Breaking the ICE: White House Announces New Polar Pact with Canada and Finland
Leaders of the US, Canada, and Finland announced a plan to establish the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, known as the ICE Pact. The trilateral agreement will result in joint development of polar icebreakers and other related maritime capabilities. Rebecca Pincus, Director of the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, speaks about the significance of the White House announcement. She covers the importance of icebreakers, what they actually do, and the rate at which China and Russia are building ships compared to the US.
Video Transcript
Breaking the ICE: White House Announces New Polar Pact with Canada and Finland
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
I think right now, the fact that this announcement came out during the NATO summit in Washington is really significant.
The fact that it's a trilateral announcement with Canada and Finland, I think is a really great sign. Obviously, the US and Canada have a special relationship. Finland is a new member of NATO and so I think it's a really terrific opportunity for these three countries to work together on a capability that we all have such keen interest in.
We're all Arctic nations. We all need icebreakers and I think, you know, this could be seen as one of the waves following the AUKUS Agreement. It's an innovative, multilateral approach to solving shared maritime challenges.
Icebreakers are remarkable vessels. They're highly specialized, and they are really hard to build, which is one of the reasons that we're seeing this announcement now. It's one of the reasons that, you know, the US needs to, sort of take some creative approaches to building more icebreakers. In the United States, our big, heavy icebreakers go up to the Arctic, but also down to Antarctica, and they break ice in both polar regions, and they provide access and presence for the United States year-round to some of the harshest and most difficult environments on the globe.
They are incredibly important. They are exquisite, unique capabilities. And they do things that no other ships can do.
We know that China is building ships of all kinds very, very quickly. That includes navy hulls. They are designing and building their own icebreakers, and commercial ships as well. China's got the largest fleet in the world right now. They can produce ships very, very quickly.
Russia also has a very significant fleet of icebreakers, which it mostly operates in the Arctic. And their icebreaker fleet is a little bit different because most of them have commercial missions, which the US Coast Guard does not. But we do have to increase our icebreaker fleet in the Arctic to stay abreast with our competition.
It is the first step down a long road, a decade plus road.
But hopefully at the end of that, we'll be in a place where, we can design and build icebreakers quickly, as quickly as we need to.
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