tl;dr: Russia would give its left arm for seaports open to world trade year-round. Could Putin be behind Trump’s withdrawal from the Arctic Council's attempts to fight warming of the Arctic?
With the news (from Reuters) that “The United States has refused to sign an agreement on challenges in the Arctic due to discrepancies over climate change wording,” a thought occurs to me (or my wife, actually :-). [Note: this is less than twelve hours old, so you're seeing the very raw reporting, including this diary.]
It's being said that this is simply another step in the Trump administration's attempts to expunge the phrase “global warming” from human consciousness, but there's another possible interpretation, requiring some historical background.
Russia in all its avatars (tsarist empire, communist state, USSR empire, Russian Federation) has effectively been land-locked because its seaports have been useless for over four months each year Its multiple efforts to rule Crimea are part of its attempt to secure a “warm-weather port”.
So an unfrozen Arctic Ocean would be an (almost-unmitigated) blessing to the Russian Federation. So why wouldn't Putin tell Trump to block attempts to prevent that event? Just sayin’.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019 · 11:01:35 PM +00:00
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By Choice
As Mr Tucker pointed out, my poll was wildly ambiguous, so I’ve fixed it; of course, the votes were removed when I changed it. For the record, at the time of removal, there were 33 votes:
9% Yes
12% No
79% You can’t be too paranoid.
Thanks for your votes, and feel free to restore them if the Kos software will let you.