Anosmia's flickr photostream/Creative Commons

Back in January, I talked about the fact that Arctic oil reserves might lead to a global energy conflict, and then a week later, I told you that the United States was basically saying, “Yeah, that’s ours” in regard to the oil in the Arctic, while Russia was researching into how far into the Arctic their borders go. And, I’ll point you again to something I said in the first post, and reiterated in the second:

As for the energy reserves in the Arctic, that does seem like a very real threat. I can’t wait (well, I probably can) until the U.S. and Russia start bickering over who gets the oil up there.

Aaaannnnnd, let’s check the first sentence from an Associated Press story (via MSNBC) from a couple days ago.

Russia plans to create a new military force to protect its interests in the disputed Arctic region, a Kremlin strategy paper says.

Oh, dammit. And I thought things were going so well. So, this is happening a little bit faster than I had anticipated. But, Russia believes that by 2020, the Arctic is going to be its “top strategic resource base,” according to the strategy paper. This paper, by the way, was written and signed by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last September, but only reported by Russian media on Friday. Now, to be fair, it does look like Russia is trying to do this above the table, and claiming that the only oil rights it would protect would be those that are officially under Russian jurisdiction.

By 2011, [the report] says, Russia must complete geological studies to prove its claim to Arctic resources and win international recognition of its Arctic borders. The paper has been posted on the Security Council’s Web site.

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops. I know this’ll seem like a weird take action item, but I’d suggest you takepart and bookmark New York Times‘ page on Russia, because it’s pretty important to know what they’re doing over there. It’s usually affecting us.