Investor's Business Daily, August 1st, 2007
Imperialism: Russia's tinhorn "conquest" of the North Pole Monday was a little comic, except for what it says about a vainglorious regime seeking to grab more energy resources to use coercively. It should be rebuffed.
If there was ever an unnecessary voyage to be made, it was probably Russia's dispatch of a naval submarine armada to the frigid waters of the far north on Thursday to symbolically drop a capsule with a Russian flag under the North Pole.
Mimicking the language of the 1969 U.S. lunar landing, Russia would have the world believe its feat was mainly a technical achievement, like climbing Mount Everest or landing on the moon, with its goal the peaceful advancement of "scientific research."
But that fools no one. In its polar foray, the only "science" Russia has in mind is amassing and extracting its oil and natural gas deposits, as if it were starved of such resources by occupying the largest, emptiest land mass on the globe.
The absurdity of Russia's "conquest" was that it occurred on territory that has already been apportioned by international treaty among Arctic nations like Norway, Denmark, Canada and the U.S.
Russia says it is trying to change the treaty's terms by claiming the Lomonosov ridge under the water as part of a Russian range, and therefore rightfully Russia's to claim.
But unlike dispassionate science, there's little doubt that Russia will "discover" what it already hankers for. Nor does this have anything to do with abstract "rights." Russia's real aim is to exert state control over ever greater natural resources in a bid to strengthen its monopoly. Through that, it can exert leverage on global buyers.
Already, the government of Vladimir Putin has thrown its weight around internally by expropriating Russia's private oil company Yukos and by squeezing Russia's foreign energy investors -- in both cases, to strengthen its growing energy monopoly.
That's why Russia's dropping of the flag abroad was less "conquest" than an outright challenge to the West.
Already there are counter-responses to Russia, including an Arctic countermission by Denmark and a $7 billion effort by Canada to beef up its Arctic fleet for patrols. The U.S. Congress is mulling $73 million in new spending on polar icebreakers and new ships, too. Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden are edging toward joining NATO.
This resource grab echoes the exploits of 19th and early 20th century imperial empires -- including czarist Russia -- to go forth in the world and seize. But the world's a much more crowded place today, and such adventures are likely to lead to major strife.
Russia's monopoly seeks not to discover, develop and share, but to keep commodities out of the hands of others. Its quest for the North Pole signals a restless power, disappointed at its loss of empire and furious at its failure to regain it. It seeks to throw its weight around.
It's bad news because Russia isn't a responsible seller of oil or gas. It's a highly capricious political operator. Its machinations make even a country like Saudi Arabia, which manipulates oil prices through OPEC production quotas, seem moderate.
It regularly uses access to oil as a weapon against those who cross it. It offers preferential gas rates to those who support it, and cuts off those who don't. This creates the potential for market chaos.
Just this week, Russia's state oil monopoly, Gazprom, cut off 45% of natural gas shipments to Belarus, claiming a $456 million unpaid bill that's just one mere week overdue, hardly a crisis for a state enterprise.
But the cutoff didn't affect just Belarus -- it affected every country in Europe that pays its bills for Russian gas exports on time, raising serious questions about Russia's reliability as a supplier.
Given that Belarus is a petty tyranny with close ties to Moscow, there's good reason to think this gas cutoff was more a warning to Europe to play ball with Russia on missile defense and the rise of a nuclear Iran, than unpaid bills.
That underscores to the West how vital it is to keep Russia's meddling hands off the Arctic region's resources in the same way it must check Russia's bullying of states in its former empire. Russia seeks conquest and if it can no longer satisfy itself by absorbing its neighboring states, it will do so by acquiring more oil resources.
Russia's voyage to the North Pole ought to be a warning of how far it will go to intimidate the nations that are its neighbors -- and in the case of the North Pole, that includes us.
