Record of an Arctic War
Playing at War in the True North Strong and Free
Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, recognizes the dissolution of His Majesty's Government as it has existed hitherto, and consents to a new organization of North America, without the participation of those varied powers foreign to the Continent which have together endangered the fraternal friendship of Canada and the other United States. So begins the Canadian surrender, preserving national sovereignty only nominally, ceding full security control to those Other United States for a slate of guarantees and benefits. How did we get here?
From March through May we played a game. It was a very long game, with many details: some five-hundred pages of rules and datatables, playing out in approximate-real time (i.e. one real day equals one game day). It was a wargame, for which we had harnessed every piece of simulatory minutiae, every RAND Corporation exercise, every half-disclosed professional simulation we could find, to take a best-guess at the coming war for the True North. This was our second such game, and I refereed: so every few days I logged in, and checked up on orders coming in. Then I spent some four or five hours moving little NATO symbols around on Google Earth satellite layers, rolling a few hundred dice, consulting a few dozen data tables, and preparing my reports for the varied powers contesting the Arctic Ocean.
In this sort of wargame — sometimes called by the German name Kriegsspiel — there is one fundamental rule, above all the other rules and documents: whatever would happen in real life, should happen in the game. Well, have you ever tried working through a killchain by hand? This is an awfully pernicious rule. Things get very complicated, and there is no single system that can resolve all things perfectly. Instead, everyone must spend a lot of time reading, calculating, taking a best-guess at some strange phenomenon. Half of what you’d like to know is classified, and the other half is buried in a hundred different papers: so you read the papers, and the field manuals, and learn what sort of things might be plausible. You learn the constraints which structure the international system. That is to say, the constraints that have produced the modern world.
We are not, it must be emphasized, men of military background. We are women, mostly: a dozen-odd ladies scattered across the world, variously engaged in software engineering, pharmaceuticals, public policy, the arts, &c. Our efforts, which could be reasonably described as militant female-pattern aspergers, have no aggressive aspirations. Contrary to (e.g.) the RAND Corporation, I am a strict pacifist on matters of interstate conflict. Nonetheless, the RAND Corporation is run by very intelligent people, who are closer to levers of power than I’ll ever be. So we ought to take them seriously. In fact, we ought to take everyone in the ‘military industrial complex’ very seriously.
Of course, serious does not mean uncritical: these people are spooks, and spooks will happily lie to you about everything. Nevertheless, they seldom lie about their priors and techniques, which are too entrenched, too omnipresent to conceal. One might therefore strive to recreate a certain way of thinking, a certain approach to the problems of warfighting, which dominates their work, and the work of all nut-and-bolts analysts in the real halls of power. You could then figure how the people that matter think — what sort of bargains they’re making.
So, that’s what we did. Here’s a speculative history of the terrible world to come. Not the only possible war, or even a particularly likely war: but a war nonetheless, which could conceivably happen in the next five years, and rip apart everything we thought we knew for certain. If you’d like the biweekly OS-INT reports and “geolocated” unit layers, they’re available here on the Asphodel website. The reports to the individual powers were a little more informal, a little more Q&A. If there’s sufficient interest, we’re working on a proper after action report — but ‘til then, this piece should tell you everything you need to know to follow the situation in general terms.
How to start? Well, first needed to catch up to the terrible future. For our scenario, I spent some time digging through climate projections. I figure a mostly ice free arctic is possible as early as 2030, in an exceptionally hot year. Taking a page from a RAND exercise, we therefore played two pregame turns: a five-year investment and reorganization turn (what sort of things are your generals asking the government for?) and a six month steady-state deployment turn (where are your boats patrolling?) There was no particular fixed alliance structure: the varied arctic powers (the Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Danish, Norwegians, and Russians) were free to push in this or that direction within realistic constraints. The Euro-Canadian members of the Arctic Council were politically bound to work together, and the generals could only push for one truly unpopular policy, but otherwise the political establishment was relatively pliable, within budgetary constraints.
Some of this pregame turn has already come to pass. The Canadian pivot to Europe, and the deployment of the French Jeanne d'Arc task group to the Greenland coast, were well-anticipated by our Arctic Council players, who used much of their pre-game political capital to organize a French Arctic Shield in Svalbard, Greenland, and Iqaluit. The election of Prime Minister Mark Carney was, from a referee standpoint, likewise an easy call. Other dynamics are plausible, but basically up in the air. The Americans, for example, drove a decisive rapprochement with Russia, and forced the rest of the international order into an uneasy countervailing alliance. The Russians, for their part, tried to well-position themselves for a period of hybrid warfare in Eastern Europe. China continued its focus on Belt and Road, building a constructive alliance with Tehran. All parties invested heavily in artificial intelligence, virtual reality training, and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Finally, on some matters, I simply had to take a guess. Every time some facet of the game comes true, we joke that we have ‘harnessed the lathe of heaven’ — but of course, we’re bound to get something wrong eventually. We are not, after all, trying to forecast reality. As referee, I was trying to sail things towards a plausible, provocative scenario. As players, the varied powers were trying to secure some kind of advantage with the meagre discretionary resources they were allotted (a value formulaically derived from gestalt military spending, as a practical abstraction). No one knows who will win the 2028 American Presidential election, for instance. I picked Illinois Governer J. B. Pritzker. This is not only because I think he has a good shot, but also because a Democrat driven to the Arctic by basically Realist concerns presents more generalized terrain for analysis and play, compared to (e.g.) the egomaniacal spasms of a self-obsessed billionaire. Games will never be a crystal ball: nonetheless, they can help us hone certain intuitions, and come to understand certain types of problem, which might suddenly appear with frightful urgency. This is, in any case, what our wargames are trying to do.
With our few weeks of preliminary activity complete, we were ready to begin in earnest. In the Summer of 2030, when the ice was all gone, and the trade routes opened up, and there was suddenly another ocean: then, all at once, things boiled over. I expected a limited war. We did not get a limited war. I’m starting to think this term is anachronistic.
September 1st: Chinese surface vessels conduct exercises across the Arctic circle. Under pressure from the national security apparatus, and looking to distract from political issues at home, President Pritzker orders a “police action” to re-assert American hegemony. Seven hours later, a especially stupid civilian sets the world on fire — launching, in a veritable Archduke Ferdinand Moment, a home-made rocket at an apparent Chinese vessel off the Aleutian Coast. What’s left of the Rules Based International Order decries the attack, widely viewed as a false flag. Meanwhile, Russia rushes to rhetorically defend America in the spirit of joint Arctic sovereignty. The stage is set, and one-to-one time sets in: from here, the players have full control.
Allied and Russo-American air-forces immediately go to high alert. Russia’s Eastern Military District deploys a screening force along the Manchurian border, while their remaining troops make-ready in garrison. The Arctic French Shield starts activating urban reserves in Copenhagen, Montreal, and Oslo. Various European and Central Asian powers make public statements in support of China. Excepting some equivocation from the CIS, the informal Russo-American alliance stands alone.
Just a few hours later, the largest fleet action since the Second World War is contested in the North Pacific, without aplomb or forewarning. As a Chinese carrier task force passes the Aleutian islands, a flurry of Russian hypersonic missiles strikes them from the southwest. American multirole fighters seize the moment, sweeping in from Anchorage to pummel the disorganized fleet: the Chinese carrier’s flight deck is damaged in the coordinated strike, and a Type 054 Frigate is destroyed. The retreating force proceeds southwest with speed, making contact with the interdicting Russian Pacific Fleet six hours later near the Meiji Seamount. A handful of ships are obliterated in an rapid exchange of missiles, and a dozen more vessels are lost in a series of submarine salvos. Eventually, both sides break off the fight for want of ammunition, and the Chinese disappear into the central Pacific.
Without embedded press, there is a little news to go off, and little public fanfare. Instead, there is at first a kind of kaleidoscopic effect: in the public’s estimation, nothing is really happening. Meanwhile, in back rooms, politicians trade in apocalyptica. In the coming days, a combined-arms force from the Leningrad military district deploys in good order along the eastern border of Europe, slowly pitching the continent into a paranoic frenzy. For the time being, everyone claims victory.
A lesson, then. The old order means nothing in the Arctic. This is new geopolitical terrain, and incentives cut across alliance-lines in weird, unpredictable ways. Canada, Europe, Russia, and America all want a certain kind of Arctic sovereignty. Canada, Europe, China, and America all want to protect a certain kind of distributed international maritime trade. China, Russia, and Europe all want a stable and economically productive Eurasian land market. In our game, Russia and America teamed up against the world: but it could really go any which way. There’s no reason to expect NATO or NORAD or Sino-Russian relations to survive a high arctic conflict in good order. When incentives get weird, geopolitics gets even weirder.
Case in point: on September 8th, the Americans move in force against Canada. A naval landing in New Brunswick catches everyone by surprise, as the 2nd Marine Division surges towards Moncton. Simultaneously, the American airforce establishes total air supremacy over Canada. A squadron of F35 and collection of hastily purchased Dassault Rafales is hardly a match for the many-thousand fighter strong American air force, which is in any case only partially deployed. The Canada-US border closes to through-traffic, while cyber attacks on Canadian media confuse the already chaotic situation.
Meanwhile, the 101st Airborne sweeps across the Quebec, swinging up from Bangor along a secondary axis of advance. Thirty-six hours of fighting for Quebec City’s Citadel makes martyrs of the Royal Canadian Regiment, and for a moment Canada takes heart. A little further west, heliborne Americans overrun the Canadian command in Montreal, where a group of French military liaisons are stationed. When they are regrettably gunned down in the indiscriminate close-quarters fighting, the French government is driven into a fury beyond the limits of diplomatic tolerance. In the coming days, they decide to enter the war. Meanwhile, Russian cargo planes ferry armament to Anchorage, resupplying their wayward fleet. The global alliance system has collapsed, and some strange new world is rising from its ashes.
Another lesson. Once America has paid the diplomatic price for a limited Arctic war, there is little reason to tarry around. Quietly annex Greenland, or push all the way to Ottawa? Well, in either case, the Europeans will never trust you again: you might as well take Ottawa. Two-hundred years of peace can give way in an instant, as soon as the incentive structure changes.
As dawn breaks over Halifax on September 11th, invading Marines approaching city suburbs pause to mark a morbid anniversary. Meanwhile, war comes to the eastern gate of Europe. Partisans of dubious provenance rise up in Estonia and try to seize parliament, inviting Russian security forces into the country as peacekeepers. Russia obliges, and the loyal Estonia government invokes NATO Article 5. Danish forces quickly move in to help secure Finland. Latvia, Poland, and Sweden signal strong resolve, and start to mobilize. Conversely, Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey, and the Netherlands want to stay out of the war. The whole affair is a terrible, confused mess, and fractures the already-divided European Union.
Then, another fleet action: this time, in the Atlantic. Allied forces engage the Americans in a Pyrrhic suicide charge. Hours later, the approximately-triumphant Allies announce the destruction of two American aircraft carriers. The United States refuse to acknowledge the claim as a matter of operational security. In truth, the loss is a devastating blow to American pride — but has little effect on their operational capacity, so close to home. The remaining American carriers in the Atlantic retreat, and French airborne troops sneak in through the temporary gap in their overwhelming air supremacy. The Allies have managed a momentary reprieve, at the cost one-half their Atlantic fleet.
On land, in the Prairies, the Canadian military strikes ineffectually at American Infrastructure. Convinced that the time for measured diplomacy has passed, His Majesty's Government cuts off the overland flow of oil and power to the United State. Rolling blackouts begin in the Northeast, instigating widespread protests; in response, President Pritzker mobilizes the 1st Infantry Division. Meanwhile, French–Norwegian Allied forces from Svalbard sneak across the Greenland ice in a daring one-way heliborne mission, destroying the US base at Thule and withdrawing to Iqaluit. The UN calls for a ceasefire. No one bothers to veto it — there’s hardly any point, when every party can convincingly play the part of a victimized state. Everyone just keep fighting.
China gets desperate. On September 15th, PLA marine forces land in Anchorage, catching the American public wildly off guard, and forcing JTF-AK north to Fairbanks. The Washington establishment's thoughts shift from the midterm election to principled national defence, and politicians across the spectrum fall in line with President Pritzker. Meanwhile, the nascent anti-war movement collapses under police pressure everywhere outside New England.
The United States maintain total air supremacy over North America, as the Canadians start to refuse direct air to air engagements. American multirole aircraft are henceforth free to conduct close air support missions, and simultaneously pummel the Allied fleet at sea. Despite their provocative intervention, the Chinese are slow to coordinate; without air-support, the Canadians are helpless. American forces therefore make steady progress in Quebec and the Maritimes. French forces arrive to reinforce by air and sea, but cannot get a steady foothold, and watch their wayward fleet crumble behind them.
At last, things start to fall apart. Resistance at Valcartier collapses on September 19th. American forces now have freedom of maneuver in most urban centers east of Ontario. Allied naval and resupply efforts in North America likewise seem to stall. Canadian troops converge on Montreal, but are unable to make progress, as DEVGRU blows all bridges across the St. Lawrence. Slowly but surely, the Americans entrap the bulk of the Chinese Pacific and French Atlantic fleets with a veritable fortress of seamines, confining them (respectively) to the Cook Inlet and Gulf of St. Lawrence. Estonia effectively surrenders, and Russia withdraws from the capital. Europe is left in a state of paralytic confusion, and falls into a feverish malaise.
In the early hours of September 20th, American carrier aircraft overwhelm the Canadian Pacific Fleet at sea. Meanwhile, ground-based aircraft hammer the French and Chinese from the sky. Essentially unable to flee en masse, some Chinese assets managed a piecemeal escape across the seamines to Vancouver. The bulk of the force is eliminated, reduced to two half-wrecked surface vessels. The Pacific theater is essentially lost on the spot, as the remaining Chinese Marines in Anchorage find themselves isolated and horribly out of supply. The French fared even worse, losing their entire amphibious task force to overwhelming airstrikes, and the bulk of their ground invasion force to advancing American mechanized and airmobile forces. The French and Chinese governments promptly withdraw from the war, on deeply unfavorable terms. American mountain infantry cross Niagara Falls towards Hamilton, as Prime Minister Carney resigns himself to the inevitable.
In the last hours before the armistice, another battalion of Princess Patricia's Infantry surrenders to an airmobile force ten times its size, concluding a bitter rear-guard action along the Ottawa river. The war in miniature: and now, it's over.
Where does that leave us? We must first of all admit that the nascent Canadian obsession with “arctic superpower status” is a childlike fantasy for the stupid and deranged. Even with the full support of two nuclear states, we simply could not hold America off. Romantic national insurgency is likewise a dangerous idea. Insurgents work well (and indeed, worked well in our game) when they are supported by a well supplied conventional force in a kind of hybrid warfare. They cannot emerge ex nihilo, sallying out to resist an invading enemy in a matter of one or two weeks. With a liberal application of American door-kicking expertise, the emerging Canuck Partisan was trivially delayed, and could not appear in earnest before the war became well and truly hopeless.
We should be careful not to generalize, of course. There are many other possible wars, and many other possible lessons. Still, we needn’t play pretend: some ‘bold visions’ are plainly suicidal, in the cold hard light of the desklamp, slide-rule, and compass. There are real, mathematical constraints on the application of force and in space and time. Warfighting is a material phenomenon, and it is driven by material constraints. No great quantity of esprit de corps and glorious élan can shoot down a multirole stealth fighter; for the time being, the objective superiority of the American airforce anywhere close to home is strictly overwhelming, and the American people are (in abstract) deeply invested in their national imperial project. The country is constrained by diplomacy, market dynamics, and casualty-aversion. In a brief conventional war, they can do whatever they please.
Above all else, it is therefore clear that the era of localized Great Power cabinet wars has well and truly ended. Everything is too interlinked, too intertwined: the next great power war will start off quick and furious, and although it is likely to come to a brief and conclusive end — as information asymmetry gives way to the brutal judgement of stockpiled explosive ordnance — it will be hardfought, and very nearly global. The countervailing forces on the side of deescalation are chiefly economic, and may prove unpersuasive to young America’s nascent National Christianity, or the loose cadre of Surkovian theatrical revanchists, who in either case operate chiefly in the realm of image and ideology. If there is a War for Greenland, it may quickly become a War for the Arctic. Then, a War for Canada, for Europe, for Manchuria, expanding all the while, until with the help of some definitive engagement, prudence overcomes courage; or else, we sputter into nuclear oblivion.
I have little mentioned high-tech AI, drone swarms, virtual reality, cyber war, &c. This was not really an omission. Such innovations dominated our period of prewar investment and reorganization. In the actual conflict, they were useful, but hardly ever decisive. Advanced technology can easily sink a ship, take a trenchline, and generally vary the character of tactical warfighting — but operationally, it will hardly change the shape of things to come. Instead, it will change the scale, and speed. War is no longer measured in capabilities (am I able to kill you?) but countervailing costs (how much does it cost to kill you?), and mechanized warfare in the drone era has settled into a kind of accelerating equilibrium. Things will continue as they always have: but faster, harder, and cheaper. A $2000 commercial drone can act as an ersatz strike fighter. Soon, therefore, everyone will have ten-thousand strike fighters. One can fight a new calamitous war every other week, on a shoestring budget, with Alibaba equipment.
Under such conditions, the spirit of man gives way to incomprehensibly complex systems of violence and exchange. We must find a way to live with each other, to trade with each other — quickly, desperately — as we come to understand the looming spectre of war. We cannot automate it away, with machines of perfect cobalt. We can not banish it, with some great force of national will. Rather, such spasms and innovations tend towards the grave: the omnipresent grave, which will take another million young men. They will die as they always have, clutching their guns, until we bid a last farewell to arms.
Let us chart a path to lasting peace.