure that would be expensive to build and maintain, and would create environmental issues of its own, such as building on permafrost. The acquisition route for this ship is clear, since the Military Sealift Command is in the process of acquiring a ship very similar to this for the United States Navy Special Operations Forces. Therefore, the Coast Guard would be acquiring the ship via a process that has already been used to obtain a ship of similar, if not more advanced, capabilities. In the MSC procurement case, the ship would be procured under a time charter, meaning that an operating company would operate the platform while the Special Forces might have upwards of two hundred personnel on board at any one time, and the ship would take direction directly from the operational commander. The MSC issued a capabilities statement and contractors were responsible for delivering a ship meeting these capabilities under a fixed-price arrangement. The U.S. Coast Guard could acquire the ship through an identical process or under an alternative acquisition route such as a bareboat charter, or an outright purchase. Such a ship could be available in less than eighteen months and for a fraction of the cost of a traditional design-and-build icebreaker. The Coast Guard could buy five of these for the cost of one icebreaker under its traditional acquisition process. While the AFSB could provide the Coast Guard with significant capability to meet most of the mission set, there remains the need for ice-capable assets for fisheries patrol, governance regime enforcement, and law enforcement. The current Canadian Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship (AOPS) program may be a good place to look for inspiration, and potential cost-saving could arise if the Coast Guard were to partner with the Canadians in sharing design and development costs, with ships being built in each countrys respective yards. While actual coproduction would dramatically reduce costs and speed assets into the water more rapidly for both countries, that isprobably a political step too far; so while mentioning that both the United States andCanada could benefit from that approach, it will not be discussed further here. The AOPS capability set, set forth below is clearly tailored towards a Canadian mission, but it would not be hard to replace the Canadian-specific requirements with U.S. requirements without adding to ship design or costs. The Canadian AOPS program lists as the ship capability set:
The ships will have sufficient flexibility to operate independently and
effectivelyinCanadas Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), including such diverse environments as the Canadian Arctic, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and
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off the northwest coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The ships would also becapable of navigating the St. Lawrence River on a year-round basis and berthing in QuebecCity;
They will be able to operate year-round in medium first-year ice which may
includeold ice inclusions as well as the open ocean areas in the Atlantic and Pacific Canadian EEZ;
They will have an ice capability exclusively for their own mobility and not
toprovide ice-breaking services to others;

They will be able to sustain operations for up to four months; They will have a range of at least six thousand eight hundred nautical miles; They will have sufficient organic situational awareness to ensure safety
ofnavigation and flight;

They will have a sufficient command, control, and communication (C3)
capability to provide and receive real-time information to/from the Canadian Forces Common Operating Picture (COP);
They will have a cruise speed of at least 14 knots and a maximum speed of
atleast17 knots;
They will have a gun armament; and They will remain operational for twenty-five years beyond Initial
OperationalCapability (IOC).76 Additionally, the AOPS may be required to be capable of embarking and operating in up to sea state three, an onboard organic helicopter, up to andincluding a CH 148 Cyclone, with one flying and one maintenance crew. A series of AOPS type ships, the use of the existing U.S. Coast Guard cutters in ice-free Arctic waters, and the use of one or more AFSB as an Arctic Fleet flag ship/s would provide the Coast Guard with a robust capability to meet all mission requirements without the need for shore infrastructure or support. The National Defense cutters are of course available now, and the AFSB could be delivered in eighteen months, meaning the U.S. Coast Guard could have a significant Arctic capability very quickly. The AOPS, being new construction, could take longer, but by partnering with the Canadians the time and cost to acquire might be reduced.
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NOAA As noted in the analysis, the science mission is a critical capability that is needed now. NOAA needs the ability to conduct extensive science missions in the Arctic partnered with NSF, UNOLS, and other science-oriented organizations both in the United States and around the world. Any expansion in science capability should be coordinated among all stakeholders in the U.S. Arctic science arena, including industry such as oil companies which already have a wealth of informationand capability. A coordinated science mission could be managed by an overall manager, and the information gained could be shared through an Arctic science exchange which addresses needs in order of precedence. The NOAA fleet should be augmented with both organic and chartered tonnage. The organic tonnage can be acquired from the commercial market quickly by converting ice-capable oil industry support ships to a science mission. Highly specialized research ships suchas ice-breaking research ships should be procured through thecommercial market as NSF is currently doing. The United States Navy As noted earlier, given the nature of the missions either occurring in the Arctic now or likely to occur in the near- to mid-term, and where most of those missions are likely to happen (U.S. EEZ), there does not appear to be a need for the United States Navy to invest in specialized ice-capable assets. At this point the largest mission for the navy is to act as a hedge against uncertainty and to augment the projection of sovereignty done by the Coast Guard. It is good for allies and potential adversaries alike to see the navy around. The navy needs to be present in the Arctic when and where it can utilize existing assets supported by new TTPs for operating in ice-free or nearly ice-free waters in the navigation season. A cooperative exchange program with the Coast Guard to develop a cadre of naval officers with Arctic experience could be created to augment experience gained by direct navy deployments to the region. Oil Spill Response and Ice Breaking Oil spill response and general ice breaking are both missions that can and should be provided by industry under a form of cooperative. The model for this capability exists in the form of the Oil Spill Removal Organization (OSRO), a U.S. Coast Guard-approved not-for-profit company whose function is to provide oil spill response capability and assets to member companies. Marine Spill Response Corporation is the largest such organization in the United States.77 Membership in an OSRO could be mandated through the port state control system just as it is now. The OSRO acquires, prepositions, and maintains all assets required to respond to a spill, trains with the equipment, and responds in the event of an actual emergency. A similar arrangement could be required in the Arctic and membership could be mandatory for ships working in the Arctic, including cruise ships. The Arctic version of an OSRO could also provide generalized ice-breaking service, considering that ice breaking, or at a minimum ice management, could reasonably be expected to be needed in the event of a real spill response. Therefore, it is reasonable to require afully competent OSRO, certified to operate in Arctic waters, to include robust
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ice-breaking capability in its asset portfolio. In the case of the icebreakers, they would be funded primarily through membership fees for the OSRO, and could also be funded by charging for services when called out for actual ice-breaking duty unrelated to their primary environmental response mission. The OSRO could be responsible for procuring, operating, and maintaining however many icebreakers of whatever mix of heavy and medium capability the U.S. Coast Guard believes is required to adequately protect both the environment and industrial activity. A fleet provided by industry and operated by industry could be available faster and at much lower cost (zero cost to the U.S. government) than any traditional model and would free U.S. Coast Guard personnel for the more critical missions they nowhave in the Arctic.
Conclusion
This analysis describes the range of activity that is taking place now and likely to take place in the near- to mid-term in the Arctic. This is the activity the U.S. government needs to be prepared to respond to. There is no doubt that there is an immediate and growing need for an official U.S. government presence in the Arctic. What that presence is, by what government agencies, how it is projected, and on what types of assets should be determined by a detailed assessment of activity likely to occur over the relevant investment horizon. The corresponding mission sets generated by that activity for the U.S. government must also be determined. This paper attempts to work through these issues and to draw conclusions regarding the types of assets that would be appropriate to respond to the resulting missions. There is a dearth of scientific knowledge about the Arctic environment that could be used to underpin practical responses such as oil spill response or fisheries management. This is an immediate mission need that requires a significantly larger investment in assets devoted to science and a much larger role for NOAA in the national debate about the Arctic than has been present in the past. NOAA should be the focal point, or clearing house, for science in the Arctic, either conducting it directly or in conjunction with partners such as the National Science Foundation, UNOLS, international partners, and industry. Current activity includes fishing, cruise ship traffic, and oil and gas activity which require missions such as persistent presence and the projection of sovereignty, governance regime enforcement, both maritimeand terrestrial, requiring strong C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capability, SAR/disaster response, and law enforcement capability. Since this activity is occurring now, the necessity to prosecute these missions is immediate. Asset investments should be focused on ships capable of undertaking these missions in an environment that contains some ice, but not requiring high-end ice capability. These missions are also clearly U.S. Coast Guard in nature, and the Coast Guard should be the focus of asset investment for them. In addition, since these mission needs are immediate, an acquisition path should be found that gets assets in place faster than the traditional design-andbuild model now utilized. Shipping through the Arctic, which tends to get the
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most popularpress, is actually likely to be comparatively small, to be destination in nature, and largely devoted to industrial activity in the Russian Arctic. Large asset investments related to regulating maritime shipping are not needed in theforeseeable future. Lastly, the focus on ice breaking as a government enterprise is misplaced since that activity can be accomplished by industry in a more costefficient and effective manner.
Notes
1 See for example Scott Borgerson, The Coming Arctic Boom, Foreign Affairs (July/Aug 2013), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139456/scott-g-borgerson/the-coming-arctic-boom. 2 In late August 2013 Maersk Line, the largest container-shipping company in the world, established an internal planning process for how it would deal with such an event, indicating the seriousness with which it views that possibility after a terrorist attempt to disrupt canal trafc. 3 Parts of this section are extracted from Stephen M. Carmel, Geo-economic Impacts of a Viable Arctic Transport Regime (dissertation, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, forthcoming). 4 See Stephen M. Carmel, The Cold Hard Realities of Arctic Shipping (proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute, July2013) for a complete discussion. 5 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbot_War for general information. 6 The United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland; see http://library .arcticportal.org/1709/1/Arctic_SAR_Agreement_EN_FINAL_for_signature_21-Apr-2011.pdf. 7 See http://www.reddogalaska.com. 8 See Trude Petterson, 46 Vessels through Northern Sea Route, Barents Observer, November23,2012, http://barentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2012/11/46-vessels-through -northern-sea-route-23-11. 9 See http://www.nsra.ru/en/razresheniya. 10 Marck Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Small and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 11 See for example Terry Macalister, Thawing Arctic Opens up New Shipping Routes on the Roof of the World, Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/05/arctic-shipping-trade-routes. 12 Maersk, the worlds largest shipping company, launched its rst Triple-E, the worlds largest containership, in the spring of 2013. See the Maersk website, http://www.worldslargestship.com for more information. 13 The ofcial website contains detailed information and can be found at http://www.pancanal.com/eng /expansion. 14 Stratfor, August 6, 2013, http://www.stratfor.com/image/russias-trans-siberian-railway.
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15 The Canadians claim the Northwest Passage as an internal, territorial water, and in order to emphasizethat claim they refer to it as the Canadian http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP /researchpublications/prb0747-e.htm#statusNorthwest Passage. The Canadian position is extensively documented, but the Parliament of Canada provides a good background in Controversial CanadianClaims over Arctic waters and Maritime Zones at http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP /researchpublications/prb0747-e.htm#status. 16 A $40 Million Gamble on the Northwest Passage, Time, September 5, 1969, accessed at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901369,00.html. 17 S.S. Manhattan breaks through the Northwest Passage, CBC News, September 8, 1969, accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/Economy+and+Business/Transport/ID/1801265072/?sort =MostPopular. 18 Calculation Shanghai to New York by author; Rotterdam calculation from Emmanuel Guy, Evaluating the viability of commercial Shipping in the Northwest Passage Journal of Ocean Technology 1, no. 1 (Summer 2006): 915. 19 U.S. and Soviet Union/Russian submarines have been conducting operations under the ice cap since the 1980s and substantial efforts at charting the Arctic sea have been made, with the Russians widely believed to have a substantial lead. Virtually all of those charts are classied however. 20 Note there is a signicant difference between an ice-strengthened ship and an icebreaker. The termsare not interchangeable and represent signicantly different ice capabilities. Cargo ships are icestrengthened, meaning a much lower level of ice capability than an icebreaker. 21 The Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, published by the Arctic Council, provides a comprehensive study of these factors, http://www.pame.is/amsa-2009-report. 22 See http://www.rosatomot.ru/index.php?menuid=20&lang=en. 23 Katarzyna Zysk, Russian Arctic Strategy: Ambitions and Constraints, Joint Forces Quarterly 57:2,2010. 24 The Northern Sea Route as a Viable development: Russias Fleet of Atomic Icebreakers ArcticEcon, October 1, 2012, http://arcticecon.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/the-northern-sea-route-as-a-viable -development-russias-eet-of-atomic-icebreakers. 25 Chinas New Foothold on the Northern Sea Route, Barents Observer, November 26, 2010, http:// barentsobserver.com/en/sections/business/chinas-new-foothold-northern-sea-route. 26 See Carmel, The Cold Hard Realities of Arctic Shipping. 27 Carmel, Sovereignty, Regulatory Regimes, and Environmental Security in the Arctic (paper prepared for the ISA 2011 International Conference, Montreal, March 16, 2011). 28 The author, as a North American committee member for Det Norske Veritas, attended a board meeting on July 7, 2013, at which it was relayed that there will be no Arctic offshore oil activity beyond surveys this year, and there have been no requests for ice management services. 29 See for example Greenpeace Icebreaker Leaves Arctic Waters, Financial Times, August 26, 2013. 30 See the NOAA Arctic navigation website, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/economy/arctic.
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31 See for example Greenpeace Arctic website, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns /climate-change/arctic-impacts. 32 This section taken from Carmel, Sovereignty, Regulatory Regimes, and Environmental Security in the Arctic. 33 See http://www.imo.org/About/Pages/Default.aspx. 34 See http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Environment/PollutionPrevention/Pages/Default.aspx. 35 For a full listing of Special Areas by Annex, see IMO Special Areas at http://www.imo.org/OurWork /Environment/PollutionPrevention/SpecialAreasUnderMARPOL/Pages/Default.aspx. 36 See http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Environment/PollutionPrevention/PSSAs/Pages/Default.aspx. 37 See http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Environment/PollutionPrevention/PSSAs/Pages/Default.aspx. 38 See http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Safety/SafetyTopics/Pages/PolarShippingSafety.aspx; the full text of the Guidelines for Ships operating in Arctic Waters is at http://www5.imo.org/SharePoint/blastDataOnly .asp/data_id=6629/1056-MEPC-Circ399.pdf. 39 See https://www.bimco.org/Members/News/2010/2010/10/22_Polar_Code.aspx. 40 See International Maritime Organization, Shipping in Polar Waters, http://www.imo.org/MediaCentre /HotTopics/Polar/Pages/default.aspx. 41 See http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/debs-arctic-construction-standards-iacs-354.htm. 42 The full text of the IACS Harmonized rules can be found at http://www.iacs.org.uk/document/public /publications/unied_requirements/pdf/ur_i_pdf410.pdf. 43 Sara J. Dresser, The Need for a Binding, Region-Specic Shipping Regime, Southwest Journal of International Law 16, no. 507 (2010): 515. 44 Thibaud Henin, The Arctic Environment as a Common Pool Resource: Structure of a Comprehensive Regional Arctic Regime to Ensure Sustainability (paper prepared for Continents Under Climate Change Conference, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, October 19, 2009). http://www.henin.net/Thibaud _Henin_conf2010_paper.pdf. 45 See http://parismou.org. 46 See http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindx.htm. 47 Olav Schram Stokke, A Legal Regime for the Arctic? Interplay with the Law of the Sea Convention, Marine Policy 31 (2007): 402 408. 48 See http://www.akhire.com/alaskaoceanrangers.html. 49 Oystein Jensen, The IMO Guidelines for Ships Operating in Arctic Ice-Covered Waters: From Voluntary to Mandatory Tool for Navigation Safety and Environmental Protection, (Fridtjof Nansens Institute Report 2/2007), http://www.fni.no/doc&pdf/FNI-R0207.pdf. 50 Full text of the declaration can be found at http://arctic-council.org/learchive/Ilulissat -declaration.pdf.
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51 See http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/debs-arctic-acts-regulations-airss-291.htm; Scientic Analysis of the ASPPR Hybrid System for Type B Vessels Canadian Hydraulics Centre. Technical ReportCHC-TR-063, March 2009. 52 The author was a participant, therefore has personal knowledge of events. 53 Complete information on NORDREG is at http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/e0001440. 54 Full text can be found at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos /closindx.htm. 55 For a discussion of the regulatory regime governing the Northern Sea Route see Erik Franckx TheLegal Regime of Navigation in the Russian Arctic, Journal of Transnational Law and Policy 18, no 2 (Spring 2009), http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/transnational/vol18_2/franckx.pdf. 56 See http://www.arctic-council.org. 57 See http://www.pame.is. 58 Oran R. Young, The Arctic in Play: Governance in a Time of Rapid Change, The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law 24 (2009): 423 442. 59 Adele Airoldi, European Union and the Arctic (report for the Nordic Council of Ministers, October13, 2010), http://www.norden.org/en/publications/publications/2010-763; Olav Schram Stokke, A LegalRegime for the Arctic? Interplay with the Law of the Sea Convention, Marine Policy 31 (2007):402 408. 60 Diethard Mager, Climate Change, Conicts and Cooperation in the Arctic: Easier Access to Hydrocarbons and Mineral Resources? The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law 24 (2009):347354. 61 Oran R. Young, The Structure of Arctic Cooperation: Solving Problems/Seizing Opportunities (paper prepared at the request of Finland in preparation for the fourth conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, Rovaniemi, Finland, August 2729, 2000. 62 Complete information for MAP can be found at its website: http://www.unepmap.org/index.php ?module=content2&catid=001001002. 63 See http://www.unepmap.org/index.php?module=content2&catid=001001002. 64 See http://www.unepmap.org/index.php?module=content2&catid=001024. 65 Young, The Structure of Arctic Cooperation: Solving Problems/Seizing Opportunities. 66 See http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/about/default.asp. 67 Peter M. Haas, Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control, International Organization 43, no. 3 (Summer, 1989): 377 403. 68 Soa Frantzi and Jon C. Lovett, Is Science the Driving Force in the Operation of Environmental Regimes? ACase Study of the Mediterranean Action Plan, Ocean and Coastal Management 51 (2008):229245. 69 Carsten Helm and Detlef Sprinz, Measuring the Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes, Journal of Conict Resolution 44, no. 5 (October 2000): 630 652.
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70 Frantzi, Institutional Performance of Environmental Regimes. 71 Dresser, Need for a Binding, Region-Specic Shipping Regime; Oran R. Young, The Internationalization of the Circumpolar North: Charting a Course for the 21st Century, Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2000, http://www.thearctic.is/articles/topics/internationaization/enska/index.htm. 72 Peter M. Haas, Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination, International Organization 46, no. 1 (Winter 1992). 73 Stacy D. VanDeveer, Capacity Building Efforts and International Cooperation in the Baltic and Mediterranean Regions (conference proceedings, Saving the Seas: Developing Capacity and Fostering Environmental Cooperation in Europe, May 14, 1999, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars):11. 74 This excludes surface ship operations north of the Arctic Circle in generally ice-free waters in, for example, the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap which are not what is contemplated here as Arctic Operations. 75 The solicitation can be found at https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id =4a2d623b34826bbe554e55185cd3828a&tab=core&_cview=0. 76 See AOPS website, http://www.materiel.forces.gc.ca/en/aops.page. 77 See the MSRC website, http://www.msrc.org.
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Copyright 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
The publisher has made an online version of this work available under a Creative Commons AttributionNoDerivs license 3.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0. Efforts have been made to locate the original sources, determine the current rights holders, and, if needed, obtain reproduction permissions. On verication of any such claims to rights in the articles reproduced in this book, any required corrections or clarications will be made in subsequent printings/editions. Hoover Institution Press assumes no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. First printing 2013 191817161514137654321 This publication is a chapter from The Opening Arctic: Shaping a Safe, Secure and Prosperous Future, soon to be published by Hoover Institution Press, edited by David Slayton.
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Arctic Security Initiative

When combined with economic and political developments, the changing Arctic is the most significant physical global event since the end of the last Ice Age. An unresolved strategic territory, the increased activity suggests that the region could become the subject of intensive negotiations and possible friction and confrontation relating to resources, ocean access, and sovereignty. In light of those changes and challenges, the Hoover Institution Arctic Security Initiative has been put in place to address the strategic and security implications ofincreased activity and to identify opportunities for shaping a safe, secure, and prosperous Arctic. For more information about the Arctic Security Initiative, visit usonline at www.hoover.org/taskforces/arctic-security.
About the Author
Stephen M. Carmel Stephen M. Carmel is the senior vice president of Maritime Services at Maersk Line Limited. He previously held positions in operations and nance and served at sea as a deck ofcer and master, primarily on tankers. Carmel graduated from the US Merchant Marine Academy; he holds an MA in economics and an MBA and is a PhD candidate, all in International Political Economy, at Old Dominion University. His research interests are in trade, conict, and Arctic issues.
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Arctic Force Structure: What An Arctic Fleet Might Look Like, by Stephen M. Carmel

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Arctic Force Structure: What An Arctic Fleet Might Look Like, by Stephen M. Carmel

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ARCTIC SECURITY INITIATIVE

Arctic Force Structure

What an Arctic Fleet Might Look Like

Arctic Force Structure

Part One: Current and Future Arctic Activity 3

Arctic Force Structure

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Cruise Ship Trafc

Arctic Force Structure

Destination Shipping vs. Transit Shipping

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FIGURE 1: Time Advantage of Northwest Passage in Hours: Shanghai to Rotterdam

Average Speed (knots)

100 150 hours Source: Authors calculations.

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Oil and Gas

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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2012.

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Science in the Arctic

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Part Two: Overarching Governance Scheme

The Current Regulatory Landscape 32

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The Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Mediterranean

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the improvement of environmental conditions in 15 percent of hotspots and

sensitive areas of national priority;

and adoption of environmentally sound technology;

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Part Three: Government Roles and Responsibilities

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Acquiring and Paying for the Fleet

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Notional Arctic Fleet

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toprovide ice-breaking services to others;

ofnavigation and flight;

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Arctic Force Structure