The U.S., Finland and Canada signed yesterday a new pact on the construction of ice breakers, aimed at providing ships for the intended domination of the Arctic by Global NATO. While the U.S. has a legitimate need for icebreakers, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan cast the new pact as a counter to the capacity of Russia to build icebreakers and offer them to other countries. “The ICE Pact is a pact ... about enhancing the collective capacity of our three countries to build icebreakers at a time when we are seeing an increasing need for those icebreakers from partners around the world who want to operate in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions and can operate there with greater freedom than before because of the impacts of climate change,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters yesterday. “And, yes, there are authoritarian nations that are making or offering the icebreakers to the world, want to corner the icebreaker market. We’re determined to have democracies be in the lead in producing icebreaking capabilities.”
According to AP, the pact calls for enhanced information sharing on polar icebreaker production, allowing for workers and experts from each country to train in shipyards across all three, and promoting to allies the purchase of polar icebreakers from American, Finnish or Canadian shipyards for their own needs. Daleep Singh, the White House deputy national security adviser for international economics, said it would reinforce to adversaries Russia and China that the U.S. and allies will “doggedly pursue collaboration on industrial policy to increase our competitive edge.”
