US Coast Guard admiral wants new icebreakers to have missiles

Admiral Paul Zukunft, Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard, told a U.S. House sub-committee that the U.S. may need icebreakers with surface-to-air missiles to defend U.S. sovereign resources from Russia and China.

Zukunft told U.S. legislators: “I have to look differently at what an icebreaker does. We need to reserve space, weight and power if we need to strap on an (anti-ship cruise) missile package on it." Some analysts think that the Arctic challenge from Moscow and Beijing are being overblown especially from China. However, the U.S. has ignored the strategic and legal implications of climate change and has been slow to use military branches to protect its Arctic assets. However, it should be noted that countries such as Russia and even Canada have longer Arctic coastlines than the U.S. arctic coast of Alaska. In 2013, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the Arctic probably contains about 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and an even greater percent of its natural gas. Just recently the Russian oil giant Rosneft announced that it had discovered a large oil deposit off the Russian arctic shelf.

The U.S. Coast Guard has just two functional icebreakers that can be used for Arctic service. One of them is 40 years old and ready to be scrapped. However, China is hardly a huge competitor as it has at present only one civilian icebreaker the Snow Dragon built in Ukraine. It is building one more that it hopes will begin service by 2019. The countries that have many icebreakers do so because they have extensive Arctic coastlines. Russia has 40 icebreakers and is building 11 more. As Zukunft points out two of them will be corvettes that will carry cruise missiles and should be ready by 2020. Canada is not mentioned in any of the articles about the arming of U.S. ice breakers that I read but it has 15 icebreakers with two heavy icebreakers, four medium icebreakers, nine multi-purpose vessels and two hovercraft. However, as with Russia, we have a huge arctic coastline.

Rockford Weitz, a noted Arctic specialist and a director of the Maritime Studies Program at Fletcher School of Tufts University, said that U.S. navy strength in the area can handle threats from rival nations in the region. Weitz said: "U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers don’t need anti-ship cruise missile capabilities at this stage. And adding such capabilities could make fulfilling the core mission set of U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers more challenging.” Weitz notes that the U.S. Coast Guard has historically enjoyed constructive relationships with the coast guards of other countries including that of Russia partly because the mission of the U.S. Coast Guard has been search and rescue, environmental protection, and fisheries regulation. The U.S. has also a powerful submarine presence in the arctic. Weitz notes that the subs carry anti-ship cruise missiles to counter any Russian threat. Weitz claims that Chinese icebreakers are focused on scientific exploration in the arctic. There is no indication at present that they have any intention of equipping their icebreakers with advanced weaponry.

China is of course interested in oil and gas in the Arctic and already the Chinese state oil company CNOOC has agreements with Iceland's Eykon Energy and the Norwegian company Petoro. There are no published reports of Chinese mobile oil rigs drilling for oil on the U.S. arctic shelf as Zukunft claims could happen. If it were to happen it would be perfectly legal and the U.S. has only itself to blame for this. The U.S. has not recognized the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) a move that would allow the US to extend its Exclusive Economic Zone to its Arctic continental shelf. See this article on U.S. not ratifying the treaty.

Arming U.S. icebreakers with missiles might not only make them less efficient at carrying out their basic purpose of breaking ice but might increase tensions in the arctic and strain relations with other nations unnecessarily. Yet the desire to put America First and ensure Arctic resources are developed for the interest of U.S. companies will no doubt have considerable resonance among U.S. politicians and might persuade them that missiles on icebreakers would be a good idea to ensure the protection of U.S. interests. Expert advice to the contrary, may be ignored.

Defeat of the Islamic State in Syria will not be end of conflict

While the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces are confronting the Islamic State in eastern Syria and beginning to enter the strategic city of Raqqa, the Syrian Army has been taking control of positions in their rear further west.

Around the end of May , the Syrian Army captured almost 100 square kilometers in the desert sparsely populated Badia area — a huge region that stretches to the southern border of Syria with Jordan and Iraq. Assad forces took over the country's largest phosphate mine and the strategic highway from the ancient city of Palmyra to Damascus. Both Assad forces and rebels, some supported by the U.S., are racing to gain control of territory as the Islamic State is forced to retreat.

The U.S. has insisted on focusing on the defeat of the Islamic State. However, the U.S. is now making it clear that it will also defend the rebels it supports from Assad attacks. At the time of the Assad advance, Al-Baraa Fares, a spokesperson for Free Syrian Army (FSA) group Mitaghawir al-Thawra (MAT), said: “The coalition is a partner of ours in the war against Daesh [the Islamic State], but when it comes to fighting the regime and its foreign militias, [the coalition] is not our partner. The role of the international coalition is to train members of MAT and to provide logistical support, weapons, ammunition and all that is needed to eliminate the terrorist Daesh." However. the U.S. has now made it clear that it will defend rebels that it supports from attacks by Assad forces.

This appears to be a new and dangerous emphasis that will inevitably give rise to new clashes and more involvement by the U.S. in the Syria war. The Assad regime is not likely to give up attacking rebels who are enemies of the Assad regime and will attack them when they get a chance. The U.S. has already shot down an Assad jet because it was said to be dropping bombs close to rebels supported by the U.S. The Assad regime said that it was on a mission against the Islamic State. Russians claim that the hotline was not used to talk to them before the plane was downed. As a result of the incident, Russia has declared that coalition planes flying west of the Euphrates will be considered targets, a clear escalation of tensions between Russia and the U.S.-led coalition.

The U.S. has a base in the Badia numbering about 100 special forces based in a small military outpost near the Tanf border crossing between Syria and Iraq. The base trains fighters of vetted forces to fight against the Islamic State. However the Free Syrian Army sees things differently and adopted a campaign titled "Badia Volcano" a campaign to "cleanse the Badia of Iranian and foreign militia". These militias are of course Assad allies. No doubt the groups involved in the campaign will demand U.S. support as they battle against pro-Assad Hezbollah and Iranian forces. The Iranians have upped their involvement in Syria by launching missile attacks on the eastern Syrian city of Deir rl-Zour. It was said to be in retaliation for an earlier attack in Iran on the parliament claimed by the Islamic State that killed at least 18 people. Within the last 12 days the U.S. has shot down two Iranian drones near the outpost of al-Tanf.

The U.S. maintains a defensive area around that Tanf base with a radius of 55km within which it will not permit the regime or its allied forces to enter. Earlier in the month, coalition warplanes attacked a group of tanks. armored vehicles and others who were advancing towards the outpost. In other words, the U.S.-led coalition has defined a zone that it occupies as off limits to the country to which it belongs. It can hardly expect to avoid further clashes. Yet a CENTCOM spokesperson said: “The continued armed and hostile presence of forces inside the de-confliction zone is unacceptable and threatening to Coalition forces. Coalition forces are prepared to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate the de-confliction zone.” The regime may be trying to re-establish trade links between Iraq and parts of Syria or even for troops and supplies to come from Iran.

The increased conflict appears to be confined to areas where regime forces, rebels and the Islamic State are in close contact. It may be that as the Islamic State loses more and more territories conflict could arise between forces loyal to Assad and the Syrian Democratic Forces supported by the U.S. In some areas of the country, there is rebuilding and cessation of hostilities as the enclosed video shows.