Dept. of Defense sends envoy to Nome to roll out Arctic Strategy

The U.S. Department of Defense sent a high-ranking official, Greg Pollock, Principal Director of the Arctic and Global Resilience Policy Office, to Nome last week. His visit was an engagement effort to roll out the DoD’s new Arctic Strategy, which was released in late July. The new Arctic Strategy acts as implementation of the new National Strategy for the Arctic Region released by the federal government two years ago; it’s stated aim is to enhance, engage, and exercise in a way that “will pursue an end state that preserves the Arctic as a stable region in which the U.S. homeland remains secure and vital national interests are safeguarded.”
Pollock visited Anchorage, Kotzebue, Fairbanks and Nome.
While in Nome on Thursday, August 1, Pollock sat down with the Nugget for an interview.
Pollock explained the purpose of his trip was to come to Alaska and conduct discussions with a wide range of state, local and Alaska Native community leaders to garner their feedback on the strategy as the DoD moves to implement it.
Pollock had spent the morning with City of Nome leadership, and he was set to meet with local Native Tribal Corporation entities in the afternoon.
The visit was timely to address engagement with local communities, a day after the USS John L. Canley, a massive war ship, to the surprise of many Nomeites, including city officials, appeared on the horizon as part of the U.S. Special Forces Operation Polar Dagger, which seemed to be fulfilling the “exercising” part of the new strategy.
In reference to the meeting with Nome mayor and city managers, as well as the community hullabaloo made from the recent military Operation Polar Dagger with its low-flying choppers and huge, ominous ship off the coast, Pollock said the conceit of improved communication lines was something that he’d take back to D.C. with him. He emphasized that he’d make sure that the DoD has the right communication mechanisms in place to “ensure that local communities know what’s going on in their backyard.”
Besides the commotion over Operation Polar Dagger, the recent record of communication from the federal government agencies to the area have been lacking when reflecting such incidents as U.S. trawlers getting caught in Russian military exercises in 2020; a Japanese defense vessel, JDS Kashima, on a cadet training missing in cold climates surprised Nomeites when the 450’ boat showed up off shore, also in 2020; and, most recently, when the USGS and USFWS chartered research vessel, the S/V Norseman, got stuck in the sea ice earlier this summer and sat in peril for weeks without news of the impending danger being shared with nearby communities.
Pollock emphasized that the new Arctic Strategy was borne by increased activity in the region by the People’s Republic of China – likely referring to two separate incidents this summer in which PRC bombers and PRC warships were seen in U.S. exclusive maritime economic zone – as well as the simultaneous “erosion in the relationship between the West and the Russian Federation”.  
He also noted the “historic” decision by Sweden and Finland to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
And that was merely the political. Pollock also cited climate change as a major impetus for an updated Arctic Strategy.
A warmer ocean with less ice could “lead to a more crowded and conceivably contested Arctic.”
Just last winter, after a two-decade study revealed the first-ever map of the seafloor in and around the U.S. exclusive maritime economic zone in the Arctic, the U.S. claimed rights to an additional nearly one million square kilometers (about 386,000 square miles) of ocean area between an area in the Bering Sea and a separate one, in the Arctic Ocean. The claims overlap with both current Russian and Canadian claims to the Arctic seabed.
When pressed about the possibility of military assets placed in Nome, Pollock was prudish about being time specific, however, he noted that the DoD will be watching “very closely as to how the security environment up here continues to evolve.”
Then he extolled the possibilities granted from a 40’ dredged port, which “will enable Coast Guard cutters, and conceivably, even U.S. Naval destroyers, to pay call here at Nome.”
Pollock gave a future vision of Nome’s expanded port as a good strategic option both for “the state’s economic development and […] the National Security of the United States.”
Pollock expounded a bit about enhanced regional power for the U.S. in the Arctic, explaining that the DoD intended to “be prepared for essentially a changing map and new threats that could emerge in this kind of increasingly accessible domain.”
The word “domain” came up repeatedly during the interview, mostly in reference to “domain awareness”, which is a term that is also used frequently in the Arctic Strategy. Basically, it means intelligence, or knowledge, and that can come in the form of lots of sensors and science knowledge, and that intelligence can also come from open lines of communication with allies and advisories alike.
 “Russia is, of course, the largest Arctic nation. It has legitimate interests, both economic and security, in the Arctic, but we need to ensure that they understand our intent and that we are aware of their intent,” he said.
The interview briefly pivoted to ice breakers, as it was announced in July, that the U.S. is entering into an ice breaker production agreement with Canada and Finland. However, Pollock was quick to point out that ice breakers fall under the Department of Homeland Security, not the DoD, yet he still expressed their importance for the development of the region.
The new Arctic Strategy comments more than once about the importance of Alaska Native knowledge and cooperation.
Pollock drove this point home by noting respect for their ability to thrive in such trying conditions, as well as mentioning the importance of enhanced communication with tribes.
Pollock met with tribal liaisons at Fort Wainwright during his trip and they left an impression. Both in the sense of learning from and of respecting their way of life. Then he expanded that view internationally, saying that Indigenous Arctic peoples all over the globe have important knowledge and views to share.
The Nugget inquired about the new Arctic Strategy’s declaration of the need for the DoD to create stronger ties to the scientific community, like with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Specifically, there has been a drastic degradation of weather observations in rural Alaska over the last twenty years, culminating in rural National Weather Stations in Nome and other hub communities losing their manned observations in 2019. It was pointed out that there are currently no official snow fall measurements taken in rural Alaska.
While demurring from project specific programs, Pollock did agree of the importance of investing in science, especially in the era of climate change. He said that when in Fairbanks that he visited the Permafrost Research Tunnel Facility, which, while in operation since the 1960s, just received a huge amount of money this year to build a new 4,300 sq ft research facility beside it, which had a groundbreaking ceremony in June.
Pollock mentioned the importance of understanding permafrost in relation to the new port here. “Ensuring that both any would-be military construction and certainly all civilian construction, there’s going to have to be a lot of analysis on where to build, how to build in, as not only the geopolitical circumstances change, but the geophysical circumstances literally beneath our feet continue to change day in and day out,” he said.
After echoing the theme of the new Arctic Strategy of imminent change to the region was soon whisked out of the Nugget office by his team to go meet with tribal entities for the afternoon.
He would head back across the continent to D.C. when he’s not working for the DoD, he is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, specializing in climate change.