The Northeast Passage - the next Suez Crisis?

Two German cargo ships navigate the Northeast Passage

Climate change could open up the Northeast Passage and link European consumers to booming Asian markets. It could also give Russia the means to blackmail the West

LAST UPDATED 4:35 PM, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

If climate change can have a silver lining, then some optimists might argue that it probably lies in the Northeast Passage. Last week two German cargo ships sailed part of its course, making their way along Russia's Arctic coast from South Korea to Siberia, passing through the Bering Strait, with an ease that would have been unthinkable before local sea ice began to feel the heat of global warming.

Already speculation is rife that this heralds the advent of a major new shipping route, running through waters that are expected to eventually become ice-free for much of the year round. This route, it is said, will link Europe with booming Asian markets, slashing distances and journey times through the Suez and Panama Canals by as much as a third. Shippers could then pass their savings onto customers, who would benefit from lower prices in the high street.

Russia could block ships that belong to states that don’t toe the Moscow lineThe political price of an active Northeast Passage, however, may not be quite so attractive. For what no one has noticed is that it would effectively become a maritime, commercial pipeline - and the story of how the Kremlin views and uses its pipelines elsewhere is by now a highly familiar one.

Moscow would benefit from this commercial pipeline in the Arctic Ocean in two distinct ways. On the one hand it could potentially charge exorbitant transit revenues - thinly disguised as 'icebreaker fees', even when such escort is unnecessary - on ships that move through what it regards as its own 'national waters'. Earlier this year, Russia was levying an extortionate $16 fee on every ton of oil cargo, compared with the meagre $1 that Finland charged Baltic shipping.

But more importantly, the Russians could potentially use the Passage as a political bargaining chip, threatening to block or impede the movement of ships that belong to states that don't toe the Moscow line. Russia has never shied from using trade sanctions as a political tool - imposing wine sanctions on Georgia and Moldova in 2006, and banning Polish meat imports in 2007 - or from manipulating the flow of natural gas to Ukraine and Moldova. And the advent of a Northeast Passage, or even the very prospect, would add considerable political firepower to the Kremlin's armoury.

Together with a rise in oil and gas prices, which is widely anticipated over the next few years, this could be a recipe for a politically more muscular Russia. For the Kremlin would be quick to recognise the political leverage the Passage offers, and use it to full effect.

An interesting comparison is with the Suez Canal in the days of Egyptian premier, Gamal Nasser. From the moment he became president, he not only reaped vast transit fees from the Suez Canal but also had the power to block shipping just as, years later, he closed off the Straits of Tiran to Israeli vessels. So when he nationalised the Suez Canal Company in July 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden was alarmed that Nasser had his "finger on our windpipe".

Of course, future Russian leaders won't have nearly so much leverage: in contrast to Suez, the Middle East's oil will never reach Western markets via the Northeast Passage. The real comparison is that Moscow's control over this new commercial pipeline could change its spirit, emboldening it to stand up to its critics and to bully neighbours in the same way that Nasser was emboldened to both nationalise the Suez Canal Company and to rally Arabs with a stridently nationalist rhetoric that chilled the leaders of Britain, France and Israel and proved so dangerously destabilising.

It is in this sense that, far from representing a silver lining to climate change, the advent of a Northeast Passage could become the next Suez.

Comments

Hide comments

A new opportunity for Russia to blackmail Europe? Even before the First Post get their article actually posted (!) it's clear what kind of crapola is being mooted here. So let's discuss some FACTS, shall we? 1) Russia didn't "blackmail" Ukraine on energy. It turned off the supply because the bills hadn't been paid for a YEAR. Yet mysteriously Ukraine's domestic and business energy consumers had been paying their bills to Ukrainian suppliers. So where had that money gone? And why can't the neocon scum explain where that money went???? 2) If I fill up my car, and then say "No, I won't pay!" is that "blackmail"??? Because that's the intellectual level of claiming Russia is an "energy blackmailer". Why is the First Post so clearly in the pockets of neocon knuckledraggers like Denis McShane, David Minibrain, Oliver Kamm and their loathsome yankee bootlicking ilk????

Posted by Neil McGowan at 10:01am on September 24, 2009

Free trade is a win-win situation. Either both sides benefit, or no deal occurs. Either we go on getting our goods via the current routes, which we can afford now, or we get them a bit cheaper via the Ruskie-controlled waterways of the NW passage (which will probably be closed in winter anyway).

Posted by michael jose at 11:03am on September 24, 2009

NeilMc - apart from not paying the bill, you omitted to mention that they'd been getting it at something less than 1/3 of the "free market" price for years. Nothing to do with being egged on by their (then) recent best friend, Shrub trying to complete the ring of client states around the Russian border.

Posted by allan kessing at 11:26am on September 24, 2009

How did Russia react when Obama announced he would not place US missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic? Arrogantly flaunt their power and their 'victory' or diplomatically announce that they were pleased by the decision and immediately announce that they would suspend deployment of their own missile batteries? "All we are saying, is give peace a chance".

Posted by Manny Goldstein at 11:54am on September 24, 2009

The North East passage has been navigable for years. Since long before this climate change hogwash was thought up. No, the Russians are not going to blackmail anybody. There are just as viable alternative routes available.

Posted by Stop Common Purpose at 12:38pm on September 24, 2009

Sorry but the second to last paragraph says it all. When in doubt, attack nationalism. It is partly the bizarre marriage of globalism and communism that has destroyed our economy and the communist/globalist crackpots advocate even more of the same as the solution. Like spend your way out of debt. I'm glad Russia stands up to the bullies of the new EUSSR and the imperial US. Russia is right to fear the increasingly bellicose United States and its irresponsibly idiotic poodle Britain (I refer to our cowardly leaders and not the people). The US as a super power is a wounded animal in its death throes and must undergo radical change and reinvent itself with less global ambition, but it seems to be doing its best to whip up international hatred of Iran to convince itself it still packs clout, based nevertheless on its desire to control the supply of oil in the region. The US will not remain a superpower for many years longer and the EUSSR is loathed throughout its over-expanded empire before it has even been consolidated by foul and un-democratic means as an exclusive political bully boy's club for national leaders who couldn't care less about their own nations. Anyway, this demonisation of nationalism and the usual ridiculous accusations that accompany it (racism, Nazi-ism, fascism, sexism, homophobia etc) is the predictable and typical knee jerk reaction of marxists who advocate globalism for their own totalitarian purposes. Nationalism would afford us the much needed protection we need from globalism and the mass movement of cheap labour forces demanded by the greedy capitalist corporations who couldn't care less what social damage they cause and leave trailing in their fickle market oriented wake.

Posted by Jerome Peter at 3:41pm on September 24, 2009