The Arctic Circle - a Ring of Influence

The United States is now taking the necessary steps toward protecting its national economic and strategic interests within the Arctic region. The first step was the release of the Arctic Regional Policy (ARP) by President Bush prior to leaving office in January of 2009. This set clear priorities regarding the region, which the United States must now determine how to achieve. This paper addresses the next two steps in the process to secure these objectives. The first will be the need to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and thereby have legal validity to our territorial claims within the Arctic. The second step will be to identify which Geographic Combatant Commander (GCC) should have responsibility over the region. Currently there are three GCCs that have portions of the regions within their areas of responsibility (AORs). This current structure creates confusion among the GCCs and leaves seams available to be exploited by other nations. By assigning USEUCOM the entire Arctic Region and then establishing an Arctic Sub-Unified Commander under it, the United States will assume the leadership role that other nations have come to expect. The United States understands that it must leverage all aspects of military and political influence ensure the priorities of National Security Presidential Directive 66 identifies, and USEUCOM is the most capable GCC of achieving that objective.