USA Eyes an Ice-Free Northwest Passage

A group of retired American generals and admirals has warned Congress the U.S. faces a dire threat to its national security from global warming -- and flagged Canada's claim to Arctic sovereignty as a future flashpoint between the two longstanding allies.

In testimony this week before the Senate foreign relations committee, the former military officers said the melting of the polar ice cap will force U.S. leaders to confront the politically charged issue of whether the Northwest Passage belongs to Canada.

"Is the Northwest Passage Canadian territorial water, or is it international water open to navigation?" retired admiral Richard Truly asked. "This is an example of an international issue that will have to be dealt with and [is] caused by climate change."

Truly and 10 other former high-ranking officers -- including retired general Anthony Zinni, the former commander of U.S. central command -- raise concerns about the ability of Canada and the U.S. to defend the continent's warming northern sea in a 63-page report by the Center for Naval Analyses, a private consultant to the U.S. government.

The report details how rising temperatures and ocean levels could present new security challenges to the U.S., and how the military should respond over the next 30 to 40 years.

Its authors said geopolitical upheaval caused by global warming threatens to disrupt oil supplies, create new havens for terrorists, flood U.S. military installations in the Pacific and trigger waves of illegal immigration from Latin America.

The report flagged the Arctic as a "region of particular concern" for the U.S. military because rising temperatures will make the Northwest Passage navigable within a few decades.

Retired admiral Donald Pilling, the former vice chief of U.S. naval operations, wrote "there is potential for fracturing some very strong alliances based on . . . the lack of control over borders."

In particular, Pilling cited concern that neither the U.S. nor Canada currently has the military capability to handle threats to North America originating in an ice-free Northwest Passage.