Arctic I.

This is coolbert:

Here from last Thursday, this headline, courtesy of NewsMax:

"Russia Insists No Plans to Militarize Arctic" - - Thursday, April 30, 2009

"Speaking at an Arctic Council meeting in Norway, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country had no plans to ramp up its military presence in the Arctic"

“'We are not planning to increase our armed forces presence in the Arctic'”

"Lavrov’s statement, however, flies in the face of a document disclosed in March that a new national security strategy featured plans to create army units in Russia’s Arctic region to “guarantee military security in different military-political situations,”

This is becoming a hot button topic for discussion. The militarization of the Arctic? Military forces to be deployed in the region. Nations that border the "top of the world", that frozen chuck of ice Arctic Ocean, are poised for a land grab [mostly land under the ocean [is that an oxymoron?]] of an almost imperialistic nature, something you might have seen over a hundred years ago when "European" powers extended their dominion to all parts of the globe.

A desire on the part of many nations that covet potential oil, natural gas, mineral wealth that ONLY PERHAPS is present at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

An opportunistic "land grab" ONLY made possible by global warming and a diminution of the Arctic ice cap, most markedly so now in the summer. Portions of the Arctic Ocean, hitherto covered with ice year-round, are now ice-free during the summer. Making travel and exploration possible on a scale before not feasible!

"No Plans to Militarize Arctic"!

What is being suggested here? That the Arctic is not now, or has not been, in the past, militarized?

Perhaps the average citizen is not aware that for many decades, THE ARCTIC REGION OF THE PLANET EARTH HAS BEEN HEAVILY MILITARIZED!! AND IN A VARIETY OF WAYS? Continues to be militarized, albeit with a much reduced presence from the days of the Cold War!

Militarization has for some time been a fact of life in the arctic, so much so, that if a high-intensity conflict had actually occurred between the old Soviet Union and the United States, a preponderance of the nuclear exchange that MIGHT have resulted from such a war would have been primarily confined to the far north! The ARCTIC!

[a high-intensity conflict is defined, usually so, as two or more combatants using ALL the weapons at their disposal. For the Soviets and American to have fought in a high-intensity manner would have meant the full usage of nuclear/biological/chemical weaponry.]

Brrrrrr!

More to follow!

coolbert.