China seeks “bridgeheads” in Europe as far north as the Arctic waters, U.S. officials are warning allies in the lead-up to a pair of major diplomatic summits.
“It’s an area of enormous concern for us,” a senior administration official told reporters Friday.
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That wariness about Chinese expansion in Europe will take Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on a tour of meetings with European officials next week. He’ll chart a course from Budapest, the heart of central Europe and a hub of old Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the seat of the modern European Union in Brussels, and end in the capital of Europe’s least densely populated country, Reykjavik. The Iceland visit indicates the scope of China’s ambitions to gain influence in waters long dominated by the NATO alliance.
“[The Chinese are] certainly creating the potential, should they wish to do so in the future, to use military capabilities in the Arctic,” the senior administration official said. “We see Iceland as a place where the Chinese would like to develop a bridgehead, including through port capabilities, and doing so would position Iceland to be a natural hub for China vis-a-vis the Arctic.”
China’s interest in the Arctic is rising with the temperature in the northern clime, which has raised hopes in Beijing of a “Polar Silk Road” through seas that past navigators found choked by ice. “As a result of global warming, the Arctic shipping routes are likely to become important transport routes for international trade,” a recent Chinese foreign ministry white paper on Beijing’s Arctic policy observed.
The melting of the ice could also result in easier access to energy resources in the region. Some American analysts suspect China’s only Arctic ambitions are economic.
“China wants to dominate militarily the Indo-Pacific, but they do not have a desire to engage in the same type of global power projection activities that the U.S. engages in,” Oriana Skylar Mastro, an expert on the Chinese military at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “If China decides that it’s equally important for them to be able to do this globally, then we can just dominate them in that realm.”
Iceland helped China gain “observer status” at the Arctic Council in 2013 and established a joint Arctic Research Observatory on the mid-Atlantic island country in November. China also has sought to invest in an airport in Greenland, an economic project that U.S. officials worry would double as a military platform for the Communist power.
Pointing to Iceland, the senior administration official said, “It’s a classic example of a place where the United States needs to show up more often diplomatically in order to make it clear to our allies that they have our support and to give them alternatives to Chinese courtship.”
