国务卿讲话:向北看:突出美国的北极焦点 
讲话迈克尔· R·蓬佩奥国务部
芬兰 罗瓦涅米
2019年5月6日
世界长久以来都感受到北极磁铁般的吸力，但是从来没有像今天这般强烈。
出于我稍后将会解释的原因，该区域已经成为权力和竞争的竞技场。而八个北极国家必须适应这一新的未来。
在其最初的20年里，难能可贵的是，北极理事会可以几乎心无旁骛地专注于科技协作、文化事宜、环境研究 — 都是重要的话题，非常重要，而且我们应该继续做这些。
但是在接下来的100年，我们不再有这种难能可贵了。
在北极，我们正在进入战略接触的新时代，还包括对北极及其领地以及对我们在该区域所有利益的新威胁。
在我们坐下来召开明天的正式理事会会议之前，我想发表一下意见，让大家了解利害攸关以及我认为我们可以一起对此做些什么。
让我们先从最基本的原则入手：美国是一个北极国家。但是即使在购买阿拉斯加之前，我们在这里的利益可回溯数百年。
现在在这里，我们已经历了数代人。这是我们以前所未有的方式欣赏它的时候。这是美国作为北极国家和为了北极的未来站起来的时刻。因为北极远非西沃德时代的许多人所认为的贫瘠偏远地区，它身处机遇和富饶的前沿。它拥有全球未开发石油的13％、全球未开发天然气的 30％，以及大量的铀、稀土矿物、黄金、钻石和数百万平方英里的未开发资源。渔业资源丰富。
其核心 — 北冰洋 — 正在迅速呈现出新的战略意义。
近海资源 — 正在帮助各沿海国家 — 是重新竞争的对象。
海冰的稳步减少正在开辟新的通道和新的贸易机会。这可能会使亚洲和西方之间的旅行时间缩短多达20天。
北极海上航道可能会在之前到来 — 可能会成为21世纪的苏伊士运河和巴拿马运河。这把我带向了我的第二点。
第二点是这样的:为了善用北极 — 北极大陆,包括非北极国家在内的所有国家都应该有权利在此区域内以和平地方式参与接触。 美国相信自由市场。 我们从经验得知自由公平的竞争,开放、依据法治,可产生最好的结果。
但市场上的各方都必须遵守同样的规则。 违反那些规则的人就该失去他们参与该市场的权利。 有尊重和透明度才能进入市场。
我们来谈谈中国。 中国在北极理事会拥有观察员身分,但该身分的前提是基于它对北极国家主权的尊重。 美国要中国遵守这一条件,并在该区域内负责任地做出贡献。 但是中国的言行引起了对其意图的质疑。
北京自称为”近北极国家”,但中国距北极最近的距离有900英里。 只有北极国家和非北极国家,不存在第三个类别,有他项宣称也不代表中国有权得到任何东西。
这并不是说我们不欢迎中国的投资– 的确,恰恰相反。 美国和北极国家欢迎透明的、反映出经济利益和国家安全抱负的中国投资。 2012年至2017年, 中国在北极投资了将近900亿。 它在计划建造基础设施,从加拿大到西北地区,延伸至西伯利亚。
就在上个月,俄罗斯宣布将北海航道与中国的海上丝绸之路连接起来的计划,该计划将会开发从亚洲至北欧的新航道。 另外,中国已经在北极海上开发新的航道。
这是我们非常熟悉的模式的一部分。 北京用中国的钱、中国的公司和中国的劳工,企图开发关键的基础设施 – 在某些情况下,以建立中国永久的安全存在。
我们的五角大楼上周才警告,中国可能利用其北极的民间研究存在加强其军事存在,包括我们部署潜舰—包括(译者注: 他们)将潜舰部署至该区域,作为核攻击的吓阻。
我们必须密切地审视这些活动,而且我们必须 — 我们谨记从其他国家那里得到的经验。 中国在其他地方强势的行为模式,应作为我们的行为依据,并让我们知道中国可能如何对待北极。
让我们自问:我们想要广泛的北极国家或是特定来说,一些原住民社群,步上斯里兰卡或马来西亚前政府的后尘 – 受困于债务及腐败吗?我们想要北极关键的基础设施落得像中国在埃塞俄比亚建造的道路一样, 没几年就摇摇欲坠、危险不堪吗? 我们想要北极海成为新的南中国海,充满了军事化和相互竞争的领土声索吗? 我们想要脆弱的北极环境暴露于中国在其沿岸海域的渔船所带来的同样的生态破坏,或是其国内不受管制的工业活动吗? 我认为答案很清楚。

Remarks Michael R. PompeoSecretary of State Rovaniemi, Finland May 6, 2019
SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you, Ambassador. I know you’re enjoying your time here tremendously, and you are doing an outstanding job.
It’s great to look out here and see so many friends, too. Who’d have thought I could come this far north and know this many people? It is heartening to me.
I grew up in southern California about four minutes from Disneyland, which claims to be the happiest place on Earth by trademark, so you all have some work to do here. Get the trademark.
Thanks for being here. Thanks especially to Foreign Minister Soini, Foreign Minister Thordarson, Michelson, and Minister Bagger. I also understand we have Mayor Lotvonen here, and lots of city leaders from this special place. I’m looking forward to my stay here. Thanks for your hospitality, too. I’m touched by your warm welcome. This is only the second time I’ve had the opportunity to visit Finland, but I really do feel, as I said earlier, that I’m among friends.
The Finnish people have a tradition of hospitality for visiting Americans. I love the story of Eleanor Roosevelt and her visit to this city in 1950 to check on your postwar reconstruction progress. It was short notice, and the Finns wanted to place a special – had a special place for her arrival. So they had an architect design a cabin overnight and mobilize their best construction crew to build that place. Her plane touched down just as the outer door was being fitted in. The townspeople were ushered in, and grand welcoming ceremony, and that cabin still stands today.
So as you can see, we’ve been friends for an awfully long time. In Finland and the U.S., you have a pair of nations that are celebrating our 100th year of diplomatic relations. We have a lot to look back on, but also a great deal to look forward to, and I want to speak today about our future – not just about our bilateral future, but about our future in this region, here in the Arctic. And what better place to do it, for me to have the opportunity to participate in the Arctic Council?
It’s an honor to gather here this week with fellow members, the seven other nations in addition to the United States and the proud indigenous people. I’m not the first secretary of state in recent memory to participate in the Arctic Council proceedings, and you can be sure that I will not be the last. I might, however, be the first to give a major address outside of those formal proceedings.
And I wanted to do so because the importance of what I came here for transcends any one forum.
The world has long felt magnetic pull towards the Arctic, but never more so than today.
For reasons I’ll explain in a moment, the region has become an arena for power and for competition. And the eight Arctic states must adapt to this new future.
In its first two decades, the Arctic Council has had the luxury of focusing almost exclusively on scientific collaboration, on cultural matters, on environmental research – all important themes, very important, and we should continue to do those.
But no longer do we have that luxury of the next hundred years.
We’re entering a new age of strategic engagement in the Arctic, complete with new threats to the Arctic and its real estate, and to all of our interests in that region.
Before we sit down for tomorrow’s formal council meetings, I want to give a voice to a sense of what’s at stake and what I think we can do together about it.
Let’s start with the most fundamental principle: The United States is an Arctic nation. But even before the purchase of Alaska, our interest here stretched back centuries.
Indigenous peoples have lived in the Arctic for generations, well before there was an America to speak of. In the 1730s, winters from – or excuse me, whalers from New England traveled the Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland. In the 1800s, our polar explorers were celebrities.
The funeral procession for one of them, Elisha Kent Kane, was said to be the second largest of the century, bested only by the Lincolns.
Alaska was purchased by the United States in 1857, and the deal was over – was completed by Secretary of State William Seward. After he retired, Seward wasted – excuse me, Seward was asked, what’s the greatest contribution he made during his long and very distinguished career. He had to pause for just one moment to say that the purchase of Alaska was my most important undertaking, but it will take the country a generation to truly appreciate that.
Now here we are multiple generations later. This is our time to appreciate it like never before. This is America’s moment to stand up as an Arctic nation and for the Arctic’s future. Because far from the barren backcountry that many thought it to be in Seward’s time, the Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of its undiscovered gas, and an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources. Fisheries galore.
And its centerpiece, the Arctic Ocean, is rapidly taking on new strategic significance.
Offshore resources, which are helping the respective coastal states, are the subject of renewed competition.
Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.
Arctic sea lanes could come before – could come the 21s century Suez and Panama Canals. And that leads me to my second point.
The second point is this: To leverage the Arctic’s – the Arctic continental, all nations, including non-Arctic nations, should have a right to engage peacefully in this region. The United States is a believer in free markets. We know from experience that free and fair competition, open, by the rule of law, produces the best outcomes.
But all the parties in the marketplace have to play by those same rules. Those who violate those rules should lose their rights to participate in that marketplace. Respect and transparency are the price of admission.
And let’s talk about China for a moment. China has observer status in the Arctic Council, but that status is contingent upon its respect for the sovereign rights of Arctic states. The U.S. wants China to meet that condition and contribute responsibly in the region. But China’s words and actions raise doubts about its intentions.
Beijing claims to be a “Near-Arctic State,” yet the shortest distance between China and the Arctic is 900 miles. There are only Arctic States and Non-Arctic States. No third category exists, and claiming otherwise entitles China to exactly nothing.
That’s not to say Chinese investment is unwelcome – indeed, quite the opposite. The United States and Arctic nations welcome transparent Chinese investments that reflect economic interest and national security ambitions. Between 2012 and 2017, China invested in the Arctic nearly $90 billion. It’s planning to build infrastructure from Canada, to the Northwest Territories, to Siberia.
Just last month, Russia announced plans to connect the Northern Sea Route with China’s Maritime Silk Road, which would develop a new shipping channel from Asia to northern Europe. Meanwhile, China is already developing shipping lanes in the Arctic Ocean.
This is part of a very familiar pattern. Beijing attempts to develop critical infrastructure using Chinese money, Chinese companies, and Chinese workers – in some cases, to establish a permanent Chinese security presence.
Our Pentagon warned just last week that China could use its civilian research presence in the Arctic to strengthen its military presence, including our deployment of submarines – including deployment of submarines to the region as a deterrent against nuclear attack.
We need to examine these activities closely, and we need – and we keep the experience we have learned of other nations in mind. China’s pattern of aggressive behavior elsewhere in the – excuse me – aggressive behavior elsewhere should inform what we do and how it might treat the Arctic.
Let’s just ask ourselves: Do we want Arctic nations broadly, or indigenous communities specifically, to go the way of former government in Sri Lanka or Malaysia, ensnared by debt and corruption? Do we want crucial Arctic infrastructure to end up like Chinese-constructed roads in Ethiopia, crumbling and dangerous after only a few years? Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims? Do we want the fragile Arctic environment exposed to the same ecological devastation caused by China’s fishing fleet in the seas off its coast, or unregulated industrial activity in its own country? I think the answers are pretty clear.
Then there’s Russia. As a fellow Arctic Council member, Russia – the other Arctic states have fruitfully cooperated in a number of areas – expansive conservation efforts. Those are to be applauded. We want cooperation to continue. But we can’t have one side cooperate, and the other side derogate its duties.
We’re concerned about Russia’s claim over the international waters of the Northern Sea Route, including its newly announced plans to connect it with China’s Maritime Silk Road. In the Northern Sea Route, Moscow already illegally demands other nations request permission to pass, requires Russian maritime pilots to be aboard foreign ships, and threatens to use military force to sink any that fail to comply with their demands.
These provocative actions are part of a pattern of aggressive Russian behavior here in the Arctic. Russia is already leaving snow prints in the form of army boots. Russia formally announced its intent to increase its military presence in the region in 2014, when it re-opened a Cold War Arctic military base.
Since then, thanks in part to its large icebreaker fleet, Russia has been able to renovate old bases and infrastructure. It claims to have built 475 new military sites, including bases north of the Arctic Circle, as well as 16 new deep-water ports. It secures this presence through sophisticated new air defense systems and anti-ship missiles.
No one denies Russia has significant Arctic interests. We recognize that Russia is not the only nation making illegitimate claims. The U.S. has a long-contested feud with Canada over sovereign claims through the Northwest Passage.
But Russia is unique. Its actions deserve special attention, special attention of this Council, in part because of their sheer scale. But also because we know Russian territorial ambitions can turn violent. 13,000 people have been killed due to Russia’s ongoing aggressive action in Ukraine.
And just because the Artic is a place of wilderness does not mean it should become a place of lawlessness. It need not be the case. And we stand ready to ensure that it does not become so.
As I said in a speech in Chile, in Santiago just a few weeks ago, American leadership stands in stark contrast with the Chinese and Russian models. When the U.S. chaired this council, we made strides to improve suicide prevention among indigenous youth, and funded new sanitation capacity in rural villages. American commitment to the region has been bipartisan, spanning multiple administrations.
The Trump administration, however, recognizes that America could do more, and we will; we intend to. Today America is sharing its focus on the Arctic and securing its future. Under President Trump, we are fortifying America’s security and diplomatic presence in the area. On the security side, partly in response to Russia’s destabilizing activities, we are hosting military exercises, strengthening our force presence, rebuilding our icebreaker fleet, expanding Coast Guard funding, and creating a new senior military post for Arctic Affairs inside of our own military.
And we’re also leveraging the important partnerships that we will expand on even this week. NATO’s Trident Structure exercise last fall was the largest Arctic military exercise since the Cold War, with over 50,000 persons participating.
On the diplomatic side too, we’re fully engaged. We’re working to strengthen our presence across the entire region and enhance our engagement with each of our Arctic partners. I’ll have more to announce on that on a later stop on this trip.
In addition to security, President Trump is committed to leveraging resources of environmentally – in environmentally responsible ways. He knows this white expanse can also be green.
Our administration helped the Arctic states seal the Central Arctic Fisheries Agreement. It was one of the first times in history that a region banded together to preemptively solve a threat to environmental resources. We should all be very proud of that.
Our administration has also freed up energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We’ve exported offshore energy production in the safest way possible, while also hosting – excuse me, also hosting joint oil spill exercises with regional partners.
And I’m pleased to announce today that U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry will deliver the keynote address at the Arctic Circle Assembly later this year in Iceland. He’ll also talk more there about how we plan to increase access to the Arctic’s resources, and do so in an environmentally responsible way.
Look, the facts speak for themselves: America is the world’s leader in caring for the environment. Our energy-related CO2 emissions fell by 14 percent between 2006 and 2017. The rest of the world’s rose by more than 20 percent during that same time period. Our black carbon emissions are down 16 percent since 2013 and are on track to drop by nearly half by 2035, the best of any Arctic country. Meanwhile, it isn’t clear that Russia is reducing emissions at all, despite being the largest emitter of black carbon in the entire Arctic.
The United States is achieving our reductions the American way: through scientific work, through technology, through building out safe and secure energy infrastructure, and through our economic growth, and doing it in a way that doesn’t stifle development with burdensome regulations that only create more risk to the environment.
Compare the data of the United States to China. Its – our CO2 emissions more than tripled between – excuse me, China’s CO2 emissions tripled between 2000 and 2016. Do we want that kind of output in one of the most precious and pristine corners of the world?
I want to close by talking about two principles that have long defined the Arctic – and which are needed in this new era more than ever: That’s partnerships and courage.
They’re common – they’re common threads through the centuries here in the Arctic: Indigenous peoples carved civilizations into the ice, explorers trudged onward in the face of danger and death, and soldiers and diplomats secured the region when it mattered the most. And sometimes – sometimes courage and partners came from unlikely places.
Like a bar in Duluth, Minnesota.
The year was 1955, and still at times there were no human being that was believed to have reached the North Pole by sea or land.
Yet in that bar on the shores of Lake Superior, an insurance salesman and a doctor – both middle-aged dads and living in the suburbs – decided to give it a shot. They recruited a high school geography teacher and a mechanic.
And they also sought a Canadian partner – someone more familiar with the North Country, settling on a Canadian snowplow, they snowplow – settling on a Canadian snowplow racer.
Eventually, the motley crew set out on what became a 43-day, 412-mile trek in temperatures reaching negative 60 degrees. All on the backs of snowmobiles.
They easily could have died, like so many before them. Instead, in 1968, they became the first human beings ever to reach the North Pole by land – just 15 months before Neil Armstrong made his historic first step on the moon.
Courage and partnership. Courage and partnership is what this region depends on. Especially today.
So for here at the Arctic Council, we’ve done our job. There’s more to do. We face a new era of challenge in the region. Now is the time for increased vigilance and increased partnership and even more courage.
We must hold each other accountable. And we must not allow this forum to fall victim to subversion – from Arctic or non-Arctic states.
Through courage and partnership, we can succeed. I trust that we will. And our nations – and the entire world – can look forward to a bright, peaceful, sustainable future for this indispensable region.
Thank you all for joining me here today. (Applause.)