Will be the Arctic last redivision of the world theater?

In all the arguments about the possible redistribution or even peaceful economic development of the Arctic must be borne in mind that in this case, humanity is completely dependent on the climate, which has not yet run. The current active discussion of this problem started solely because of global warming due to a rapid melting of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean, where melting uneven (the fastest ice relieve the Russian sector of the Arctic, especially the Asian part). But no one really knows the causes of global warming (the extent to which it is a natural process in which - man-made), the more possible it is unknown depth and duration. Some climate scientists believe that the warming of the peak has passed. And with regard to the foreseeable future in the Arctic could happen anywhere from complete extinction of the ice cover in summer and winter to a significant reduction in the Little Ice Age. If warming to cooling, which can not be completely ruled out, discussed topic will be closed automatically, because the costs of any form of economic activity in the Arctic would be too high.

If we talk about the military use of the Arctic, it is divided into two different aspects. First -is the use of the territories and waters in the Arctic for the global confrontation, the second – is the armed struggle for the redistribution of property in the Arctic .

Factor of the global struggle

Military significance of the Arctic region since the Cold War determined, first, that it is through the polar regions are the trajectory of ICBMs and SLBMs from the USA to Russia and back, and secondly, the fact that only through the Barents and Norwegian Seas Russian Navy has the only open access to the Atlantic (the Russian Northern Fleet, in fact, is not so much "Arctic" as "Atlantic").

Recently, with the rapid development of high-precision weapons in the USA, there is another point related to the first two: the possibility of applying the USA (in conjunction with strategic and possibly carrier-based aircraft) massive non-nuclear preemptive strike by SLCM "Tomahawk" Russian's strategic nuclear forces on objects. Such an attack would destroy a significant part of the Russian ICBM, the PKK CH and bombers, and without a global environmental catastrophe. In such a scene-American strategic nuclear theory retain all its potential. If Russia still dare to retaliate remains its strategic nuclear forces, it can be defeated with even a limited missile defense. And in reflection of this shock can also take part with USA ships SAMs "Standard-SM3» and radar, to provide for their missiles. To accomplish both of these tasks, American ships have to strike it from the Arctic, because here is exposed through SLCM "Tomahawk" most of the Russian territory (and most of the objects SNF). In addition American ships with the "Aegis" are under the flight path of the remaining Russian ICBMs and SLBMs of a hundred-Ron USA. (because their trajectories pass through the Arctic.) This greatly simplifies the task of minimizing the value from the ABM course option and the ability to shoot forward, and not vdogon and SLBMs launched from PKK CH Northern Fleet, generally can shoot down at the boost stage. In addition, the USA can assume that if the Russian strategic nuclear forces will be significantly weakened by the preemptive strike, despite the fact that the USA strategic nuclear forces will retain their full potential, Russia did not dare to strike back [1, 2].

However, this scenario has a number of significant risks and limitations.

• 1)    preemptive strike must be unique, because if the first strike was not successful either brought limited success, opportunity, a second hit will not be, because Russia would automatically cause a full-scale nuclear attack on the United States. Therefore, the first and only strike must be engaged maximum potential Navy and The USA Air Force. However, the concentration cruisers "Ticonderoga" and destroyers of the "Orli Berk" USA Navy near Russian waters automatically destroy the surprise, which makes the whole event meaningless. If we only rely on the PLA, there problems with the number of SLCM.

• 2)    Application of the preemptive strike by SLCM "Tomahawk" and the solution includes defense in conflict with each other, as SLCM and SAM "Standard" are placed in the same cell Mk41 OHR cruisers and destroyers. Thus, the greater the SLCM, the smaller missiles, and vice versa.

• 3)    At this stage defeat ICBMs on a space station, their trajectories using SAM "standard" is not possible, can you modify them accordingly - is unclear.

• 4)    Strategic Missile Division, stationed in Siberia, are beyond the reach of SLCM "Tomahawk", even when shooting at him from the Arctic waters (or the need to increase the amount of fuel by reducing the weight of warheads that will not provide high security target lesion even if directed).

Accordingly, the implementation of such a scenario is possible only at the same time as several conditions.

There will be a complete degradation of the Strategic Missile Forces, the Air Force and Air Defense, the Navy and the space group of the Russian Federation to the rapid reduction of their operational capacity, which minimizes the number of targets for a preemptive strike and its ability to reflect and to retaliatory strike (both in the USA. and on the ships of the Navy USA. inflicting preemptive strike). In reality, in the past three years, this degradation stopped, there is even a slight increase of Russian military capabilities.

The USA will increase the potential impact Navy and Air Force, which is not evident in the conditions of the early significant budget constraints (in particular, it is the accelerated writeoff of seven cruisers "Ticonderoga", long out of service due to a fire PLA "Miami"). In addition, major efforts the USA military and naval forces in general in the first place will be taken in the APR. The forces of the Atlantic Fleet, which may be involved in the described impact will be reduced, making the scenario unworkable for purely quantitative parameters.

American SLCM and SAM will be very substantially modified, which can not be guaranteed, since it requires the solution of many major scientific and technological problems and significant research and development expenditures. Moreover, increasing the speed and range of missiles, is likely to require an increase in their size. However, their size, there are strict limits defined by the cell dimensions OHR Mk41 or mines on PLA.

Political relations between the USA and Russia will deteriorate to such an extent that the USA. government considers the risk of war with Russia acceptable. Currently, there is, rather, the opposite trend.

It should be emphasized that it is necessary to be performed all four conditions simultaneously, failing at least one hit will not be applied. Therefore the probability of such a scenario should be considered very close to zero, not only in the short term but in the longer term. Zero is the more likely a massive nuclear strike the pole from anyone, because no one is going to commit suicide mutual assured.

The struggle for the redistribution of the Arctic

Even in the case of continued global warming Arctic is still at least a very long time to be unsuitable for any mass residing population. In addition, none of the current Arctic countries no overpopulation problem, on the contrary, everywhere except in the USA, there is the problem of depopulation. Accordingly, the potential redistribution of the Arctic may be purely economic motives.

Thus, the most popular theoretical scenario of armed conflict in the Arctic is a struggle for the division of hydrocarbon deposits on the Arctic shelf. Because of the lack of oil or gas company will not agree to the implementation of such a project, if not dealt with the risks of a legal, political and especially military. That is, no one will "spur of the moment" to produce oil and gas in those areas of the shelf, which are controversial because such a project would be unprofitable known, besides, no insurance company will not cover it (or the price of insurance will be unacceptably high.) Accordingly, the scenario of the conflict can be considered completely illusory. Especially considering the fact that of all the existing oil and gas fields to date is not defined membership only 3%.

For similar reasons, illusory script conflict in the form of the naval clashes sides due to the unresolved problems of navigation in the Arctic, with the condition of its exemption of the ice for an extended period. Moreover, in 2010 commercial transit shipping on SMP has already begun. It became the pioneer gas carrier to deliver LNG cargoes from Murmansk to China. Its passage provided three icebreakers. Since then, the NSR was organized more than 30 transit flights (both domestic and international) in both directions. The annual turnover on the track reached 800 thousand tons, in the long term it may reach 30 million tons to any conflicts that did not lead.

In general, the experience of the war in Yugoslavia in 1999, and the incident with the capture of the Russian Airborne Troops Battalion airfield in Pristina, as well as the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008, even the United States, not to mention the European countries are not psychologically ready to very limited military conflict with Russia, if it occurs outside the territory of both Russia and NATO countries. There is no doubt that the same applies to the potential clash of fleets in the Arctic because of the unresolved issue of the status of water areas. The situation can change only if a very substantial military weakening of Russia even in comparison with the current situation.

Moreover, the military capabilities of the European countries bordering the Arctic, and therefore theoretically interested in the redistribution is reduced much faster than Russia, denying them any power to influence the situation. It should be noted that the complexity of the climatic conditions in the Arctic, leading to a sharp rise in the cost of military systems used for the war in the region. With the economic crisis, the construction and deployment of such systems in any significant numbers is not realistic. In general, it is possible that most of the European countries in the military has already passed or will soon pass the "point of no return" after which the restoration of the lost fighting ability is impossible for the economic reasons, since it requires too expensive. This can be seen today, if only because that NATO is not ready to launch a military operation against even covered the civil war Syria, though that by destroying the Turkish military aircraft, has created the perfect excuse for such an operation. However, Syria's military potential is too great to start against NATO risked her fighting. This shows that the scenario discuss the NATO aggression against Russia, which has several times more powerful than that of Syria, the conventional armed forces and also a huge nuclear arsenal, is possible only in the framework of the special propaganda, not the scientific discourse.

Chinese factor

Thus, in the short term given the current geopolitical configuration of any military action in the Arctic, even on a small scale is not possible. The situation may change if ice melting continues, with the world in general will increase scarcity of natural resources, which can not be met through the development of deposits in other parts of the world. In this case, input prices rise sharply, making the profitability of the project in their production in the Arctic.

This development is almost inevitable, if we continue the current (or even a little slower) growth of the Chinese economy. In this case, in a few decades it will not be enough resources of the Earth for the population. If China to 2031 income per capita will overtake the U.S., it will eat up two-thirds of the world grain yield, power consumption of oil will rise by 500% compared to 2006, resulting in a shortage of 800 million tons a year of world production, demand for paper doubled its production will surpass the world. [3] Writes in his work Davydov, "proved that she wasteful model upon which the modernization of China, can not only bring down its economy, but also deplete the world's stocks of resources. The fact that until recently was sufficient to meet the needs of the "golden billion", will be in extreme short supply, if the "club of consumers" rightfully join 1.3 billion China "[4, p. 35-36]. Chinese political scientist Jin Tsanchzhun asks rhetorically: "Since industrialization, Britain had a population of 10 million people, but has created an" empire summer solstice. " United States, with its 100 millionth population, created the myth of the sole super power. What will this mean for the industrialization of the world, which provides China with a population of 1.3 billion people? "[5, p. 23].

Understanding well, the Chinese government and Chinese companies have already shown considerable interest in the development of the Arctic, although geographically China in no way be considered as Arctic countries. Also, it is China that is most interested in the freedom of navigation through the Arctic, as it will dramatically reduce the route from the ports to the ports of Europe and the North America.

China's entry into the Arctic is possible either through Russia (in the event of the further economic and demographic penetration in its Asian part), or through Canada (which is already very high proportion of the population of the ethnic Chinese), or through Norway (now up to Svalbard is China's first Arctic station, in the same Chinese icebreaker based) or via Denmark (through development of natural resources by Chinese companies in Greenland). Perhaps a combination of all these options. In addition, China in the next 10-20 years can create their naval base on the Atlantic coast (eg, Venezuela, Cuba, Angola), from which it will receive access to the Naval Arctic.

There is no doubt that the growth on the one hand, the PLA's military power, on the other – is the resource, stiffness of the China's foreign policy will continue to grow. There will also be activated and the Chinese version of "soft power", that is, a total of buying assets and people (especially the political and economic elites) that are needed to China, as well as demographic penetration. Obviously, the efficiency of the use of "soft power" will rapidly increase as providing its military power of China.

It should be noted that the military capabilities of the European countries, as mentioned above, tend to decrease below the critical level at which there is a complete loss of combat power. The expected budget cuts will inevitably reduce USA military capabilities, especially as the physical aging American military equipment, especially aircraft. The promised transfer efforts in the Asia Pacific can only partially compensate for the overall reduction in capacity. Prospects for military construction in Russia is extremely ambiguous and little expected because of the economic and political issues, besides Russia is highly vulnerable to the impact of China's "soft power." As for the PLA's military capabilities, they are growing rapidly, and once in all aspects and components [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 , 22, 23, 24, 25]. This leads to a radical change in the balance of forces in the world. When you save these trends over the next 10-20 years, China will be able to project power to almost any point on the Earth (especially due to the massive penetration of Africa, which is a base of China), which will directly affect, in particular, the situation in the Arctic.

In the interest of the Arctic resources are the three Asian countries, which, in theory, have the sufficient economic, demographic and military capabilities to engage in the fight for the re- gion. This is India, South Korea and Japan. But they are far behind China and the size of the Armed Forces, and in the availability of the sphere of the influence abroad, providing power projection to distant regions. However, one can imagine that the United States and / or Russia can exploit the potential of these countries, as opposed to Chinese expansion in exchange for giving them the right to have access to Arctic resources in their economic zones of USA in this regard may be eligible for an alliance with all these three Asian countries, Russia - an alliance with India, and possibly in Korea.

Accordingly, in the long term it is possible military confrontation in the Arctic in the USA -China - Russia. Participation of other countries and coalitions possible, but it will certainly be a purely auxiliary. Describe specific scenarios, this opposition is not possible, because they are affected by too many different factors. Exactly one can only say that if the Arctic will become the last great theater in the division of the world, one of the participants in the war will be China.