Ice Pact: US, Canada and Finland sign polar icebreaker deal in challenge to China

The US, Canada and Finland have announced an initiative to collaborate on the production of polar icebreakers, a move meant to jump-start an expansion of shipbuilding capacity to supply a global market increasingly dominated by China.

The trilateral "Ice Pact" will include information sharing on icebreakers - the workhorses of polar coastguard fleets - to create an interoperable product class across three countries, as well as joint efforts to attract buyers from among "allies and partners", a senior official in US President Joe Biden's administration told reporters.

The initiative was revealed during the ongoing Nato summit in Washington, and, according to the official, is "consistent with the message you've been hearing this week" at the bloc's annual meeting. It is the second trilateral partnership on maritime technology and production announced by Biden, after he established Aukus with Britain and Australia in 2021.

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"The Ice Pact will reinforce the message to Russia and China that the United States and its allies intend to ... doggedly pursue collaboration on industrial policy to increase our competitive edge in strategic industries like shipbuilding, to build a world-class polar icebreaking fleet at scale."

The pact is also meant "to project power into the polar regions to enforce international norms and treaties", according to the official.

"Without this arrangement, we'd risk our adversaries developing an advantage in a specialised technology with vast geostrategic importance, which could also allow them to become the preferred supplier," he said.

This year's Nato summit marks a new level of agreement among members of the transatlantic security alliance on how to counter Beijing's influence, as they grow more defiant of China's trade with Russia as a form of support for Moscow's war against Ukraine.

The joint initiative is likely to bring further tension to the Arctic region, which is becoming increasingly important in global power plays as climate change creates the possibility for new shipping routes, and because of its strategic location and natural resource extraction potential.

Although China has no direct access to the Arctic Ocean, Beijing has declared the country to be a "near-Arctic state", a designation that it uses to push for a greater role in stewardship of the region.

Chinese President Xi Jinping first raised the idea of the "Polar Silk Road" in Moscow in 2017, when he unveiled a series of plans with Russia in the Arctic to be incorporated into China's Belt and Road Initiative, a trade and infrastructure strategy spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

Months later, Beijing released its official Arctic policy white paper, in which it first asserted the "near-Arctic state" status.

The paper suggested more scientific exploration, the opening of a shipping route across the Arctic, as well as the development of oil, gas, mineral resources and other non-renewable energy sources, fishing and tourism in the region.

As part of the plan, China has been developing a new heavy icebreaker plus semi-submersible heavy-lift ships - so big that they can carry other ships.

Declining shipbuilding capacity has emerged as one of the biggest concerns for US policymakers looking at national security vulnerabilities with respect to China.

That was one of the key messages witnesses told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressional advisory body, in March.

Biden has also faced pressure from unions to act on China's advances in the industry. The United Steelworkers and other North American unions recently called for a probe into the country's "unreasonable and discriminatory" practices in the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sector.

The administration official briefing reporters on the Ice Pact initiative said the US Coast Guard has only two polar icebreakers, both "reaching the end of their usable lives".

"We intend to scale up by multiples of the current amount as soon as we can," he added, but he declined to give a specific time frame.

The US government is substantially behind on its Polar Security Cutter programme - a plan to acquire as many as five polar icebreakers, also known as PSCs - which has been plagued by delays and cost overruns.

The estimated US$3.2 billion needed was calculated in 2021, before inflation began picking up in the US, and only about US$2 billion has been appropriated, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The Coast Guard originally intended to have the first PSC in 2024, but the delivery date may now be pushed back as far as 2029 or later, it said.

The Biden administration official said the PSC programme could cost as much as US$10 billion "to fully deploy the fleet that we want".

The Ice Pact "could involve operational interoperability", which would "increase the incentive for Finnish and Canadian companies to invest in American shipyards but also to train American workers," he said.

"We have tentative agreements with [Finland and Canada] to fund a workforce development exchange," the official added.

"We've also made tentative suggestions from our Coast Guard and Navy to sponsor personnel exchanges of the officers who lead shipbuilding for the US."

Meanwhile, China recently launched its fourth next-generation polar icebreaker, the Jidi, adding to a growing fleet tasked with supporting research and replenishing supplies for the country's seven stations at the North and South Poles.

It was designed and built by CSSC Offshore & Marine Engineering Company in Nansha, which is owned by China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation.

The Polar Research Institute of China, a central government agency that plans and coordinates the country's polar activities, said in a study published last year that China had completed the field testing and evaluation of an underwater listening device to be deployed as a large-scale network in the Arctic Ocean.

The acoustic information collected by the network could be used in a wide range of applications, including "subglacial communication, navigation and positioning, target detection and the reconstruction of marine environmental parameters", according to the study.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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