Border Strife Heating Up Arctic

And it's not just increased shipping traffic Brooks is worried about. This summer, Russia planted a flag on the sea floor near the North Pole, calling the area sovereign territory and staking a claim to turf that had once been locked under year-round polar ice. Brooks added that Canada has increased its fleet of ships with ice-hardened hulls and intends to claim the Northwest Passage - which is increasingly ice-free - as its territorial waters. That claim is counter to the United States' view that the Passage is international seaspace. "The challenge at the moment is we don't know what the boundaries are. We don't know what the borders are between the United States and Canada and Russia," Brooks said, adding he hopes an international compact can be concluded to fix those borders so things don't get nasty. Next summer, Brooks will send a team of Coasties to man a remote outpost on the northern tip of Alaska to monitor shipping traffic and determine what the best level of resources the U.S. will need to protect sea lanes and rescue ship wrecked passengers and crew. "What we're doing now is we are going about in a methodical way determining what is actually happening in the Arctic ... how much work do I need to prepare to do or not do in the Arctic to meet missions into the next decade," Brooks explained. "This will allow us to figure out how much work is actually there and how much infrastructure we will need to do the work that is required in that part of the world." He's looking at erecting the recon outpost at Nome, Barrow or Prudhoe Bay - some of the most remote civilian outposts in the Arctic. more: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,156722,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

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