Pompeo Insists Arctic Council Become a Geopolitical Arena, Confront Russia, Exclude China

May 7, 2019 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is answering not only to President Donald Trump’s directives, but to the British Empire’s war party, on his May 6-9 Europe visit. On May 8, he is to visit London, to deliver the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture at the Center for Policy Studies, as well as to meet top officials. His speech will be dedicated to “the Special Relationship that binds the United States and the United Kingdom in a relationship that has indelibly contributed to the prosperity, security, and freedom of both countries and our people,” it was announced.

His first stop was in Finland for a meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council. Pompeo broke protocol, and gave a public speech prior to the Council meeting. There, he demanded that the Council, which has historically functioned as a diplomatic forum for cooperation on matters of mutual economic concern, become a forum for aggressive geopolitical conflict.

“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,”

he said. The Arctic region “has become an arena for power and for competition. And the eight Arctic states must adapt to this new future.”

The number-one threat he named: China. He ridiculed China’s claim to being “a near-Arctic State,” and suggested its observer status could be withdrawn, because “China’s words and actions raise doubts about its intentions.”

He singled out Russia’s plans “to connect the Northern Sea Route with China’s Maritime Silk Road” as a grave threat. “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.” He dragged out the tired lies against the Belt and Road Initiative, of nations “ensnared by debt and corruption,” and wildly said that the entry of China’s BRI into the Arctic may create “the same ecological devastation caused by China’s unregulated industrial activity in its own country.”

“Then there’s Russia,” he went on. Russia “illegally” insists other nations request permission to pass through the Northern Sea Route along its coast, expressing “territorial ambitions,” just as it violently did in Ukraine, he said.