"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 37

In this episode: As the Arctic Ice Melts, Could a New Kind of Cold War Be Coming?

January 15, 2024

"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 37

Episode 37: As the Arctic Ice Melts, Could a New Kind of Cold War Be Coming?

Until recently, the eight nations whose borders creep into the icy Arctic haven’t had much of a reason to fight over this forbidding landscape. But as climate change melts the ice and opens up access to all kinds of precious resources, the United States is preparing for the possibility of conflict. So how will the U.S. defend its interests in a place where most of us have never set foot?

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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(Wind, sounds of the Arctic)

Louie Palu recording: Here we are, Resolute Bay, High Arctic. (ambient sound wind, crunching ice) Close to minus 50, 50 below zero

Louie Palu: The Arctic is very much about the unknown.

Louie Palu recording: Oh, my face is killing me right now.

Louie Palu: You don't even need to be attacked by an enemy force. You’ll just get frostbite.

You can lose your fingers, your hands. You can dehydrate just as quick in the Arctic, in the cold, as you can in extreme heat.

This is Louie Palu, a photojournalist who first started documenting the Arctic in 1993.

Louie Palu: If you puncture a hole in your boot, you're in deep trouble.

(Wind roaring)

Louie Palu: If you lose your glove, you're in deep trouble.

(Wind roaring)

Louie Palu: I tie one end of a string to one glove and one end to the other, and I put them around my neck and I have extra gloves. Cause if you lose your gloves, you'll lose your hands. You could sweat and die. The Arctic lets you know how hard it can push back on a daily basis. The wind could ground flights for a week, it can freeze fuel lines, my cameras stop working. Anything we've built, it can defeat.

Palu's recent photography project about the Arctic shows the brutal, often surprising reality of a region so many of us have only imagined. Perhaps as a vast landscape of ice, interrupted only by a ferocious polar bear.

(Polar bear growling)

There are polar bears in the Arctic, and they will kill you. But there’s more to the Arctic than that.

Picture the globe from your grade-school classroom and those thin, latitudinal lines circling it. There’s an imaginary line at around 66 and a half degrees north of the equator, forming a circle right at the top of the globe. That’s the Arctic Circle. The borders of eight countries creep into that circle, including the United States, Canada, Denmark's territory of Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Until recently, they haven't had much reason to fight over the Arctic. But then the polar caps started melting. And that opened up uncertainty as well as possibility: new shipping passages, easier access to natural resources like gas, oil, lithium — even diamonds —buried deep below the Arctic ice.

ARCHIVAL Lisa Murkowski: The far north has been flooded with investment activity and competing interests.

That’s Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, speaking at a forum about the Arctic. She says all this attention is a double-edged sword for the region:

ARCHIVAL Lisa Murkowski: Some of it’s welcome…and some of it is very threatening.

Today, as the rapidly changing climate reshapes the polar region, the United States is adding to its military presence there, even as the Arctic superpower, Russia, opens new bases. So, how can the US defend its interests in this punishing landscape? And are we poised for a new kind of “Cold War”?

I'm Peter Bergen, Welcome to In the Room.

(Theme music)

Louie Palu is no stranger to forbidding landscapes. I first met him a few years after the 9/11 attacks when we were both reporting on the US-led war in Afghanistan, where Louie embedded with American and allied soldiers for up to six months at a time. His expertise on warfare is rivaled only by his expertise in the Arctic, a region he’s documented for three decades during more than 50 trips. To find out what’s really happening up in the Arctic, the first person I would call is Louie.

Over the past decade, Louie has closely followed the military activity of seven Arctic nations. He’s photographed the recently reactivated 11th Division Airborne, known as the Arctic Angels, who are part of the U.S. military’s strategy named “Regaining Arctic Dominance.” And he’s chronicled the Canadian Rangers, most of whom, once you get above the treeline, are Inuit. Their expertise in this challenging landscape is a key asset.

Louie’s images show a strikingly diverse range of training methods. In one photo, dozens of parachutes fill the sky, as US Army troops float down into an icy landscape, playing the role of an imagined invading army. In other images, Canadian soldiers learn to forage for berries on the tundra, and to build igloos for emergency shelter. Despite being surrounded by snow, even accessing drinking water isn’t straightforward in the Arctic: soldiers have to melt down ice using kerosene stoves.

Louie Palu: But before you do all of this, you have to train for falling through the ice.

(water noise)

Louie Palu: The military that took me up there, there’s a test you’ve gotta do. We did it in Yellowknife, so it wasn't so cold, it was minus 36. They tie a rope around you and you walk 50 meters….

(water noise)

Louie Palu: …. fully clothed - like running shoes, a pair of just regular pants, and a sweater with a hat. And you just fall in the water, you go right under, and it's instant panic for anyone. Even, I've seen Special Forces - your body's like, ‘Oh my god, panic.’ You can't breathe, your lungs kind of collapse. You get up to the edge of the ice, and the ice starts breaking. So you're like trying to get to some solid ice, and you calm down. When they ask you, ‘What's your name?’ when you go to speak and it happens to everybody, you just go, (gasps) like, you can't speak, you get up to the edge of the ice and they say, okay, calm down. You have to get your breathing. Cause you could be up there with a group of guys and they fall through the ice and they're going to rely on you to save them.

What keeps Louie coming back is a fascination with the Arctic as a rare new frontier.

Louie Palu: The Arctic is a place in the history of this planet that no one's ever really had to think about. Canada considered it a scorched ice policy or strategy: ‘No one's ever going to attack us over the pole. Forget it. We don't have to worry about that.’ And for the first time, and I think it's a big moment: the United States and Canada and virtually all countries that are in the Northern Hemisphere got to consider that with dwindling resources and a potential new, at least it's perceived, if we survive the effects of climate change as it continues to grow, that countries may do unexpected things, in ways that we could never have imagined.

Things could be happening there already that we don't know about and we're not gonna know about.

One of those unexpected things happened back in 2007.

Louie Palu: I saw some video of a submarine, a small submersible planting the Russian flag at the bottom of the North Pole.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: Russia is making a very bold move, planting its flag on the Arctic seafloor.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: It's a decision that has many nations up in arms.

Louie Palu: And I thought, that's pretty bold. It's kind of like going to the moon, except no one really wants to live on the moon — yet. People underestimated Russia all the way back then, they're really going for it in the Arctic.

That flag was planted at the bottom of the vast Arctic Ocean, in an area that doesn’t technically belong to any nation, two and a half miles under the North Pole. It was no easy feat.

Heather Exner-Pirot: This was an incredible scientific achievement.

That's Heather Exner-Pirot, a Canadian political scientist who has worked on just about every Arctic issue you can imagine, from indigenous economic development to Arctic energy to the ever-more-pressing field of Arctic security.

Heather Exner-Pirot: It was a great image, internally, domestically for Putin to say, here's the Russian flag on the seabed of the North Pole.

A few years earlier, Russia had submitted an application to the United Nations, to claim almost half of the Arctic Ocean as their territory. That claim was based on the premise that the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range, is connected to Russia’s continental shelf. While that initial claim was rejected by the UN, Russia has continued to revise and submit new claims. And in the meantime, Denmark and Canada have also made similar claims arguing that some of the same disputed territory belongs to them.

Exner-Pirot says the flag-planting expedition was more of a stunt than anything else. She points out that the voyage, on Russian submarines, was financially backed by one of the passengers — a Swedish pharmaceutical magnate.

Heather Exner-Pirot: It was kind of like, you know, one of those billionaire quests.

In any event, Canadian authorities were not amused.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: A normally subdued Canadian government has reacted with anger to the Russians. Their foreign minister saying, ‘This isn't the 15th century.’

Heather Exner-Pirot: You can't just go around planting flags and claiming things, which they didn’t.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster: And a U.S. State Department spokesman says, ‘Whether it was a Russian flag, or a rubber flag, or a bed sheet, it doesn't matter, it doesn't have legal standing on Arctic resources.’

Stunt or not, the incident forced other Arctic nations to react.

Heather Exner-Pirot: After that, every Arctic state put out an Arctic foreign policy, an Arctic strategy. It certainly spurred everyone to think about Arctic foreign policy in a more strategic way, in a more kind of whole government way. It was definitely a watershed moment.

It might surprise you to learn that up until recently, the Arctic was actually a rare bright spot of international cooperation, where Russia and the West worked together through something called The Arctic Council, founded back in 1996.

Heather Exner-Pirot: It’s a real window into the ‘90s.

ARCHIVAL CNN Newscaster: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been removed from power…

ARCHIVAL ABC Newscaster: In Moscow, the hammer and sickle is lowered for the last time, and an era comes to an end.

Heather Exner-Pirot: It was a peaceful decade. But because of that, the Americans weren't particularly interested in being constrained by middle powers, as we would say in international relations. But Canada pushed and pushed and pushed to have this Arctic Council.

For almost three decades, the Arctic Council has gathered together the eight Arctic nations, along with several indigenous organizations in the spirit of cooperation. They produced a groundbreaking climate change assessment and moved international policy forward to prohibit especially dangerous forms of pollution. In fact, almost all of the Council’s work has been environmentally oriented.

Heather Exner-Pirot: Why is that? Because it's not a zero-sum game. Everyone was a winner if everyone else was doing better on the environment.

Being able to monitor things like persistent organic pollutants, black carbon, you know the pollutants from diesel or from coal that sits on the ice and then kind of enhances climate change. Fish, wildlife protection, wildfire management. It seemed like the Arctic region was that one area where we could work with Russia and we thought the Arctic is actually a good area for us to cooperate, and, gosh darn if we didn't. It was a great success. And it's hard to say that now because things have gone so bad.

(Music)

Heather Exner-Pirot: And so what happened? Russia invaded Ukraine.

ARCHIVAL NPR Reporter: One week after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Arctic Council announced it was suspending all its activities because of the war.

ARCHIVAL Arctic Council Statement: We don't know how long the pause will last.

Heather Exner-Pirot: And they cannot meet as the Arctic Council without having Russia there. So it's a real pickle. So now you ask yourself, should we make an Arctic Council with just seven? Or what are we going to do?

The Council is communicating again, but there are no in-person meetings. Their work on pollution, fishing, and climate change has slowed to a crawl at a time when the world needs cooperation around these issues more than ever.

Heather Exner-Pirot: Russia has ruptured the good thing that we had going in the Arctic, it’s their fault. All we can do is respond to it. And the correct response is to isolate them, diplomatically.

Russia is part of pretty much any conversation about national security risks to the United States. But to understand why they loom so very large in this one, you have to understand how significantly they overshadow every other Arctic nation in every major category.

Heather Exner-Pirot: Russia has half the land, two-thirds of the people and three-quarters of the GDP. And so it has an enormous... presence in the Arctic. It is the Arctic superpower in many ways. It is far more populated than the Canadian Arctic or the Alaskan Arctic or the Greenlandic Arctic. It is a significant producer of oil — and gas. Russia has the world's largest gas reserves. 80 percent of its reserves are in the Arctic.

So, the difference in the importance of the Arctic to Russia, to its psychology, to its identity, to its economy, you cannot compare it to any other Arctic state.

(Music)

Heather Exner-Pirot: So what the real security risk is Russia and or China, sending nuclear submarines that go undetected. This is the important thing to know about Russia in the Arctic. Their northern fleet is located in the Arctic because it's their access to the North Atlantic, and having that access for their nuclear submarines, for a lot of their nuclear-powered assets means that they have credible response to a nuclear attack from the West.

So as part of their nuclear deterrent strategy, they really need that access to the North Atlantic. They get it through their Arctic, and so they have to keep those lanes safe and secure for them to use. That's an existential threat to them, and that's why they put so many resources into that corner of the world.

Those submarines are nuclear-powered, meaning they can stay below the surface for long periods of time, and they’re capable of actually launching nuclear missiles.

Heather Exner-Pirot: What we're trying to achieve is this continental defense. To have Fortress North America. To say to the Russians and the Chinese, ‘Don't waste your time. Don't put your resources. This is not a place for you. Stay as far away as possible.’

Until recently, Russia had cooperated with its Arctic counterparts…

Heather Exner-Pirot: In many ways, it was a good team player. At the very beginning in the ‘90s, it was on its back foot, so it was, I would say, more compliant. It was looking to be included, it was looking to be part of something, looking to find a way back into kind of, the, normal Western sphere.

On scientific matters, there are tremendous Russian scientists, and they have a lot of, the things that, the permafrost or the marine, a lot of the assets, that scientists want to look at, or the ability to monitor, because it's so big, it's such a huge part of the Arctic. It's very important to know what's happening on the Russian side of the Arctic.

Overall, it was pretty good. But, Russia was also Russia. So, for example, on scientific cooperation, there's lots of hawks in the Kremlin that did not want Western scientists to come in with monitoring equipment into the Russian Arctic.

Were very suspicious, very skeptical, probably not safe for scientists to do so, not always safe for Russian scientists to come to the West, not because of the West, but because the Russians would automatically assume that they were spies or knew something or make them act as spies. So, in some ways, a team player, in some ways, it was always Arctic 7 plus Russia.

And then there’s China. Despite being 900 miles from the Arctic at its closest point, China released its own Arctic strategy in 2018, giving itself the title of “near-Arctic State.” Then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took issue with this self-designation.

ARCHIVAL Mike Pompeo: There are only Arctic states and not Arctic states. No third category exists and claiming otherwise entitles China to exactly nothing.

Pompeo said the playbook that China has followed in other regions of the world is concerning.

ARCHIVAL Mike Pompeo: Do we want crucial Arctic infrastructure to end up like Chinese-constructed roads in Ethiopia, crumbling and dangerous after only a few years? Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?

Do we want the fragile Arctic environment exposed to the same ecological devastation caused by China's fishing fleet in the seas off its coast or unregulated industry activity in its own country? I think the answers are pretty clear.

Exner-Pirot doubts that China will become a major player in the Arctic.

Heather Exner-Pirot: It's extremely difficult to operate effectively in the Arctic. And you need the right equipment and you need the right training. And China doesn't have that. So you think, what are the risks? Not being able to have that sufficient monitoring so that a Chinese nuclear submarine is closer to North America than we would ever want it, that it goes by undetected. But in terms of China taking resources, or doing, you know, some kind of land invasion. All these things make no sense to me.

(Music fades into sound of wind in Arctic)

Louie Palu recording: Oh my face is killing me right now.

Deep in my inside pant pockets is…my lunch, which is a squished ham and cheese sandwich with tomato and Dijon mustard. Now I'm just looking around, no bears, so I can just start eating this sandwich. (plastic rustling) Let's see. Sandwich eating time in the high Arctic. Okay. Layer one. Done. Plastic bag. Into the camera bag. No littering in the Arctic, please. Ah, this tastes really good.

One of Louie’s photographs especially grabbed me. It shows a US nuclear submarine, which has punched a hole in the Alaskan ice and risen above the surface. A floating black platform in a stark white landscape.

Louie Palu: It's this massive, I believe, black steel conning tower. There's some mist coming up from the heat from inside. I guess the hatch might be open, coming from the sub. And there's two little dots, like there's two little sailors out there. And the sun is behind it, hitting it. And the periscope and some of the instruments that are, I believe, communications or weather instruments, are creating these shadows across the ice.

It's interrupting the sunlight on the ice. And it's just this moment where it's kind of like landing on the moon. I couldn't help being a fan or being a person who likes being informed by cinema of having these little soundtracks in my head, like, you know, Stanley Kubrick.

(2001 Space Odyssey music)

Louie Palu: It was so real and raw and powerful, this incredible invention, this construction, this big black monolith popped through and the ice was cracked. And it was like this moment where the steel and the human-made and nature were like, ‘Hey, we're, we're equal.’

Peter Bergen: I think people underestimate how cold and barren and difficult it is… or is the Arctic just too inhospitable for really military activity? I mean you’ve documented with the US military and with the Canadian military repeatedly.

Louie Palu: I watched Canada and Alaska, you know the United States, try and head back into the Arctic and they had kind of forgotten how to operate in the Arctic. Canada went up and landed with a C 130, unloaded some snowmobiles and basic things. They thought they wouldn't fill the gas tanks to the top because it's lighter to fly with. But when they got up there and they took the snowmobiles out from the heated space, condensation formed and all the fuel lines froze. So none of the snowmobiles worked.

There's this great quote from a general who had worked operating the Arctic for decades said: “Anyone who tries invading over the North Pole will turn into the largest search and rescue operation in the history of the world.” And it’s true.

Peter Bergen: The Arctic is such a challenging place for these soldiers you’re documenting. How hard is it for you, as a photojournalist, to do your work up there?

Louie Palu: You get up there and the briefing is, take your time, don't be in a hurry. Be very careful because medevac could be two days to a week. If you get seriously hurt, you could die. They make it very clear and plain. And when you go out there, you have to have a rifle or someone with a rifle. Even if you aren't carrying the firearms, it's good to know how to operate a bolt action rifle, because there are cases where thethe gun jams, and they get attacked or killed by the polar bear, and then it goes to the other person.

One day I was going out taking photos and, you know, the vapor from your mouth going up and my eyelashes start getting some little ice freezing on. It's like minus 60-something.

Louie Palu: And I blinked and my eyelashes froze together and I couldn't like open my left eye. And I thought if I blink I in both my eyes cl-, I mean, these are almost ridiculous situations, but if you start walking out there, you'll die. You're not in the city where you can ask for help.

You could be yelling as much as you want. No one's going to hear you.

Louie Palu recording: (wind) Oh god! Fuck!

Louie Palu: I carry a serious first aid kit, simple things like you break your zipper. Well, I carry zipper repair kits.

If you break your zipper, the cold is blowing into your coat. You're in serious trouble.

When you use the cameras outside, you got to leave them outside.

Because if you go inside, they'll get full of condensation. They're useless for two hours. Zoom lenses are useless cause the grease freezes.

The grease freezes. I'm trying to remember the days when I used film, the film would crack. You couldn't load anything. The batteries would die. If you spill your coffee, as I did once on a camera, there's no Nikon repair shop. Little things become catastrophic. You're sleep deprived, and sleep deprivation, you make mistakes, you forget things. In the Arctic you gotta learn to take losses.

(Music)

The title of Louie’s recent project is Distant Early Warning. It comes from the name of a series of manned radar stations that were built across the North American Arctic to Greenland in the 1950s and 1960s, extending about 3,000 miles. They were built to detect potential Soviet missile attacks, and called the Distant Early Warning Line. Now called the North Warning System, it’s a Cold War relic that has taken on renewed importance.

Louie Palu: There's this idea of an imagined attack over the North Pole, the Soviet Union with missiles or bombers, so they're like, ‘Oh my God, we need to know to prepare or to retaliate if this attack is going to come.’ The military has been waiting for an imagined attack for over 70 years. That was a really fascinating concept, waiting for this attack that has never come, but could.

Peter Bergen: You’ve been visiting the Arctic for three decades; how do you see evidence of climate change with your own eyes?

Louie Palu: I have a lot of indigenous friends that I've got to know over the decades and, uh, with Facebook, I can say, how you doing? How's the fishing?Right now, this is what I'm seeing with climate change, there's a lot of talk and a lot of news articles on problems with fishing, declining fish stocks. I know a lot of people snowmobile every day, so every day someone like we drive our car and we're like, ‘God, these potholes all over the place.’ They're like, ‘ice has changed. I can't go there anymore. There's no ice. The ice melted sooner this year.’ And that's been repeating for years in very big ways. They're seeing it firsthand and scientists are backing it up with contemporary science, with the numbers. So it is changing.

The impact of climate change on the Arctic has been devastating: as sea ice melts, instead of reflecting sunlight, the dark ocean absorbs it, compounding the warming effect in a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. 2023 was the warmest summer in the Arctic since reliable measurements have been taken.

Heather Exner-Pirot: Being in the coldest country in the world has a lot of disadvantages. (laughs) And I know that being from the prairies in Canada. You know it's not a joke, obviously.

Climate change is terrible. If you want to build a mine or a port in the Russian Arctic, now you're dealing with melting permafrost. Now those roads are hell. Very high cost to build, very high cost to maintain.

The mining infrastructure is much more difficult, again, more expensive. But for agriculture, it's kind of good. For shipping through the northern sea route, it's kind of good. There are real downsides to climate change on infrastructure, especially with regards to permafrost, but it does make shipping somewhat easier, especially on the Russian side, and it does enhance the growing season for agriculture.

And warming temperatures could open up access to critical minerals, the materials we need to power our economy today, and the technologies of tomorrow. Materials like cobalt, a supply chain currently dominated by China.

Heather Exner-Pirot: For the energy transition as well as our security and not relying on China and other authoritarian regimes, we need to have a lot more domestic and Western supply of critical minerals, things that we need for the energy transition, but also things that we just need for everyday life, our digital lives. And so if you're looking at the world and you're saying, where do we have some untapped resources from safe allies. Obviously, the Arctic is top of that list.

The resources are there. The geology is there. But actually getting to it is very expensive, very difficult. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of money. Commodity prices have to be very high to make it economic. You're very far from market. You might be ice-choked, you might not have any infrastructure.

And there's no stealing. There's no taking. There's no fighting. There's no race.

(Music)

(haunting siren alert in distance)

Melting sea ice was once a distant early warning of the potential for severe climate change, a warning that’s turning into a reality. Louie sees Russia’s attack on Ukraine as another indicator of threats on the horizon.

Louie Palu: With the current war in Ukraine, can we rely on any agreements to do with a country that has one of the largest militaries and Arctic- capable navies and air forces for the Arctic?

Russia's kind of out of everything; they're doing their own thing. And I think the worry is, if they're going to do their own thing in Ukraine, what's doing their own thing in the Arctic? Because they have the capabilities to do a lot more things than everybody put together up there. If they find something that they want to fight for in the Arctic, Ukraine is proof that they will go to any lengths to keep it and take it. And I think that any country that's unprepared for that future is going to pay a very big price.

That may sound kind of bleak, but look at it this way: Here we have an early warning of what might come in the Arctic. The US hasn't always done a great job of acting in its best interests when it comes to the long view, and then this lack of foresight has come back to bite Americans, whether it was the rise of al-Qaeda before 9/11 or the way that the Chinese have cornered markets in critical minerals that are key to electric vehicles and smartphones.

In the Arctic, the US and its allies have the chance to plant their flags in the receding ice in ways that may help to blunt the ambitions of the Russians and even the Chinese. We would be wise to heed this warning, early though it still may be.

If you’re interested in learning more about the topics explored in this episode, we recommend Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez and The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell. Both of those titles are available on Audible.

CREDITS:

IN THE ROOM WITH PETER BERGEN is an Audible Original.

Produced by Audible Studios and FRESH PRODUCE MEDIA

This episode was produced by Laura Tillman, with help from Holly DeMuth.

Our executive producer is Alison Craiglow.

Katie McMurran is our technical director.

Our staff also includes Alexandra Salomon, Erik German, Luke Cregan, Sandy Melara, and JP Swenson.

Theme music is by Joel Pickard.

Our Executive Producers for Fresh Produce Media are Colin Moore, Jason Ross and Joe Killian.

Our Head of Development is Julian Ambler.

Our Head of Production is Elena Bawiec.

Eliza Lambert is our Supervising Producer.