Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SuperFly]

Canada puts muscle behind claim to Northwest Passage


TORONTO � Canada announced plans Monday to increase its Arctic military presence in an effort to assert sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, a potentially oil-rich region the United States claims is international territory.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said six to eight patrol ships will guard what he says are Canadian waters. A deep-water port will also be built in a region the U.S. Geological Survey estimates has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.

"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it," Harper said.

U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins has criticized Harper's promise to defend the Arctic, claiming the Northwest Passage as "neutral waters." But Wilkins declined to comment Monday, said U.S. Embassy spokesman James Foster.

"It's an international channel for passage," Foster said of the disputed waterway.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003782182_canada10.html








My thoughts: On the one hand, I can understand Canada wanting to lay claim to the Arctic, but technically it's just ice over an ocean, an icecap. It's not really land.

But good grief. The Americans have gone half-way around the world to protect their oil supply. Do the Canadians really think a few boats will keep them away from oil in their own backyard?

[Kuros]

Chavez sends 60% of his country's oil to the US.

Most of Canada's oil will go south whatever the politics.

[cbclark4]

There was a recent story about Russia doing something similar.

[stevemcgarrett]

I believe with all my heart and soul that every stray dog in America should unite behind you and ravage the border of Canada, thereby creating a massive diversion until our forces secure this waterway once and for all.

And when we're done with that, we must sneak aboard military transports to Korea and finally liberate our brothers in stew pots!

Enough is---bark--enough!

[crazy_arcade]

Canadian soveriengty is the Arctic should have been protected by our gov'ts years ago but they chose to ignore it. This is one thing that Stephen Harper is doing right. Fortunately, there probably won't be a British judge helping to decide the soveriegnty.....

[freethought]

the issue here is one few people understand, and involves a great irony with the party in power.

Crazacrade is right in that something should have been done long ago, if only to ensure that the ambiguity ended. The arctic has been an issue for a long, long time, starting with the Alaskan boundary dispute. In more modern times, essentially every PM since King has had the issue in their lap at one point or another.

Trudeau made a number of comments, but did little.

Mulroney had a plan for nuclear subs among a few other things (see 1987 defence white paper), but NOTHING came from that. There were a number of comments made under chretien, but nothing was done, other than angering the US diplomatic staff.

Now Harper is taking his second stab at the issue, one which will fail. It will fail because 1. the gov wont last long enough to see the plan come to fruition, and it will be cancelled by whatever party takes power, and 2. because the type of patrol craft they're ordering will make no difference whatsoever in 'protecting canadian sovereignty' in any meaningful way.

The irony that I mentioned has to do with the fact that this latest move, and the perceived necessity of this purchase has to do with an 'effect' that just about every member of the CPC believes doesn't exist; global warming. With the melting of polar ice, what used to be waterways that were death to all but the heaviest of icebreakers, are gradually becoming passable. This means that rather than simply having to deal with nuclear powered (and armed) subs passing through what we claim as our territory, we will soon have to deal with surface ships, hence the purchase of the patrol craft.

On the whole nothing can be done, and it's about as senseless an exercise in national sovereignty that has ever taken place. Unless we plan on firing on Russian nuclear ships, and coming face to face with our closest allies and threatening to fire on them or cause major defence and international tension, there's not much we can do.

All hail Canada's Arctic strategy!

[idonojacs]

I'm all for Americans dating Canadians.

[Nowhere Man]

Tokdo II: The Western Hemisphere


Yes, that's not near enough weaponry to defend it.

Could it be Harper is borrowing Republican strategies from his neighbors to the South? Defense spending has nice campaign funding implications.

What he needs to do is build a missile shield...

[enns]

freethought, a couple concerns about your post.

[koon_taung_daeng]

there has to be a diplomatic solution to this, canada flexing their military muscle to america is not going to help, its just going to make people laugh and give the red white and blue some easy target practice

[freethought]

[contrarian]

It is a tempest in a teapot. The sea bed where the petroleum is, belongs to the land areas closest to that leaves them Canadian. What the squabble is about is right of passage.

I also read that the one icebreaker alone is costing the Canadian tac[ayers 40,000 dollars a day.

[Hollywoodaction]

Just because the US wishes it were neutral waters doesn't change the fact that a fair part of it cuts right through Canada (hence the difference in names) and most of the rest is well within 200km of the Canadian coastline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Internal_Waters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage

[contrarian]

The internal waters has a 12 mile limit. Seabed resources has a 200 mile limit. In many places in the world the 12 mile limt doesn't apply.

The English Channel, The straights of Malacca, The Straighs between Denmark and Sweden, to some degree the Dardenelles which is Turk on both sides, The Straights of Juan de Fuca, and to some degree the inland passage to Alaska, the Gulf of Aquaba, I could probably thing of a few more but you get the picture

[Hollywoodaction]