 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Heather Conley. I'm Senior Fellow and Director of the Europe Program here. And we're delighted that you could travel with us on the road to the Seventh Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting this coming week in Newt Greenland. I cannot think of two more distinguished and knowledgeable officials that will help us understand U.S. policy interest in the Arctic prior to this ministerial than Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and Admiral Thad Allen. And we are very grateful that you could be with us this afternoon. This discussion represents the culmination of a four-month project in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund that we have called the Road to Nuke. We brought together leading experts, Arctic experts in government, in academia, the private sector, and the foreign policy community, a group we have called the Arctic Consultative Group, many of whom are in the room today, to examine some of the key environmental and economic and security trend lines in the Arctic, as well as to take a closer look at the most pressing agenda items for the Arctic Council. I would like to offer a very special word of thanks to Bill Eichbaum, Vice President for Marine and Arctic Policy at WWF. Bill, could you stand up for me, please, for his leadership of this initiative? Thank you, Bill, so much. In addition to our collaborative work with the World Wildlife Fund, CSIS is also very fortunate to be the American partner and a five-year research effort in geopolitics of the high north with Norwegian, Russian, and German think tank partners. And we've had an opportunity to explore U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic through that research. And I think the work both of this project as well as the geopolitics project has led me to the conclusion that this week's Arctic Council ministerial meeting is a historic turning point to deepen and strengthen international cooperation in the Arctic as we seek to meet the dramatic challenges of the equivalent of a melting continent over the next several decades. Strong American leadership and engagement will be vital in this region from ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to developing sufficient Arctic capabilities such as ice breakers, which is why we are very much looking forward to this afternoon's discussion. Now just a brief housekeeping message. This session is on the record. Secretary Steinberg and Admiral Allen have generously agreed to take questions following their remarks. We will have microphones available for you. They will indicate by raising your hand and identify yourself and your affiliation before addressing your question. And finally it goes without saying that this would have been the road less traveled to Nuke had it not been for the World Wildlife Fund. And we are delighted to have David Reed with us, senior vice president for policy at the World Wildlife Fund who's going to get us started with an introduction of Secretary Steinberg. We thank you for joining us and we look forward to an important discussion. Thank you. David. Please. Thank you. Thank you over so much, Heather. Indeed, it's a great honor to be here and have the honor to introduce our keynote speaker this afternoon, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg. His current position is really a reflection of accumulation of many, many years of breadth and depth of his experience in foreign policy affairs. He served earlier as a deputy national security advisor to President Clinton. Served as President Clinton's G8 Sherpa. He served as the director of the foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institute. And of course held many positions at the Department of State prior to assuming his current role. As you may know, Deputy Secretary Steinberg will soon be making a transition to Syracuse University. And it is actually like to say that WWF has an institutional relationship with the Maxwell School, of which he will be the director. And we certainly look forward to continuing that relationship in the coming years, albeit in a different form. Now, as Heather mentioned in her introduction, today's seminar is organized in anticipation of the ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council that will take place in Newt Greenland on Thursday. It will be attended by Secretary Clinton. I'm delighted to know that and have her representing our government in those deliberations. Number of issues from WWF's point of view and I hope shared by CSIS will be brought up on that occasion, is whether the members can agree on a strong collaborative planning process for this rapidly changing Arctic marine environment. And indeed, if an agreement be reached as to whether to hold back on oil and gas development in the marine environment until extractive industries and activities can be done so safely. So it is, again, with great pleasure that we welcome Deputy Secretary Steinberg. He has offered to speak for approximately 20 minutes, after which he will take questions for another 15 minutes or so. So thank you very much, Deputy Secretary. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be back. This is a reprise for me of Arctic Council meetings. So the last time I was here, I was on my way to the Deputy Minister's meeting, but I'm pleased to be here to preview Secretary Clinton's participation in U.S. goals and objectives, not only for this meeting of the Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council, but for broadly going forward. It's, of course, an honor to be here to talk about the road to Newt, but as most of you know here, there are no roads to Newt. So we're all facing the challenge of a very exciting environment in which there are few roads and few hotel rooms, but the American team is going to look forward to the opportunity to be seaborne while they participate in this meeting. But it is, I think, significant that the meeting is taking place in Greenland for the reasons that Heather suggested, because it's important both gathering, but also a symbol of some of the big challenges that the Arctic faces. Heather characterized it as a historic meeting, and I think we shared that view for a number of reasons. As she said, this is the first time that a U.S. Secretary of State has participated in an Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting. It emphasizes both the importance of the United States government as a whole places on Arctic diplomacy, but also the personal commitment that the Secretary Clinton has had to this. She, even as a senator, expressed and engaged in a very serious way on these issues, and it has been an important issue for her during her tenure as Secretary of State. There will also be, I think, some notable achievements at this Ministerial. First, the Council will create a permanent secretariat to strengthen its operational function. We've been grateful to the Arctic states that have provided the secretariat in their kind of voluntary operating way over the past several years, but the creation of a permanent secretariat really does represent a step forward, both in terms of the capacity of the Council, but also the commitment of the Arctic Council members to this institution. And we're also going to be strengthening the Council institutionally by using it as the convening body for negotiations among Arctic states. And I think this is an important innovation in the kind of architecture of regional and global cooperation. I talked about this a bit the last time I was here. The meeting will also mark the first time that Arctic states have entered into a legally binding agreement and on a very important subject, that is search and rescue operations. This brings to a close one of the most successful negotiations to emerge on emerging issues in the Arctic, and I think that's a paradigm and an example of some of the things that may be possible going forward. As I mentioned, even as Senator Secretary Clinton had visited the Arctic and she's looking forward to coming back to sea in a very first-hand way, both the changes that have taken place, but also the advancements that we've made as nations trying to cooperate to deal with these challenges. But as you undoubtedly know, it's not just Secretary Clinton who's going, and the composition of our delegation really reflects both the breadth and the seriousness of the attention that we as the U.S. government place. She'll be accompanied by Secretary Ken Salazar, Secretary of Interior and Deputy Secretary of Interior David Hayes, Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, Mead Treadwell, our Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Environment, Kerry Ann Jones, our Ambassador to Denmark, Lori Fulton, and perhaps, depending on Senate schedules, Senator Murkowski. And that really reflects the breadth of the interest that we have. And I think the presence of two U.S. cabinet secretaries is a real testament to how we see these issues at the meeting. More broadly, as we think about not just this one meeting, but overall our approach to the Arctic, I think we can see that our strategy is based on six overarching goals. First, we intend to meet our national security and homeland security needs relevant to the Arctic region. Second, protecting the Arctic environment and conserving its biological resources. Third, ensure that the natural resource management and economic development in the Arctic are environmentally sustainable. Fourth, strengthen the institutions for cooperation among the eight Arctic nations. A fifth, involve the Arctic's indigenous communities in decisions that affect them. And as you all know, that's one of the things that's most innovative about the Arctic Council is the way in which we involve indigenous communities in the activities of the council. And sixth, and finally, enhance scientific monitoring and research into local, regional, and global environmental issues. So it's a broad-ranging agenda. These are very core interests that are at stake in the Arctic, but it is an opportunity to find new patterns of cooperation in these challenges, because clearly these are things that the United States or any individual nation acting alone is not able to advance by acting alone. To handle this very ambitious agenda, we have a very comprehensive interagency process in the government that really does involve a full range of interests within our governments through an interagency policy committee which oversees our policy development here, which coordinates with the staff of the National Ocean Council that connect Arctic policy to some of the broader national ocean policy issues. And of course, as I said, in addition to the coordination within the federal government, we work very closely with state and local governments, particularly the state of Alaska, and with indigenous communities which have such a critical role to play. And whose interest we see ourselves as being very fundamentally aligned with in our work and in our policy development. With respect to the specific meeting at Nuke, we have several key goals. First, in the broadest terms, we want to send a strong message that in the post-Cold War world, the Arctic is a region of cooperation, not conflict. And by working together to ensure the safety of human life in a newly emerging region of human activity, we can show in particular that Russia and the United States are key actors in helping to propel cooperation on important issues. Another major goal is to strengthen the Arctic Council to ensure that it remains the preeminent form for Arctic diplomacy. We will have a secretary that will be small but efficient, and it will provide the kind of support that we need to make sure there's continuity and follow-through on the important work of the Council. And it will also provide, I think, an important focal point for the broader outreach to publics and communities that are interested in these issues, including NGOs and others who play such an important role in developing the work. And I want to express my appreciation for all of the NGOs, both U.S. and international, who play such a role. I personally benefited enormously from my interaction with them and we see them as important partners for us going forward. Next, we hope at this meeting to agree on the criteria for and the role of observer nations. It's clear that as the Council takes on broader role and becomes a focal point for work, there is greater interest among other nations with interest in the Arctic to have some kind of association with the Council as well as NGOs. And as we work towards the ministerial, the senior Arctic officials and the permanent participants, the indigenous communities, have developed some new criteria for assessing observer applicants, as well as defining the role that observers will play. This is an issue which is still under discussion, but we hope and anticipate that at the meeting in Duke that we will get some decisions on the way forward, both on terms of the criteria and a timeframe for moving forward with observers. At the meeting, we hope to engage our partners on a key climate-related issue, the short-lived climate-forcing agents, black carbon, methane and HFCs. This is, as you all know here, one of the most important practical issues that we face in the Arctic. We've had a chance over the past two meetings to try to push this agenda forward. The Council has done some important groundbreaking research that's pointed the way to what we need to do on short-lived climate-forcing agents. And we know that they have a disproportionate impact on climate generally, but especially in the Arctic. The Arctic is warming at a rate two to three times faster than the rest of the world. And it's clear that dealing with the problem of short-lived climate forces is one of the most effective ways to address climate change. And I was delighted today in the context of the bilateral meeting that we're holding with China through the strategic economic, the S&ED, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, with China, that a major topic of discussion between the Secretary, Secretary Chu, Environmental Protection Administration, at least Jackson and others, with their Chinese counterparts was addressing the issue of short-lived climate forces. And I think it really reflects a recognition that this is both a key climate challenge and that leading countries have a responsibility to deal with it. One of the key focuses of our work on SLSCs is going to be on the problem of black carbon, which has a particularly intense effect in accelerating the melting of frozen areas in the Arctic. And when she spoke to the meeting of the Antarctic Treaty that took place here in Washington at the State Department two years ago, she highlighted this issue as an important challenge and she pressed for action in both the Arctic Council and in other fora to develop strategies to deal with it. And since that time, the United States and Norway led a task force to develop mitigation recommendations for the Arctic states based on the science that have come out of this Arctic Council scientific report. And we here in the United States two years ago announced the $5 million program specifically designed to address black carbon emissions in the Arctic. So we will at the meeting in Newark urge Arctic states to take mitigation actions domestically so we can slow down Arctic melting while we deal with the broader debate of global climate change. Another element of the challenge of SLCS is the problem of methane and HFCs. Methane is another important short-lived climate force contributing to rapid warming in the Arctic. And we are also looking for action by the member states on methane and hope that they'll all join in the broader global methane initiative. Similarly, we hope for action on hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs, which are another potent greenhouse gas, which like black carbon and methane remain in the atmosphere for a fairly short time but have a very significant impact. So the ability to take action now allows us to have a very important near-term impact and in some ways a bigger multiplier than the longer-term challenge of dealing with carbon dioxide, which as you know, persists in the atmosphere for much longer. And so dealing with atmospheric concentrations is a much longer-term challenge with respect to those greenhouse gases. Of course, another area of interest in dealing with the future of the Arctic is the issue of protecting the Arctic environment from oil spills. And one of our priorities at the upcoming meeting is to launch a new Arctic task force to negotiate an instrument on oil spills in the Arctic. We know that there are significant deposits of oil and gas that were in the past difficult to access and may become more accessible over time. So we want to get ahead of the curve and try to see what we can do to be prepared, both in terms of preventing accidents in the first place, but in the event that they should happen, having effective mechanisms to deal with accidents should they happen. And that's why we believe the Arctic Council should take up the issue of oil spill preparedness and response. We think we have a lot to contribute. We've obviously learned a lot of lessons from Deepwater Horizon, and I'm sure the Admiral will have a few words to say about that in this context. But I think it is a chance for us all to work together in a cooperative fashion to deal with that. Another important issue that we'll address at the Arctic Council meeting, which I know our friends in the NGO community have been very focused on and played a leading role on, is the issue of ecosystem-based management. We think it's critical that we find ways to look holistically at the challenges of managing the environment and development in the Arctic. And we need the kind of tools that ecosystem-based management provide that we use ourselves in our own national ocean policy and are especially well-suited in our view to dealing with the interrelated challenges of the Arctic. Some of the Arctic states, such as Norway, already use EBM as part of their domestic policy in Canada too, has highlighted in its Arctic policy. We're hoping to persuade our colleagues in the Arctic Council to make this an integral part of all the Arctic Council's work, and we look forward to the convening of a task force and experts group to look at how we can apply and use the Arctic Council to move this tool forward. We also hope to take further steps in moving forward in scientific cooperation, and particularly in dealing with the specific challenges that we need to deal with the opportunities and the needs of the citizens and the inhabitants of the Arctic, and that's one of the reasons why we have been a strong advocate for a number of years in creating the sustaining Arctic Observing Network, SAON, something that's an initiative that's been underway for a couple of years, and it will be a system of observing systems for the Arctic, bringing together a number of different national and cooperative systems that can allow us to work together, such as the Bering Sea Subnetwork run by the Indigenous community in the U.S. and Russia, the International Circumpolar Surveillance run by the U.S. CDC and the Arctic Observing Network run by other U.S. scientific agencies. But there are also networks in Europe and Russia that can be part of the system. So when we work on this together, we not only provide good sound data that will allow for long-term management of the Arctic, but it also enhances our cooperation. Finally, I just want to say, and Heather also mentioned, that we recognize that one of the important elements of supporting the work of the Arctic Council is strengthening the underpinnings based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Obama administration remains committed to uncloss and we continue to work with Senator Kerry and others to look for opportunities to move that forward. We are strongly committed to its accession. We believe it will advance the full range of U.S. interests in this region and indeed across the world. So that's a bit of a preview of where we are and I look forward to your comments and questions. Do we have mics or just go for it? Yes, we have mics. Right up here this side. Thank you very much and thank you for taking the time. My name is Josh Rogan. I'm with Foreign Policy magazine. You mentioned at the end of your remarks that the administration is committed to look for opportunities to seek ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Could you please explain to us exactly what would be those opportunities? When would we see some ratification? Many of us are looking for some signs that a ratification push will actually happen. It's been two and a half years and we hear that perhaps a ratification push won't come until after the 2012 election. Is that true and if not, when might we see some actual action on this important issue? Thank you. As I said, we're working very closely with Senator Kerry on this. This is at the very top of the list of administration priorities. This obviously we need the leadership of the cooperation of the Senate to find a good opportunity in the Senate calendar. But this has been a priority for the President and for the Secretary about waiting or pushing it off, but we have to find an opportunity to work with the leadership of the Senate to find the time in their calendar. Right here. If there is blockage of in the Senate for the next few years, what are the list of a number of things, specific initiatives that are being taken in practical terms, but going deeper into practical issues, like icebreakers as mentioned earlier, does the United States have a program to work in the Arctic in informal ways, or by workarounds that can help deal with some of the burning issues, not to mention fossil fuels, but also safety and rescue, you said there is something going forward. What are the other practical ways that we can go forward with partners to alleviate avoid worse outcomes? I think the social rescue agreement is an example. It is a legally binding agreement. We are going to be able to do it as an executive agreement, so we are allowed to go forward with that. I think there are a number of other examples of steps that we can take to reach intergovernmental agreements that allow us to advance a number of these efforts. And as I said, I think just in terms of things like implementing ecosystem-based management, the use of coordinated domestic action on short-lived climate forces, these are all things that can be done in collaboration with the other Arctic countries. And I think what is interesting about the Arctic Council is we really are breaking new ground in terms of tools of collaboration. It is not a treaty-based organization, but what we are finding is that it facilitates negotiations among the member states to move forward. And that I think is going to be a model for a lot of the work that we do internationally. We have the rigidities of some of the more formal institutions. The efforts that we make on SLCFs, for example, can contribute to the broader climate discussions that are taking place through the UN Framework Convention and elsewhere. But we have the nimble because it is a smaller group of significant countries to take decisions going forward. And that kind of work I think is going to be more and more the model that we see of how do you provide leading-edge effort to stimulate broader international agreements moving forward. Of course, I also want to emphasize on the law of the sea that we have not formally acceded to it. The United States does, as a signatory, abide by and respects the provisions of that treaty and that convention. And we continue to believe it is an important instrument for our own national interest. Just to get a bit more clarity on the issue of the short-term climate forces, what is your expectation for actually getting an agreement for action on this issue at this summit, or if you can put a timeline on it, an agreement and an action plan, sort of a mini you know, mini Kyoto or I mean, I think what we recognize at the end of the day is that for most of these actions they require domestic actions by the key players. But if you think about the model that established by Copenhagen and now kind of incorporated in the Cancun agreement, what you have is a system that allows individual nations to make commitments but to have the kind of mutual commitment to each other that in the context of these individual action plans that we will be responsive to each other's efforts. And that's why the Copenhagen-Cancun model of individual countries putting forward action plans but engaging in dialogue with their partners to try to encourage coordinated efforts I think is a very promising model to go forward. And as I say, the step from Copenhagen to Cancun shows that these kinds of efforts can be effective. So what we'll be looking for with respect to a short-lived climate forces, not just among the Arctic Council members but other nations, is steps that we can take together. And so, for example, outside this context, and as I mentioned today in the China-USS&ED meeting we looked at steps that we can take on cooking fuels, on biofuels and the like and steps that we can mutually take both to provide technology exchanges but also to strengthen our own domestic efforts to try to move that agenda forward. Again, it's a coordinated effort of individual states looking at what is needed broadly and trying to find common understandings about steps that individual countries can do. The problem, of course, is different in different countries. The problem of, I mean, for more developed countries, for example, the challenge has to do with diesel, which is an important source of black carbon in more advanced countries. For others, where you're dealing with problems of domestic cooking and heating, there are a whole different set of challenges. So I don't think there's a single answer in terms of what can be done. Now, there are other elements of this, like the hydrochlorofluorocarbon problem where there are more formal mechanisms, both through the Montreal Protocol and through the UNFCC that may allow for more formal agreements. But again, I think that the point here is to have a coordinated focus, a coordinated set of efforts that put attention on this issue and to kind of encourage countries to step up to the plate, to take strong actions domestically, and give the sense because, after all, this is a collective action problem in the sense that if everybody doesn't help, then individual efforts don't have that big an impact. So even though it's unlikely to be a formal legal agreement on this, what we are seeing is kind of challenging each other to make the collective and common effort to try to raise the standards, incentivize strong action and give people a sense that if you take strong action, others will do it too. And that tool, I think, has been proven to be a successful one and allows us to move this agenda forward without the some of the rigidities of kind of going through the negotiation of a formal agreement. Caitlin Antron, Rule of Law Committee for the Oceans. Since Law of the Sea has already been addressed, I won't pick that topic. But you mentioned the U.S. and Russia as partners in the Arctic. Beyond ministerial, what type of things are you looking at in building that partnership? In particular, and Admiral Allen can address things of navigation work, maritime safety. But Russia has a pretty extensive plan for developing their Arctic and looking for partners in that. And it seems like that's an opportunity both for American business and American environmental groups. And do you have anything to say about the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary agreement and getting that finally locked in on the Russian side? On the cooperation, as I said, in addition to these multilateral discussions that take place through the Arctic Council, we have a fairly intense bilateral engagement with Russians in particular. This is an area of great interest. I think one of the areas where we've had some important cooperation is on the scientific side. There's a lot of interest in our two scientific establishments working together and through our bilateral cooperation mechanisms with Russia that the Vice President and others have played a big role in. We're trying to expand the areas of cooperation, including military to military for example. And this is an important dimension of this. I think we have been encouraging Russia to see the issue of moving forward with exploration and exploitation of resources as something that requires cooperative management. And I think there is a good discussion going on there. On the maritime boundary, I can't tell you where the Russians are and they're thinking on that. Back there. Hi, Deputy Secretary Brooks Yeager with Clean Air Cool Planet. I just wanted to say two things. One, congratulations really for US leadership and agenda and enhanced cooperation that discusses a number of really important issues, both in environmental development and also makes management cooperation perhaps more weighty than the reasons for competition and non-co-op or competitiveness in the Arctic. The second question is US has really been leading on some of this and putting some of these issues forward. Some countries have been more excited about that proposition than others. You've got Secretary Clinton going to the meeting. Is there a chance there for her to use her personal influence and her presence and her interest to motivate perhaps faster action and more specific steps forward on both the issue of black carbon and the issue of ecosystem management. There is some danger that both of them will be talked about a lot at the Arctic Council, but not much will be done about them. All of these classes can either be half full or half empty. And I have to say that my own experience, both at the one ministerial that I attended and the deputy minister's meeting, is that her cooperation is very good and you mentioned with Russia, but at the ministerial that I attended, I was really struck by Minister Lavrov's strong commitment to working on these issues and the sense that this is a place where there are obviously different perspectives on issues and there are issues between other countries that swirl around the side of the Arctic Council, but the broader impetus of collaboration is actually very strong. And I think it's a real recognition that there is simply no unilateral set of choices here. And if countries want to protect and preserve their long-term interests here, they have to do in collaboration with others. And I think nothing is more dramatic than the recent boundary agreement that we saw at the last meeting, which I think surprised everybody, but it really reflected a spirit of cooperation, which I think really does characterize the Arctic. Again, I don't want to suggest that there be conflicts or differences of perspectives. Each country has slightly different takes on what their national interests are there and different ways of pursuing these things. But compared to a lot of other arenas in which we work, I think there is a broad recognition at very high levels that this is the commons in a very important way. And that even though there are territorial claims there, this isn't the Antarctic, that this is still an area where no country is going to be successful over the long term in just kind of asserting national interest and territorial issues without trying to work with the others. And again, I think the other part that's very striking is there's a strong responsiveness to the indigenous communities among all the member states of the Arctic Council. They're present there and there's a real recognition that they are partners in this. So as international arrangements go, the combination of states, indigenous communities and the NGOs, I think well, you've been there, you know. I think it's a relatively unique and relatively encouraging set. Again, not to diminish the fact that these are difficult issues. The difficulty of reaching binding agreements is always going to be challenging. We are also going to have to relate to other organizations like how does the IMO fit in with the work of the Arctic Council. But this is the informality and the high level engagement in the Arctic Council is relatively unique. I think it has engaged the imagination of senior officials in all the Arctic Council members. And so the level of commitment to me based on my own experience and working in a lot of these organizations before is uniquely positive and it gives, I think, a spirit of cooperation and obviously I think the Secretary's presence, as you suggest, and her personal engagement is going to be all to the good in terms of the agenda that we're trying to pursue. Can I take one more over there? Hi, thanks. Rene Show from McClatchy Newspapers. Thank you. Will the Secretary bring any list of what the U.S. plans to do to reduce the black carbon or methane emissions here in this country? I think she's going to brief on the efforts that we have been making and what our thinking is on the strategy going forward. I think we have a robust plan that involves both considerable scientific research and investments by the Department of Energy in these areas as well as some ideas about what the international engagement is going forward, particularly on HFCs. I'm going to have to go. Please join me in thanking Deputy Secretary Steinberg for being with us. Thank you so much. Well, it's with great pleasure that I introduce Admiral Thad Allen. Admiral Allen is a senior fellow at the Rand Corporation. He's actually delayed his arrival at Rand by a few months to serve as National Incident Commander of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Prior to joining Rand, Admiral Allen served as the 23rd Commodant of the U.S. Coast Guard and prior to that important position served as the Coast Guard's Chief of Staff where he was the principal federal officer overseeing the response and recovery efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Needless to say, Admiral Allen is one of the few people that our national leadership turns to in our most difficult challenges of national significance. I think the Arctic fits into that category. It's not an immediate crisis but the transformation of the Arctic will certainly challenge the United States in new and unanticipated ways. And so as we were developing this concept of our road to nuke with the exception that there are no true roads we knew we needed a strong voice to speak in support of America's Arctic interests and who did we turn to, of course Admiral Allen. So with pleasure I introduce to you Admiral Allen. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Everybody hear me okay? Good. I think the most the best use of our time today would be for me to fill in some areas that you raise related to my own personal background, professional background and then kind of expand on some of the points that Secretary Steinberg raised moving forward. But let me say one more time in the interest of those who raise the issue in the room. It is time to deal with the law of the sea treaty. Several weeks ago there was an op-ed that was run on a Monday morning in the New York Times. It was signed by myself John Hamry and Dick Armitage saying it's time to bring this to the floor and it's time to cede to this treaty. We will work very closely with anybody that's in favor of doing that. I've been a strong proponent of this for a long time. The time has come it needs to be done. We need to demonstrate leadership and I hope that Senator Reid in the leadership of the Senate will find the floor time to bring this very important piece of legislation to the floor. In talking about the Arctic there are very practical issues that are going on up there every day that require us to manage a changing environment a changing economic structure and decisions are made every day and there was some talk earlier on about what can the United States do unilaterally in advance of some of these very lofty goals that have been laid out for the ministerial. I thought it might be a good idea for me to catalog some of the things that are going on that we are doing. Maybe use that as a touch point for further discussion and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have for me. First of all I would not underestimate the importance of the SAR agreement. In fact this is embedded in a very long standing agreement that the United States has had with Canada and the UK for many many years. In fact decades old and it patterns on the fact that search and rescue is a unity of effort issue for everybody in this globe and safety of life at sea and safety of life in general is something we need to focus on. We've had a long standing agreement with Canada to assist each other in search and rescue now that is extending into the Arctic and that is exactly the right way to do that. I will give you one vignette that I think is particularly poignant. During the evacuation in New Orleans and the rescue that followed that and the devastation hurricane Katrina the Coast Guard moved every helicopter that it had down there that wasn't needed someplace else and we exercised our agreement with Canada and moved Canadian Cormorant Helicopters down to New England that stood the search and rescue watch in our own country when we moved our helicopter south to New Orleans and we did that without any prior approval or higher level decision making because it was already embedded in agreement so what these agreements allow you to do is act quickly, flow forces, not get bogged down and getting higher level approvals or political input when it is clearly a case of life is in danger but I would say this, the degree of difficulty during search and rescue in the Arctic is significant. You'll all remember last year we had a cruise ship that became disabled a few hundred miles south west of San Diego and that became a major event that involved the US aircraft carrier the Coast Guard cutter transferring food over and trying to maintain the quality life safety of life on that ship while it was finally brought back to San Diego I would ask you to envision that happening a couple hundred miles north of Point Barrow when the nearest places you can take a large draft ship in are Dutch Harbor and Kodiak which are depending on where you're at are 900 to 1100 miles away the nearest port is Gnome and the constraining draft is 21 feet there so this notion of being able to carry out these activities even if there's an agreement are going to require facilities infrastructure and forward basing I think the most brilliant example I can give you is Nuuk think about having to run an operation out of where they're holding this meeting where there are not enough beds in town to hold a ministerial meeting if we were to stage off the North Shore of Alaska off the North Slope in Barrow once you get over 30 or 40 people into that town you have maxed out the bed space and the nearest infrastructure to run an operation off the North Slope of Alaska is over in Dead Horse where it's a northern terminus of the oil line it would have to be there that is only a large amount of infrastructure that is not near anything and this is irrespective of what the oil companies may do to meet their requirements of the permit to be able to explore for oil out there I'm talking about what we would need to do to establish command and control and a presence and oversight which was such a significant issue during BP and be able to do that as well and one of the ways you will have to do that since the water is so shallow off the North Slope you will have to do that on vessels and any vessel operating up there even in the summer is going to encounter ice because it is not ice free there is ice floating around up there and given certain wind conditions you can actually have pack ice form in the summer and it has in the past actually threatened local fishing vessels and other vessels that have been up there so this notion of forward presence and being able to establish and operate a command and control system up there ice breakers have been raised several times we have punted this down the road through a number of administrations and the day of reckoning is coming when we will no longer have capability to be deployed with ice strengthened vessels up there and if we have to do anything in an environment we will have to be operating out of Point Barrel or Dead Horse and it's a serious national issue I think we need to deal with it moving forward in regards to unilateral issues that we can take right now let me give you a couple of frameworks by which we should consider this the first one is National Security Presidential Directive 66 there is an official policy on the Arctic there is in my view adequate guidance on where we need to be going this National Security Presidential Directive was painstakingly staffed and worked at the interagency level for 18 months leading up to January 2009 when it was signed by President Bush just a few days before he left office and then affirmed by the current administration so what we have is a National Security Presidential Directive that lays out our goals in the Arctic related to environment, energy commerce, security has been ratified or basically accepted by two different administrations and I would suggest if we need a pathway to move forward while we are dealing with international constructs we need to look no farther than NSPD 66 it is there on the books I think we just need to follow it the second one is the work completed by the interagency task force on ocean policy last year that resulted in the establishment of the National Oceans Council and the establishment of the concept that we will deal with marine spatial planning based on ecosystem based management as Secretary Steinberg indicated and there were some comments made I think what we need to do we do not need to accede to a treaty and we do not have to have the agreement to implement policies and processes in our country allow us to move towards ecosystem based management and marine spatial planning as somebody who worked 39 years in the Coast Guard and dealt with conflicting uses of the water out there whether it is right whales in New England versus offshore LNG terminals or shipping lanes there are many many reasons why we need to move forward and start looking at marine spatial planning as a way to rationalize the use of the oceans and take into account ecosystem based management which is one of the goals of this ministerial moving forward some of the issues that we have addressed unilaterally with the Russians and that came up as well one of them is a traffic separation schemes in the Bering Straits traffic separation schemes are the equivalent of making traffic lanes in the ocean now obviously we can't put white dots out there yellow lines but we can put on charts, electronic charts and by international treaty the international maritime organization established lanes where vessels going in certain directions have to remain within a certain area this is done in places like the English Channel the approaches to New York, the approaches to Boston every major port in this world have traffic separation schemes they are almost the equivalent of the different levels we put aircraft on when they are approaching airports and flying across the country the Coast Guard is in the process right now talking with the Russian government on establishing a vessel separation scheme for the Bering Strait this would allow northbound vessels on the right side southbound vessels on the right side separate them, there are two islands there there are some depth of water issues but the more you can get the traffic moving in the same direction and not near each other you reduce the risk of a collision and the catastrophic results that could accompany that when you have bunker fuel or any other kind of hazardous cargo that might be carried in addition there are a lot of issues going on in the International Maritime Organization right now for those of you who are not familiar with it the International Maritime Organization is the Maritime Equivalent of the International Civil Aviation Organization which is a subset of the United Nation and this deals with issues of safety of life at sea, maritime pollution and so forth I think Secretary Steinberg was correct we need to understand where the IMO is at in terms of global governance in relation to pollution ship operations and the Arctic and that needs to be harmonized with where we go with the Arctic commission and how we work together on a governance process but I will tell you right now the IMO is aligned with the law of the sea treaty on many issues and there's a uniformity of approach and policy on how we move forward there but things like requirements for ice strength and hull so you minimize a chance if a vessel does have a problem up there that there will be a problem in the design of the ship is one thing we move forward on I would add one other thing that I think is very important it hasn't gone a lot of notice we're in the process of electing the new secretary general for IMO right now and the U.S. has a candidate and this will be coming to fruition in the next two or three months the council at IMO will elect the new secretary general the U.S. candidate is Jeffrey Lance L-A-N-T-Z he's a member of the senior executive service for the United States Coast Guard deals with regulatory affairs and joined me when I led the U.S. delegation IMO and the two trips that I made over there when I was coming on moving forward another thing we have done unilaterally and in partnership but below the level of the Arctic Council are two Coast Guard fora one is the North Atlantic Coast Guard forum and the other one is the North Pacific Coast Guard forum the North Pacific Coast Guard forum has been working for nearly 14 years now there's an annual meeting of principles followed by scheduling the drills, multilateral operations and exercises my first year is common on 2006 Sweden hosted the first ever North Atlantic Coast Guard forum the common members of both of those are Canada Russia and the United States this offers the opportunity for bilateral discussions on things like traffic separation schemes, search and rescue agreements and evolving our oil spill response doctrine and I would tell you this we don't need permission to engage on international oil spill response it is covered by treaties and IMO they're required to do that it is consistent with the tenets and the law of the sea treaty and for everybody's information when there was such a discussion during the BP oil spill regarding whether or not that oil will become entrained in what they call the loop current be carried down through the Straits of Florida and around while we thought that was a very low probability based on the hydrographics and the predictions provided to us by NOAA we took the precaution of reaching out and actually did bilateral meetings with Cuba and the Bahamas on how we might proceed under international treaties should there be an oil spill so we're not prohibited from cooperating and we should cooperate and move forward finally they talked about sensing in the area one of the big challenges we had in the Gulf of Mexico following the spill was we did not have enough what they would call a characterization of the Gulf as a baseline from which to determine if there were any changes caused by the oil itself we have areas in the Arctic right now that have never we've never had access to in terms of surface currents because it was covered with ice you know it characterized the exact nature of the water and that will lead you to be able to predict what the fate of oil might be based on the temperature, salinity and so forth so I think the issue of sensing up there which is currently being governed under the Arctic Council is something we need to move forward on we can't have too much information about what the baseline characteristics are of that water up there moving forward I think that should continue if you take a look at all of that that's a fairly robust set of activities that does not require any senate ratification doesn't require a consensus to move forward with the Arctic Council I think it's something we need to move forward and all of it all of it is consistent with the national security presidential directive 66 which lays this all out and organizes it in terms of policy for the federal government moving forward so with that I'd be happy to take any questions you might have for me that are more directed at the maritime side or whatever you'd like Josh? Thank you Josh Rogan foreign policy magazine we just heard Deputy Secretary Steinberg say that the administration was waiting for the senate to tell them when it was a good time to push for ratification of the law of the CE treaty frankly at the same time we haven't seen a push from the administration to educate congressmen set the stage, publicize this issue and do the other things that would make a senate ratification more imminent or put more pressure on the senate to move forward with this issue why is that what's your take on why we haven't seen beyond in speeches lip service to the effect that it's important real determined engagement on this law of the CE treaty what two and a half years into this administration thank you well I'll start with the proviso that I'm not a government employee anymore I think there is outreach going on I think there's discussion with the leadership I think there are the quiet behind the scene talks going on both with State Department and Department of Defense about what's going on there are very consequential issues associated with the law of the CE treaty that transcend the Arctic if I were to give you one good one to talk about in the context of being here at CSIS it's the rebuttable presumption of operational control and presence that China is creating in the South China Sea and here's the reason it's an issue and I'm not a lawyer I just stayed at Holland Express last night either the law of the sea construct as it stands right now evolved from what's called customary law or customary practice over time and codified was generally accepted governance rules for the commons if we don't enforce the law of the sea treaty as it stands right now we allow customary practice to continue it evolves into accepted practice that goes beyond the limits of the treaty that isn't particularly applicable in the Arctic although it could be but it's very very important that we understand that that becomes the baseline governing structure for the maritime commons whether it's the Arctic the South China Sea or the Torres Straits that separate Australia from the from the islands to the north of it so the causes there I know the conversations are going on I'm not privy to exactly what's going on on a day-to-day basis because I'm not in government right now I certainly have my personal urging and the op-ed that was written by the three of us John Hamery Dick Armatage myself lays out very clearly that this is the way we need to go John Farrell from the Arctic Research Commission you've called in the past for new icebreakers in the Arctic when you were coming on Coast Guard has spent a lot of time thinking in this they have the high latitude study who hasn't seen the light of day yet our two pollers are coming up to their 40th year actually once decommissioned what's it going to take for Coast Guard to get the budget to get a older class heavy icebreaker well I'm not here to advocate for the Coast Guard budget I will tell you this that the answer I was given this goes clear back to when I was the budget director in the Coast Guard in 1996 as a one-star admiral is that we need a clear policy on which the base requirements to take a look where this fleet is going I would tell you that NSPD-66 is the policy and frankly every time I try to have this discussion inside OMB there's another policy clarification that's needed you know I don't work in government anymore but quite frankly OMB is tone deaf on this issue next question I'm Bill Mote with Senator Begich and you talked about some of the difficulties in responding to Arctic oil spills and just some of the logistics basics people having a place to eat and sleep I wonder if you could comment on the role of communications and telecommunications in that as well so in addition to having a place to eat and sleep they need to communicate and how important is it for the on-scene people to be able to reach back through telephone and internet to the rest of the nation and sort of what the state of play is on those telecommunication capabilities in the Arctic now well the austere conditions up there also relate to command and control communications normal short range operations are VHFFM or line of sight you can actually go in and create systems that can do that and repeater systems you can actually come in and deploy that we start talking about long range communications up there where you have to follow the curvature of the earth and it's not line of sight you have to move up to either really low frequency or high frequency or go to space based systems where you're going up and down through ultra high frequencies a lot of that infrastructure does not exist or if it exists is marginal related to that we've had units up there for the past five years now operating off the north slope those are challenges we will probably have to bring it with us when we come and there are no immediate plans like to increase the satellite coverage up there or build the kind of infrastructure because just getting some place and putting permanent infrastructure there and building a tower that you might need is cost prohibitive and so I think the notion of how we can get a deployable command and control system up there and use it when we need to is very very important now if you can fly it in and put it on the ground and create the infrastructure at the time that's great but what's really handy is if it floats April, Steve Flanagan from CSIS I wondered if you could comment on how you see from an operational perspective the prospects for greater cooperation with the other Arctic literal nations on maritime security, safety search and rescue efforts and also how do you see the needs of looking from a more national perspective in terms of our ability both in the surveillance and reconnaissance area but to the extent you could talk about it but also the ability to operate in that environment how well positioned is the United States to ensure advancement of some of the goals that Deputy Secretary Steinberg discussed in his intervention well as I said earlier we have tremendous relationships with the countries that are up there now and in fact we coordinate search and rescue every day with the Russians and we do a lot of cooperation regarding fisheries enforcement and we work a boundary line together and there's a famous place called the Donut Hole where the two EZ's don't quite meet so you can sit in the middle of international waters and you can go into Russian waters or US waters and it's a cat and mouse game up there and we work very closely with our counterpart and the counterpart to the US Coast Guard in Russia by the way is the Russian border guard it doesn't follow a chain of command up to their military organization their chain of command goes to the FSB which is an interesting relation we have a very close relationship with the Canadian Coast Guard we do annual exercises with them we also have protocols for dealing with not only search and rescue but oil spills as well we recently have begun to incorporate into the United States Canadian UK SAR agreement to pull Iceland into that too by just adding an appendix to that agreement I think sooner or later that agreement that currently exists should be the format by which they build to the agreement that's assigned and that's certainly the intent and the way it's going so I don't think there's any problem with cooperation I don't think there's any problem with joint exercises and joint operations the question is what do you bring to the table when the event occurs it gets back to the earlier discussion about capability and capacity your ability to forward stage and your ability to actually be operationally effective when you need to be up there we have started what we call Arctic domain awareness flights where we're actually flying aircraft up there but there are issues related to that too if you fly a C-130 far enough north you find out you have to have heaters in the fuel tanks otherwise the fuel at minus 40 starts becoming solid the aircraft that we have working in the lower latitudes aren't necessarily made to operate up there some of our helicopters don't have de-icing capability some of them do we know now that if we're going to go up there we need the ones with de-icing capability there's a question of then capacity and inventory of airframes around so it all gets back in terms of hardware, infrastructure and capability regarding command and control and everybody's going to throw everything they got into a problem when it occurs we do that now and I don't think it's a matter of relationships doctrine protocol because that's pretty much laid out and I believe they're sufficient authority and policy in international agreements even acting under the the structure of the law of the sea treaty and then through IMO and our international search and rescue agreements are already signatory too I don't think that's an issue hardware, infrastructure, command and control for projection capability thank you Admiral Allen I'm Arnie Fugilovic with Senator Murkowski's office and I would like to say that she is intending to attend the Artic Council Ministerial and Nuke I've heard reports that there could be at least a dozen ships across the northern sea route down through the Bering Strait this summer including one this month including a fully laden oil tanker nickel tankers LNG tankers and freighters do you think that the U.S. is at all prepared for 400% increase in ships through the northern sea route over last year? well it's a matter of what's the acceptable risk for the gain made by the economic movement of those goods I would tell you this based on the shipping companies that I've talked to a lot of those passages of those ships are proof of concept trying to learn more about the navigation routes what are the risks associated with doing that I was in Denmark a couple years ago with Gary Ruffin we met with the AP Muller company that runs the worldwide shipping conglomerate if you will and given the just-in-time delivery related to containers and things like that there are certain things right now that are prohibited from making that route something that people would rely on annually what they are doing they've started out with bulk carriers where you're carrying cargos like ore or coal and it's a proof of concept but there's not a just-in-time issue related to that cargo and I think what you're slowly going to see them do is take bulk or commodity type cargos and move it through there for the purpose of testing the navigation the communication systems and then seeing how they can operate where we need to consider things like you need some extra watch stand-in or pilotage when you go through certain waters and again this notion of the traffic separation schemes where now it's voluntary I think we really need to move at best speed to do that and separate that traffic moving forward so as far as the risk associated with that if you're going to have more traffic there is some elevation of risk how far that risk is elevated I think it's difficult to tell right now I think the traffic that level of traffic is not a huge amount of traffic compared to other parts of the world if you're looking at the Straits of Malacca the tourist straits or the English Channel or places like that we certainly ought to be learning everything we can from those transits and we ought to know as much as we can about how their navigation communications systems perform and how the vessels perform themselves what kind of ice did they encounter if they did do they have ice strength in holes I think those are the things we ought to be concentrating on Thank you very much folks Thank you very much Admiral Hanna I'd like to bring the session to a close then expressing our sincere gratitude to Admiral Allen and to Deputy Secretary Steinberg for joining us I think their presence, their thoughts their actions over these many years is the clearest possible affirmation of the importance of this issue to our national interest I'd like also to thank each of you whether you're from the diplomatic community Congress, congressional offices scientific community or civil society for the work that you have done over these many years to elevate this issue and in fact to create a clear path this is an extraordinary accomplishment and incredible contributions from each and every one of you and I'd finally like to thank our great partners CSIS for the partnership that has led us to carry out these three seminars and we certainly have every intention not only of continuing our work with CSIS on the Arctic issues but a broader range of foreign policy issues so with that let me close thanking all of you once again Admiral