Rick Rozoff: NATO Rehearses For War In The Arctic

To the world's military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open a treasure trove of resources and long-dreamed-of sea-lanes. Rick Rozoff scrutinizes the feverish military activity taking place in the High North, under the official label of a joint Norwegian-NATO-Partnership for Peace endeavor, including preparedness drills against terrorist threats, mass demonstrations, and spies coming in from the cold! The largest military exercise in the High North, inside and immediately outside the Arctic Circle, since the end of the Cold War, and perhaps even before, was completed in northern Norway. Except for the crash of a Norwegian military transport plane in Sweden, during its course, the world would have been unaware of it. Cold Response 2012 was conducted from March 12-21 primarily in Norway but also in Sweden, with the participation of 16,300 troops from fifteen nations as part of full spectrum "air, sea, infantry and special forces" maneuvers against the backdrop of the past three years' new scramble for the Arctic. The term High North is a translation of the Norwegian designation "nordomradene", which was adopted by NATO in January of 2009 for its two-day Seminar on Security Prospects in the High North in Reykjavik, Iceland attended by the bloc's secretary general, chairman of its Military Committee and two top military commanders, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. Four of the five Arctic claimants "the United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark" are members of NATO. The other, Russia, is not.