opinions
Arne O. Holm says:
A Creeping Feeling of Being Reduced to Pawns in a Game Between Superpowers
Comment (Tromsø, Northern Norway): NATO is no longer wobbling, says the experienced diplomat Kåre Aas, looking out over an expectant prelude to the Arctic Frontiers conference. That is good to know, of course, but how are the Arctic civil societies doing at a time when astronomical sums are being poured into weapons and military personnel?
Published
This is an op-ed written by an external contributor. All views expressed are the writer's own.
Dette er en kommentar, skrevet av en redaksjonell medarbeider. Kommentaren gir uttrykk for skribentens holdninger.
That is just one of the questions I brought with me to a conference with almost 1,000 participants from across the world. 120 of them are journalists. They too have traveled far and long to a part of the world that once was a sort of exotic outpost.
Midway between Putin and Trump
Here, in Tromsø, Northern Norway, they will all maneuver around hordes of Asian tourists holding onto their phones while dancing around on slippery, icy sidewalks and roads.
For the tourists, the Northern Lights and the exotic North are still the crowd-pullers.
For the participants at Arctic Frontiers, an event organized midway between Vladimir Putin's nuclear weapons and Donald Trump's absurd idea that Greenland should become an American colony.
The same reward is promised to all.
On stage, in front of me while writing this, we find Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt and her Norwegian colleague Espen Barth Eide. In additon to EU's 'foreign policy chief,' Kaja Kallas, among others.
Afterwards, they will answer questions about Ukraine, China, and Arctic strategies. Questions they have answered many times before, yet which are still increasingly reiterated.
They answer on behalf of us who live here in the North, which they emphasize in different ways every single time.
We are important
Because we are important, of course, even at a time when an ever-increasing part of the community's funds is spent on weapons and soldiers.
"Nothing is more difficult to defend than where there is nothing. There must be a place to defend," says assistant director Jan Erik Torp at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.
"The Armed Forces would not exist without the civilian undergrowth," says Torleiv Opland, CEO of the Norwegian Defence and Security Industries Association.
He said this at the prelude, or "Springfart for nord", which is the official name of the meeting place.
The Army Chief, Major General Lars Lervik, is set to invest NOK 20 billion and increase the number of employees in the Armed Forces in the North by 3,000.
A crucial question for the municipal economy in the North is whether these employees will be commuters, who only increase expenses, or permanent residents, who pay taxes and provide income.
Sprung from the fear of military confrontation.
Geir Håkon Karlsen, a former officer and now a principal lecturer at the Norwegian Defense University College, takes the argument further.
"Local ownership of businesses is part of a necessary preparedness in the North."
I am already feeling some pushback. The reward dangling before the business sector in the North is that a portion of the increase in the defense budget will be spent on civil society. That is called total preparedness.
Not easy to understand
Of an increase to five percent of the gross national product, one and a half percent will be used in this way.
The problem, at least one of them, is that the same reward is promised to municipalities nationwide. The next is a complicated procurement system. A set of rules that limits the possibility of getting on the procurement list, especially for smaller companies.
"The entry ticket is not easy to understand," says Morten Høylo. He is the community contact for Lerøy, a major player in the fishing and aquaculture industries. In other words, ideal for self-sufficiency in a crisis situation.
"Someone needs to tell us what is required," he adds.
When Ole Erik Almlid, the head of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), speaks, the situation becomes even clearer. According to Almlid, Northern Norway is significantly underweighted in terms of long-term risk capital.
"We aren't creating functioning systems," says the NHO chief, who increasingly participates in discussions about the future in the North. The view from NHO's stronghold at Majorstua in Oslo has not always been as good as it is now.
I will spare you more quotes, and I also don't need to remind you that the curves, which indicate population and age composition, are pointing in the wrong direction.
Surrounded
After a couple of days surrounded by academics, politicians, and business leaders who all emphasize how important both the business community and we who live here are for the nation's security, a slightly uncomfortable feeling creeps in.
The Armed Forces would not exist without the civilian undergrowth.
Without taking the comparison too far, a feeling of being reduced to pieces in a great power game, like the population of Greenland. That feeling has been pressing for a long time further north and east.
There is much talk about the opportunities in the North. It is and will be our destiny. That the Arctic represents an opportunity. The roadmap from opportunity to reality has varied over the past decades.
Now it is the Armed Forces and security policy that sets the framework. That justifies and decides. That will correct all the mistakes from yesterday.
A new opportunity, then. Sprung from what we want the least. But still fear.
A military confrontation in the North.
