The US on Friday opened its northernmost diplomatic station, highlighting the elevated significance of the Arctic area for Washington at a time when cooperation amongst Arctic nations has been hit by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduced the opening of the station, in Tromsoe, Norway, in June, as a method for the US to have a “diplomatic footprint above the Arctic Circle”.
“Symbolically, it’s vital,” Andreas Oesthagen, a senior analysis fellow on the Oslo-based Fridtjof Nansen Institute, informed Reuters on Tuesday.
“It’s a gesture that showcases simply how rather more vital the US sees the Arctic now than solely 5 or ten years in the past.”
Tromsoe is the most important metropolis in Arctic Norway, positioned about 400km (250 miles) west of Russia. Norway and Russia share a border within the Arctic.
In the course of the Chilly Conflict, Washington had a station in Tromsoe however closed it in 1994.
Arctic council
Referred to as a “presence put up”, the station won’t supply consular providers.
It’s going to have one diplomat, whose work will deal with enterprise outreach, science and the Arctic Council, a polar physique comprising the eight Arctic states of Russia, the U.S., Canada, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark.
The put up might be housed in the identical constructing because the Arctic Council’s secretariat.
Cooperation inside the Council between Russia and the Western Arctic states was placed on maintain after Ukraine was invaded in February 2022.
Some cooperation with Russia has resumed since Norway took over as Council chair in Could, however this stays restricted to contact between diplomats.
Marc Nathanson, the U.S. ambassador to Norway, stated Washington believed “very strongly” the council ought to stay the primary physique for cooperation within the Arctic.
“The Arctic Council should survive,” he informed Reuters. “However due to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine it means, for the seven different members of the Arctic Council, that we will not do enterprise as regular with Russia.”
The U.S. put up might be “non-military,” Nathanson added. It’s “for cooperation for a peaceable, scientific-based, diplomacy”.
(Reuters – Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, enhancing by Terje Solsvik and Deborah Kyvrikosaios)
