Need muscle to flex it

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2009 (5877 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went on vacation recently and pictures of him swimming vigorously and riding a horse bareback– he was bareback, not the horse — were flashed around the world.

To a Canadian, it was kind of a comical sight, like Stockwell Day arriving at a press conference on a personal watercraft in a spandex suit. But Russians loved the spectacle of Mr. Putin flexing his muscles.

Mr. Putin has also been publicly flexing Russia’s muscles recently, and the Russians appear to love that, too. A few weeks ago, two Russian nuclear submarines broke through the ice and surfaced in the high Arctic to reinforce Moscow’s claim to the North Pole. Russian bombers have tested the borders of Canada’s Arctic airspace, although they have not crossed it yet.

Previously, a Russian submarine had planted the Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole and Moscow has announced that this summer it plans a military exercise that will see Russian paratroopers land at the Pole.

This week the Canadian military dispatched a surveillance aircraft to monitor the movements of two Russian submarines off the East Coast of Canada. The subs had previously sailed up the American East Coast. It marks the first such military adventure by Moscow since the end of the Cold War and, although they have not moved into American or Canadian territorial waters, they are close to the line and another sign of Russia’s new and aggressive assertiveness on the international scene.

There is speculation in North American media that the subs have strayed so far from home because they are for sale as Russia updates its fleet and Moscow wants to demonstrate to the world they are still serviceable and seaworthy.

And that may be the case. But that could be proven by sending them anywhere in the world, and Russian newspapers tell a different story. They say that the submarines have failed in their mission because they were detected — the purpose of submarines, after all, is subterfuge — and that indicates an entirely different motive.

In any case, to dispatch them to the coast of North America in a tactic reminiscent of the Cold War is cocking a snook at the United States and a deliberate provocation of Canada when taken in the context of other Russian activities that threaten this country’s claim to Arctic sovereignty.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay has said this is all part of “Russia flexing its muscles” on the international scene, but it is also part of a pattern of Mr. Putin pushing to see how far he can go in furthering Russia’s claims to Canadian waters in the Arctic.

Under the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada has become more aggressive in asserting Canada’s sovereignty. Whether it is timely or simply ironic, the Canadian navy is set to conduct anti-submarine exercises in the Arctic this month, but decades of neglect of both the military and the Arctic have enfeebled both Canada’s claims and the means to enforce them. Russia is not the only challenger. The United States regards the Northwest Passage as an international waterway rather a Canadian sovereign route, and even Denmark lays claim not just to Hans Island — a useless lump of rock in the Arctic archipelago — but to some of our Arctic seabed as well.

The government has promised to beef up the Canadian presence in the Arctic, but promises don’t stop submarines, and this country still has very little muscle to flex in its northern territories.