Writer Neil Shea profiled Tokyo in the April issue.
Photographer Louie Palu received a Guggenheim
Fellowship to photograph the military in the
Arctic. This is his first story for the magazine.“Man, look at this.” He spread his arms wide,
taking in the empty tundra, the rangers, the paper
Russians. “What would anyone do up here? Tanks
driving around, soldiers, planes?” He turned to
Atqittuq. “Whaddya say, Marv? You ready to fight
the Russians?” Atqittuq grinned up from his note-
book. “Too much hassle.”
“From a military standpoint, it doesn’t make
sense, eh?” Lushman said. “You’ve seen how
much time we spend
out here just doing
basic shit. You’ve seen
how often our stuff
breaks down, how
much work it takes just
to survive. Ain’t no war
comin’ up here.”
The Canadian Rang-
ers had been created during the first Cold War,
when military planners, worried about ballistic
missiles and the space race, had looked at the
Arctic and seen a vulnerable back door. But the
rangers themselves were never intended to battle
invading armies. Even now, the eyes and ears of
the north are far more likely to watch for passing
ships: the Chinese icebreakers, cargo vessels, and
cruise ships that are expected to appear in ever
greater numbers as ice disappears.
Paul Ikuallaq, one of the rangers on the firing
line, had been volunteering with the program
for some 30 years. During the Soviet era he had
helped train NATO troops. “It was kind of a shit
show,” he said.
A barrel-chested, tough-love kind of guy with a
rich laugh, Ikuallaq also didn’t believe war would
come to the north. The kabloona soldiers he had
taught over the years all went home with ice-
numbed fingers and toes, reminders of just how
bad war in the cold would be.
“Those guys, some of them didn’t even know
when they had frostbite on their faces,” Ikuallaq
said, laughing. “They didn’t know they could get
even whiter.”
While none of the NATO officials I spoke to
believed Russia would launch a war in the north,
several suggested a conflict might begin some-
where in the south and eventually spread to the
Arctic. Some cited Russia’s violent takeover of
Crimea and China’s aggressive moves in the
South China Sea.
But many outside the military believe there’s
still hope for a different Arctic, one that looks
less like a Cold War battlefield and more like
Antarctica or space. In those regions, both of them
also frontiers, international agreements—and dis-
tance—dampen the effect of political struggles.
“Countries that have difficulty elsewhere find
themselves having to cooperate in cold, dark,
dangerous, expensive regions,” said Michael
Byers, a professor at the University of British
Columbia. “This necessity of cooperation leads
to a practice of cooperation.”N OUR LAST EVENING IN
camp, well after the sun
had set, a small group of
young Inuit roared in on
snowmobiles. The rangers
greeted them, cigarettes
began to glow. It was cold
but not that cold. The men
had been hunting caribou somewhere in the
west, without luck.
Suddenly one of the newcomers stumbled into
the crowd. He was upset and told of a young man
who had been riding in the sled he was towing.
The passenger had disappeared. He must have
fallen off somewhere out on the tundra. Marvin
and other rangers asked for more details, but the
young man could only shrug and point. Here was
the sort of search-and-rescue mission the rangers
had trained for. But before Atqittuq could organize
it, a pair of rangers suited up and throttled off.
We watched their headlights streak into the
darkness, grow fainter, vanish. Then most of us
wandered back to our tents to wait and listen
for the whine of returning machines. We made
tea. Marvin seemed concerned but not overly so;
the missing Inuit had been raised in the Arctic
and knew what to do if he found himself alone
on the ice. I thought of the bears spotted a cou-
ple of days before and tried to imagine what the
young man was doing out there. Maybe he was
singing hymns. jRUSSIA HAS BECOME THE DOMINANT ARCTIC
POWER, WITH THE LARGEST ICEBREAKER
FLEET AND DOZENS OF MILITARY BASES.
THE NEW COLD WAR 73