Prisoners of Geography

by Tim Marshall

  Brazil is included in the BRICS – a group of major countries said to be on the rise both economically and politically, but, while each one may be rising individually, the concept is more fashion than reality. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are not a political or geographical grouping in a meaningful way and have very little in common with each other. If the letters had not spelt what sounds like a word then the BRICS theory would not have caught on. The BRICS hold an annual conference and Brazil does sometimes liaise with India and South Africa on international issues in a sort of vague echo of the Cold War Non-Aligned Movement, but it does not join Russia and China in taking a sometimes hostile stance towards the USA.

  The North and South American giants did fall out in 2013 over an issue which still rankles in Brazil. The news that the US National Security Agency had spied on the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, led her to cancel a state visit to Washington. That an apology was not forthcoming from the Obama administration was testament to the fact that the Americans are irritated that China has supplanted them as Brazil’s main trading partner. Brazil’s subsequent decision to buy Swedish fighter jets for its air force rather than ones from Boeing is thought to have been informed by the row. However, the state-to-state relationship has partially recovered, albeit not at presidential level. Confrontation is not Brazil’s style, unlike Venezuela under the late President Chavez. The Brazilians know the world thinks they are a coming power, but they also know that their power will never match that of the Americans.

  Neither will that of Argentina; however, in some ways it is better placed to become a First World country than is Brazil. It lacks the size and population to become the primary regional power in Latin America, which looks to be Brazil’s destiny, but it has the quality of land to create a standard of living comparable to that of the European countries. That does not mean it will achieve this potential – simply that, if Argentina gets the economics right, its geography will enable it to become the power it has never been.

  The foundations for this potential were laid in the nineteenth century with military victories over Brazil and Paraguay that resulted in control of the flat agricultural regions of the Rio de la Plata, the navigable river system, and therefore the commerce which flows down it towards Buenos Aires and its port. This is among the most valuable pieces of real estate on the whole continent. It immediately gave Argentina an economic and strategic advantage over Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – one it holds to this day.

  However, Argentina has not always used its advantages to the full. A hundred years ago it was among the ten richest countries in the world – ahead of France and Italy. But a failure to diversify, a stratified and unfair society, a poor education system, a succession of coups d’état and the wildly differing economic policies in the democratic period of the last thirty years have seen a sharp decline in Argentina’s status.

  The Brazilians have a joke about their snobbish neighbours, as they see them: ‘Only people this sophisticated could make a mess this big.’ Argentina needs to get it right, and a dead cow may help it.

  The Dead Cow, or Vaca Muerta, is a shale formation which, combined with the country’s other shale areas, could provide Argentina’s energy needs for the next 150 years with excess to export. It is situated halfway down Argentina, in Patagonia, and abuts the western border with Chile. It is the size of Belgium – which might be relatively small for a country, but is large for a shale formation. So far, so good, unless you are against shale-produced energy – but there is a catch. To get the gas and oil out of the shale will require massive foreign investment, and Argentina is not considered a foreign investment-friendly country.

  There’s more oil and gas further south – in fact, so far south it’s offshore in and around islands which are British and have been since 1833. And therein lies a problem, and a news story which never goes away.

  What Britain calls the Falkland Islands are known as Las Malvinas by Argentina, and woe befall any Argentine who uses the ‘F’ word. It is an offence in Argentina to produce a map which describes the islands as anything other than the ‘Islas Malvinas’ and all primary school children are taught to draw the outlines of the two main islands, west and east. To regain the ‘Lost Little Sisters’ is a national cause for successive generations of Argentines and one which most of their Latin neighbours support.

  In April 1982 the British let their guard down and the Argentinian military dictatorship under General Galtieri ordered an invasion of the islands – which was considered a huge success until the British task force arrived eight weeks later and made short work of the Argentinian army and reclaimed the territory. This in turn led to the fall of the dictatorship.

  If the Argentine invasion had happened in the present decade Britain would not have been in a position to retake the islands, as it currently has no functioning aircraft carriers – a situation that will be remedied by 2020, at which time Argentina’s window of opportunity closes. However, despite the lure of oil and gas, an Argentinian invasion of the Falklands is unlikely for two reasons.

  Firstly, Argentina is now a democracy and knows that the vast majority of Falkland Islanders wish to remain under British control; secondly, the British, once bitten, are twice shy. They may temporarily lack an aircraft carrier to sail the 8,000 miles down to the South Atlantic, but they do now have several hundred combat troops on the islands, along with advanced radar systems, ground-to-air missiles, four Eurofighter jets and probably a nuclear attack submarine lurking nearby most of the time. The British intend to prevent the Argentinians from even thinking they could get onto the beaches, let alone take the islands.

  The Argentine air force uses planes which are decades behind the Eurofighter, and British diplomacy has ensured that an attempt by Argentina to buy up-to-date models from Spain was called off. Buying from the USA is a non-starter due to the Special Relationship between the UK and USA, which is indeed, at times, special; so the chances of Argentina being in a position to mount another attack before 2020 are slim.

  However, that will not calm the diplomatic war, and Argentina has sharpened its weapons on that front. Buenos Aires has warned that any oil firm which drills in the Falklands/Malvinas cannot bid for a licence to exploit the shale oil and gas in Patagonia’s Vaca Muerta field. It has even passed a law threatening fines or imprisonment for individuals who explore the Falklands’ continental shelf without its permission. This has put many big oil companies off, but not, of course, the British. However, whoever probes the potential wealth beneath the South Atlantic waters will be operating in one of the most challenging environments in the business. Its gets somewhat cold and windy down there, and the seas are rough.

  We have travelled as far south as you can go before you arrive at the frozen wastelands of the Antarctic. While plenty of countries would like to exert control there, a combination of the extremely challenging environment, the Antarctic Treaty and lack of obtainable and valuable resources, together largely prevent overt competition, at least for the present. The same cannot be said of its northern counterpart. Heading straight up from Antarctica to the northernmost part of the globe, you reach a place destined to be a diplomatic battleground in the twenty-first century as countries great and small strive to reach pole position there: the Arctic.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE ARCTIC

  ‘There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.’

  Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Arctic in Fact and Fable

  WHEN THE ICEMEN COME, THEY WILL COME IN FORCE. Who has the force? The Russians. No one else has such a heavy presence in the region or is as well prepared to tackle the severity of the conditions. All the other nations are lagging behind and, in the case of the USA, do not appear to be even trying to catch up: America is an Arctic nation without an Arctic strategy in a region that is heating up.

  The effects of global warming are now showing more than ever in the Arctic: the ice is melting, a
llowing easier access to the region, coinciding with the discovery of energy deposits and the development of technology to get at them – all of which has focused the Arctic nations’ attention on the potential gains and losses to be made in the world’s most difficult environment. Many of the countries in the region have competing claims which they haven’t bothered to press – until now. But there is a lot to claim, and a lot to argue about.

  The word ‘arctic’ comes from the Greek artikos, which means ‘near the bear’, and is a reference to the Ursa Major constellation whose last two stars point towards the North Star.

  The Arctic Ocean is 5.4 million square miles; this might make it the world’s smallest ocean but it is still almost as big as Russia, and one and a half times the size of the USA. The continental shelves on its ocean bed occupy more space proportionally than any other ocean, which is one of the reasons why it can be hard to agree on areas of sovereignty.

  The Arctic region includes land in parts of Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the USA (Alaska). It is a land of extremes: for brief periods in the summer the temperature can reach 26 degrees Celsius in some places, but for long periods in winter it plunges to below minus 45. There are expanses of rock scoured by the freezing winds, spectacular fjords, polar deserts and even rivers. It is place of great hostility and great beauty that has captivated people for millennia.

  The first recorded expedition was in 330 BCE by a Greek mariner called Pytheas of Massilia, who found a strange land called ‘Thule’. Back home in the Mediterranean, few believed his startling tales of pure white landscapes, frozen seas and strange creatures including great white bears; but Pytheas was just the first of many people over the centuries to record the wonder of the Arctic and to succumb to the emotions it evokes.

  Many also succumbed to its deprivations, especially those voyaging to the edge of the known world in search of what doubters said was the ‘mythical’ Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. One example is Henry Hudson. He may have the second-largest bay in the world named after him, but back in 1607 he probably would have preferred to live into old age rather than be cast adrift and almost certainly sent to his death by a mutinous crew sick of his voyages of discovery.

  As for the first person to reach the ‘North Pole’, well, that’s a tricky one given that, even though there is a fixed point on the globe denoting its position, below it the ice you are standing on is moving, and without GPS equipment it is hard to tell exactly where you are. Sir Edward Parry, minus a GPS, tried in 1827, but the ice was moving south faster than he could move north and he ended up going backwards; but he did at least survive.

  Captain Sir John Franklin had less luck when he attempted to cross the last non-navigated section of the Northwest Passage in 1845. His two ships became stuck in the ice near King William Island in the Canadian archipelago. All 129 members of the expedition perished, some on board the ships, others after they abandoned the vessels and began walking south. Several expeditions were sent to search for survivors but they found only a handful of skeletons, and heard stories from Inuit hunters about dozens of white men who had died walking through the frozen landscape. The ships had vanished completely, but in 2014 technology caught up with geography and a Canadian search team using sonar located one of the vessels, HMS Erebus, on the seabed of the Northwest Passage and brought up the ship’s bell.

  The fate of Franklin’s expedition did not deter many more adventurers from trying to find their way through the archipelago, but it wasn’t until 1905 that the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen charted his way across in a smaller ship with just five other crew. He passed King William Island, went through the Bering Strait and into the Pacific. He knew he’d made it when he spotted a whaling ship from San Francisco coming from the other direction. In his diary he confessed his emotions got the better of him, an occurrence perhaps almost as rare as his great achievement: ‘The Northwest Passage was done. My boyhood dream – at that moment it was accomplished. A strange feeling welled up in my throat; I was somewhat over-strained and worn – it was weakness in me – but I felt tears in my eyes.’

  Twenty years later he decided he wanted to be the first man to fly over the North Pole which, although easier than walking across it, is no mean feat. Along with his Italian pilot Umberto Nobile and fourteen crew he flew a semi-rigid airship over the ice and dropped Norwegian, Italian and American flags from a height of 300 feet. A heroic effort this may have been, but in the twenty-first century it was not seen as one giving much legal basis to any claims of ownership of the region by those three countries.

  That also applies to the impressive effort of Shinji Kazama of Japan, who in 1987 became the first person to reach the North Pole on a motorbike. Mr Kazama was so intrepid as not to have relied on a shrinking polar ice cap, and is the sort of man who would have ridden through a blizzard in order to get into the history books, but there is no doubt that there is now less ice to cross.

  That the ice is receding is not in question – satellite imaging over the past decade clearly shows that the ice has shrunk – only the cause is in doubt. Most scientists are convinced that man is responsible, not merely natural climate cycles, and that the coming exploitation of what is unveiled will quicken the pace.

  Already villages along the Bering and Chukchi coasts have been relocated as coastlines are eroded and hunting grounds lost. A biological reshuffle is under way. Polar bears and Arctic foxes are on the move, walruses find themselves competing for space, and fish, unaware of territorial boundaries, are moving northward, depleting stocks for some countries but populating others. Mackerel and Atlantic cod are now being found in Arctic trawler nets.

  The effects of the melting ice won’t just be felt in the Arctic: countries as far away as the Maldives, Bangladesh and the Netherlands are at risk of increased flooding as the ice melts and sea levels rise. These knock-on effects are why the Arctic is a global, not just a regional, issue.

  As the ice melts and the tundra is exposed, two things are likely to happen to accelerate the process of the greying of the ice cap. Residue from the industrial work destined to take place will land on the snow and ice, further reducing the amount of heat-reflecting territory. The darker-coloured land and open water will then absorb more heat than the ice and snow they replace, thus increasing the size of the darker territory. This is known as the Albedo effect, and although there are negative aspects to it there are also positive ones: the warming tundra will allow significantly more natural plant growth and agricultural crops to flourish, helping local populations as they seek new food sources.

  It is clear from satellite images that the ice in the Arctic is receding, making the sea lanes through the region more accessible for longer periods of the year.

  There is, though, no getting away from the prospect that one of the world’s last great unspoiled regions is about to change. Some climate-prediction models say the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by the end of the century; there are a few which predict it could happen much sooner. What is certain is that, however quickly it happens and dramatic the reduction will be, it has begun.

  The melting of the ice cap already allows cargo ships to make the journey through the Northwest Passage in the Canadian archipelago for several summer weeks a year, thus cutting at least a week from the transit time from Europe to China. The first cargo ship not to be escorted by an icebreaker went through in 2014. The Nunavik carried 23,000 tons of nickel ore from Canada to China. The polar route was 40 per cent shorter and used deeper waters than if it had gone through the Panama Canal. This allowed the ship to carry more cargo, saved tens of thousands of dollars in fuel costs and reduced the ship’s greenhouse emissions by 1,300 metric tons. By 2040 the route is expected to be open for up to two months each year, transforming trade links across the ‘High North’ and causing knock-on effects as far away as Egypt and Panama in terms of the revenues they enjoy from the Suez and Panama canals.

>   The north-east route, or Northern Sea Route as the Russians call it, which hugs the Siberian coastline, is also now open for several months a year and is becoming an increasingly popular sea highway.

  The melting ice reveals other potential riches. It is thought that vast quantities of undiscovered natural gas and oil reserves may lie in the Arctic region in areas which can now be accessed. In 2008 the United States Geological Survey estimated that 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 90 billion barrels of oil are in the Arctic, with the vast majority of it offshore. As more territory becomes accessible, extra reserves of the gold, zinc, nickel and iron already found in part of the Arctic may be discovered.

  ExxonMobil, Shell and Rosneft are among the energy giants that are applying for licences and beginning exploratory drilling. Countries and companies prepared to make the effort to get at the riches will have to brave a climate where for much of the year the days are endless night, where for the majority of the year the sea freezes to a depth of more than six feet and where, in open water, the waves can reach forty feet high.

  It is going to be dirty, hard and dangerous work, especially for anyone hoping to run an all-year-round operation. It will also require massive investment. Running gas pipelines will not be possible in many places, and building a complex liquefaction infrastructure at sea, especially in tough conditions, is very expensive. However, the financial and strategic gains to be made mean that the big players will try to stake a claim to the territories and begin drilling, and that the potential environmental consequences are unlikely to stop them.

  The claims to sovereignty are not based on the flags of the early explorers but on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This affirms that a signatory to the convention has exclusive economic rights from its shore to a limit of 200 nautical miles (unless this conflicts with another country’s limits), and can declare it an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The oil and gas in the zone is therefore considered to belong to the state. In certain circumstances, and subject to scientific evidence concerning a country’s continental shelf, that country can apply to extend the EEZ to 350 nautical miles from its coast.