The icebreaker gap

The United States and four other nations are racing to assert their rights to a bounty of natural resources and future access to an ice-free trade route across the top of the world. A real cold war, with an actual wind chill factor, is taking shape in the Arctic sea.

Global warming and climate change may eventually shave 5,000 miles and a week's sailing time through open water. The Arctic ice cap is half its size of 50 years ago, with no slowing in the shrinkage. For the U.S. to properly assert its interests, two things have to happen.

First, the Senate must ratify a 25-year-old United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has languished since the Reagan administration worried about ceding sovereignty to an international body. The U.S. hesitated, and now is on the outside looking in.

Second, the country needs to equip the Coast Guard with icebreakers suited to a rigorous task. Adm. Thad Allen told The Seattle Times last week that two of the Coast Guard's three icebreakers are 30 years old and not up to the workload.

The newest U.S. icebreaker is seven years old and capable of breaking ice 8 feet thick, but that is not enough heft for the job. The Healy left Puget Sound Aug. 6 to map the seafloor off Alaska with an eye toward registering boundary information.

The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard also endorses the prompt ratification of U.N. convention language that sets up the process for establishing claims. The U.S., Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are sprinting to gather evidence that undersea ridges connect their coastlines and continental geology to the ocean floor of the Arctic sea.

The U.S. gets in the competition two ways: through the acquisition of negotiating rights, a process supported by President Bush; and with the hardware to have a physical presence in the Arctic. Hearkening back to talk of a Cold War missile gap, the Russians have 16 icebreakers, including behemoths capable of punching through ice 16 feet thick.

Canada is in a panic over the race for the Arctic. Two Russian minisubmarines recently planted a titanium flag on the ocean floor, an act sneered at as so 15th century by Canada's foreign minister. His sarcasm could not deflect the finger-pointing over who failed to follow through on building a colossal icebreaker recommended two decades ago. Canada, with no heavy icebreakers, has launched a $7 billion catch-up effort.

The U.S. Coast Guard should be able to count on the Washington congressional delegation for help getting the ships and equipment it needs to do the missions it is expected to perform. Regular duty in the Arctic sea is on that list.