US should not raise alarm about Russian activities in Arctic: Analyst

The United States should pursue its plans in the Arctic Ocean instead of raising alarm about Russian activities there, an American foreign policy analyst says.

James George Jatras, a former US diplomat and adviser to the Senate Republican leadership, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday while commenting on a report which says US intelligence agencies plan to research potential threats in the Arctic.

For the first time since the Cold War, US intelligence agencies have commissioned analysts to work on the Arctic on a full-time basis, following reports that China and Russia are boosting their military presence in the region, the Tribune Washington Bureau reported on Monday.

“It is understandable that all of the countries bordering on the Arctic Ocean have ambitions regarding the resources in that region, and the Russians have been very active in pursuing what they see as their legitimate interests there,” Jatras said.

“Rather than reacting with alarm to that -- the way Washington is doing -- it would seem much more sense, given the fact that the United States is also an Arctic power because of the position of Alaska, to pursue our plans with the same kind of vigor that the Russians are doing,” added the Washington-based analyst.

“I know there has been criticism of the Canadian government for not doing that likewise,” he stated.

Rather than pursuing a threat in the Arctic, it seems to me that much more prudent course is simply to pursue one’s claims and the resources that are known to be in the Arctic rather than expressing alarmism and a kind of usual paranoia we hear from American officials,” the foreign policy analyst reiterated.

The US analysts are delving into raw intelligence gathered from a recently overhauled Canadian listening post near the North Pole and a Norwegian surveillance ship called the Marjata.

In addition, the experts are also utilizing data from US spy satellites orbiting overhead and Navy sensors deep in the frigid waters.

The move comes amid confirmation by the Pentagon on Wednesday that it was tracking five Chinese warships sailing in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, for the first time.

Also, a Russian intelligence ship was spotted off the coast of Kings Bay, Georgia, home to the American Navy’s East Coast ballistic missile submarine fleet.

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