The Economist - USA (2020-05-16)

42 Europe The EconomistMay 16th 2020

2 restaurant turnover fell by 70% in the

monththroughApril22nd.ElisabethPe-

ters,whois 67 andlivesononeoftheis-

landsoffthewestcoastofSweden,believes

therehasbeena “hugechange”inpeople’s

behaviour, aligned with official advice.

Somepeoplearenotseeingtheirgrand-

childrenatallnow,shesays.Whenher

childrenandgrandchildrenvisiteveryone

staysoutsidealldayandkeepsata distance

fromherandherhusband.

Onfirstglance,Swedenseemstohave

paida heavypriceforchoosinglessstrin-

gentmeasurestokeeppeopleapart.ByMay

13thithadrecorded 33 covid-19deathsper

100,000 people,a rate more thanthree

timesthatof Denmarkandseventimes

higherthaninFinland,which hadshut

schoolsandrestaurantsinMarch.Evenso,

Sweden’s mortality rate has beenmuch

lower than that in Britain, France and

Spain. Swedes largely approve of their

country’sapproach,withtwo-thirdssaying

inpollsthatthegovernmentishandling

theepidemicwell.

TimewilltellwhetherSwedenchosea

betterstrategythanothercountries,says

Jussi Sane of the Finnish Institute for

HealthandWelfare,becausethecostsof

lockdowns—intermsnotonlyofeconomic

damagebutalsoharmtopeople’smental

health—are yet to be tallied. European

countries willseemore covid-19 deaths

whenpeoplestartmovingabout,because

theshareofthoseinfectedsofar(andthus

presumably immune, at least for some

time)isstillinthesingledigits.MrGie-

seckereckonsthatStockholmwillreach

“herdimmunity”,the40-60%rateofinfec-

tion needed to halt the spread of the

coronavirus,byJune.Hethinksthatwhen

Europeancountriescount deathsayear

fromnowtheirfigureswillbesimilar,re-

gardless of themeasures takenand the

numbersnow.Theeconomicdamagein

Sweden,however,maybesmaller. 7

T

he barents sea is not a hospitable

place for visitors. “Frequent snow

storms...blotted out the land for hours on

end,” wrote an unlucky British submariner

sent there to snoop around during the cold

war. “We faced the beastliness of spray

which turned to ice even before it struck

our faces.” American and British warships

have not exercised there since the 1980s—

until they returned last week.

On May 1st a flotilla of two American de-

stroyers, a nuclear submarine, a support

ship and a long-range maritime-patrol air-

craft, plus a British frigate, practised their

sub-hunting skills in the Norwegian Sea.

That is not out of the ordinary; natohas

been rediscovering its cold-war interest in

the Arctic in recent years. In 2018, for in-

stance, an American aircraft-carrier sallied

into the Arctic Circle for the first time in 30

years, during a huge exercise in Norway.

But on May 4th some of those ships

broke off and sailed farther north into the

Barents Sea, along with a third destroyer,

remaining there until veDay on May 8th.

Russia’s navy, whose powerful Northern

Fleet is based at Severomorsk around the

corner, was told in advance, but still greet-

ed its visitors with live torpedo exercises.

The decision to dispatch destroyers was

a bold one. One aim was to show that co-

vid-19 has not blunted swords, despite the

virus knocking out an American and a

French carrier. Another was to assert free-

dom of navigation in the face of Russia’s

imposition of rules on the Northern Sea

Route (nsr), a passage between the Barents

Sea and the Pacific Ocean that is increas-

ingly navigable as ice melts. Although last

week’s exercise did not enter the nsr, it

hints at a willingness to do so in the future.

More broadly, the Arctic is a growing

factor in natodefence plans. Russia has

beefed up its Northern Fleet in recent

years. The fleet’s submarine activity is at its

highest level since the cold war, and the

country’s new boats are quiet and well-

armed. As a result, the alliance’s “acoustic

edge”—its ability to detect subs at longer

ranges than Russia can—“has narrowed

dramatically”, reckons the International

Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank.

The main task of Russian subs is defen-

sive: to protect a “bastion”, the area in the

Barents Sea and Sea of Okhotsk where its

own nuclear-armed ballistic-missile sub-

marines patrol. But natoadmirals worry

that, in a conflict, some might pose a wider

threat to the alliance. A separate Russian

naval force known as the Main Directorate

of Deep-Sea Research (gugi, in its Russian

acronym) could also target the thicket of

undersea cables that cross the Atlantic.

The challenge is a familiar one. For

much of the cold war, natoallies sought to

bottle up the Soviet fleet in the Arctic by es-

tablishing a picket across the so-called

giukgap, a transit route between Green-

land, Iceland and Britain that was strung

with underwater listening posts. The gap is

now back in fashion and natois reinvest-

ing in anti-submarine capabilities after de-

cades of neglect.

But defence in depth may not suffice. A

new generation of Russian ship-based mis-

siles, capable of striking natoships or ter-

ritory from far north of the giukgap, repre-

sents “a dramatically new and challenging

threat”, concludes the iiss. Similar con-

cerns led the Reagan administration to

adopt a more offensive naval posture,

sending forces into the Soviet Union’s mar-

itime bastion—“bearding the bear in its

lair”, as a British mponce put it. “I’m struck

by similarities with the 1980s,” says Niklas

Granholm of the Swedish Defence Re-

search Agency. “A forward maritime strat-

egy to get up close and personal with the

Russian Northern Fleet, rather than meet

them farther south.” 7

America and Britain mount a show of force in the Arctic

Naval strategy

Northern fights

ICELAND

CANADA

RUSSIA

Barents

Sea

BeringStrait

PACI F I C

OCEAN

ATL A NTI C

OCEAN Alaska

UNITED

Greenland STATES

DENMARK

Svalbard

NORWAY

Arc

ticC

ircle

Sea of Okhotsk

NorthSea

Norwegian

Sea

ARCTICOCEAN

NorthPole

Greenland-

Iceland-UK

(GIUK) gap

NATO members

Severomorsk

(NorthernFleetHQ)

Kaliningrad

(Baltic Fleet HQ)

NORWAY

DENMARK

BRITAIN

Northern

searoute

North-east

passage

North-east

passage

750 km