VICE (2013) s02e11 Episode Script
Heroin Warfare & The Coldest War
This week on "Vice," the heroin epidemic that is crippling Iran.
_ _ _ And then, how global warming is reigniting the Cold War.
The idea is the reestablishment of Russia's control over what Putin claims is its territory.
Don't point that camera, eh? We're inside this giant ship now.
It's literally like we just entered the Death Star.
This is the area where all the junkies hang out.
It's hard to go much lower than this.
Since the American occupation of Afghanistan began in 2001, the amount of opium cultivated in the country has increased more than 2,500%, making it by far the world's largest opium producer.
And while heroin use in the United States has doubled in the same time span, the biggest effect has been in neighboring Iran, which, despite its fundamentalist Islamic regime and the consequent strict punishments, has one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the world.
And it's fighting a massive battle against the drug, seizing nearly 400 tons of heroin a year and losing thousands of lives in the process.
So we sent Suroosh Alvi to one of the most remote and dangerous borders in the world to see what the opium war looks like at its origin.
_ _ _ So we are rapidly approaching the Iranian border with the Afghan Border Police, and the situation out here is really bad.
It's impossible for them to get all the heroin that's going through.
The commander said that there's about 1,000 kilograms every day that they are not getting that's making its way into Iran.
Can you tell us why it's so challenging? _ _ Is the weather like this often? _ _ _ _ It's crazy out here.
This is one of the Afghani Border Patrol posts.
There's one post every 50 kilometers and 4 soldiers in each one.
Imagine how difficult it is to control all that empty space in this wide-open desert.
Can you tell us what it's like fighting all the heroin smugglers? _ _ _ Then they showed us what they have to coordinate their defenses with.
This is insane.
Old-school walkie-talkies, CB radios, and wires just jimmied together with a car battery.
It's so rudimentary.
While well over 400 tons of heroin is crossing this very border each year, drug-trafficking has consumed the local economies of impoverished border towns, and many of the men being sucked into this trade are not coming back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ But the heroin consumes more than just the local economy, as it has affected their entire way of life.
_ _ _ The local youth are not only addicts, but some have also become the dealers, like these 3 boys we spoke to on the condition that we hide their identities.
Tell me about your jobs.
What do you do, exactly? _ _ This epidemic of heroin use is actually a stark contrast to the amount of drugs here prior to the U.
S.
occupation, as shortly before America invaded the country, the Taliban made opium cultivation strictly forbidden.
We spoke to Molla Mohammad Bashar Eshaqzai, a former Taliban commander turned government official, about how this policy has changed over time.
What was the Taliban's stance on drugs before the U.
S.
occupation? _ _ _ _ _ _ Under the current government in Afghanistan, the number of addicts has more than quadrupled, and it's estimated that with a total population of just 30 million, there are now well over one million addicts.
And they were quick to tell us why they think this happened.
_ _ _ The reason they feel this way is because since the Taliban was removed from power, not only do they no longer impose their ban on opium, but they're suspected of actually running parts of the smuggling operation.
In what ways is the Taliban involved with drugs currently? _ _ _ Now, the Taliban is using the same drug money to fund their ongoing fight against the coalition forces.
And with opium production increasing by 30 times since 2001, Afghanistan is now a narco-state that is threatening to destabilize the entire region, which is escalating tensions with their next-door neighbors, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
_ With 80% of the heroin that ends up in Europe now flowing through Iran, the nation's authorities, who are notorious for blocking out Western media, allowed us access inside the country to document the devastating effects.
With a vast network of walls, trenches, forts, and fences, Iran spends approximately $1 billion a year and devotes 12,000 men to fight an actual war on drugs.
More than 3,700 soldiers have lost their lives so far.
And of the approximately 2,000 executions Iran has had in the last 3 years, an estimated 70% of those were for drug-related charges.
_ But even though Iran now leads the world in heroin seizures, this lethal drug is still flowing across the border in record numbers.
So once the drugs leave Afghanistan, they come through Iran, go to Turkey, and eventually to Europe.
But a lot of those drugs end up here, getting consumed by the millions of addicts that are here.
In fact, there are now so many heroin addicts in Iran that they can be seen using in plain sight, like at a massive outdoor drug den we found in southeastern Tehran.
We were tipped off that this is the area where all the junkies hang out.
It's kind of an outdoor shooting gallery/open bazaar.
Every morning, the dealers come with a scale and a kilogram of heroin.
Now Iran is suffering the same fate as Afghanistan because wherever heroin spreads, it infects the local population.
And as a result, this strict fundamentalist country now has one of the largest numbers of heroin and opium users in the world.
It's pretty heavy.
It's hard to go much lower than this.
And while the sheer volume of addicts makes it nearly impossible to arrest users, it wasn't long before we found ourselves caught up in a police raid.
_ _ Turn it off.
We wanted to find out what happened to the street junkies who were swept up in raids like this, so we went to the Rebirth Society, a homeless shelter where the majority of the clientele seemed to be users trying to stay off the streets.
_ _ Mohammed Abolfathi told us that the reason so many junkies were hiding out here is that while the government claims to offer rehab to addicts caught up in raids, where they could actually end up is in gruesome detention camps.
_ _ _ _ _ To see just how many Iranian addicts were now suffering in these camps, we spoke to Hadi Ghaemi, an Iranian-born human rights activist.
There are 657 camps, not treatment centers in the traditional sense.
They are internment camps.
They are worse than prisons.
People are not getting treatment.
They are stacked up like sardines in rooms without having proper access to sanitation, food, or water, and many of them are dying in these camps.
The number of camps seems to be increasing, along with the number of addicts, as the government now reports more than two million users, leaving many to estimate the actual number of heroin addicts is much higher.
Since the amount of drugs coming into the country shows no sign of slowing down, we talked to the head of Iran's DEA to get the government's point of view on the problem.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The idea that America is not only directly responsible, but actually actively allowing this to occur, was not just isolated to the anti-narcotics police.
Almost everyone we interviewed felt the same, like Mohammad Mahdi Kariminiya, a Shiite clergyman.
_ _ _ _ And as this theory gains momentum, so does anti-U.
S.
sentiment, which can be felt throughout the country, like at a Friday prayer service where senior Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami was speaking.
_ _ _ _ _ _ It became clear to us that whether their theory was true or not, the tremendous spike in heroin flowing to Iran is being used as a powerful propaganda tool against the U.
S.
To get some perspective on how this happened, we sat down with Sarah Chayes, who spent 10 years in Afghanistan and served as a special advisor to Admiral Mike Mullen, who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States.
Everyone in Iran is blaming America for the explosion of heroin that's coming into their country.
What is your view on that? I wish American officials were that smart.
Quite frankly, in my experience over a decade, Iran never even came into the conversation.
When the United States is at war with a country or an entity, consciousness just stops at the border.
It became terrorism and nothing else.
We were paying almost anyone who could present himself as an anti-terrorist type of guy.
And that could have been a war lord or it could have been, you know, an extremely corrupt government official.
A number of our political interlocutors, not least of them President Karzai's younger brother, were deeply involved in opium trafficking.
After a 13-year occupation, what is America's legacy going to be in Afghanistan? We went in claiming that we were going to deliver a democracy and deliver a system based on the rule of law.
We basically delivered the opposite.
You have a system that is institutionalized lawlessness.
We're leaving behind a really remarkable and well-equipped hub for transnational organized crime.
Whatever the U.
S.
's intentions were originally, the end result is that under America's watch, Afghanistan has now become the largest opium producer in the world, with the drugs flowing out of the country generating $61 billion annually, a portion of which goes directly to the Taliban.
_ _ _ _ The Arctic is melting.
In fact, it's melting at such an astonishing rate, it's created access to parts of the world that were previously impenetrable.
Along with opening new, never-before-used trade routes, which drastically cut travel time, thereby creating savings in the billions, the Arctic thaw has also made accessible massive oil deposits and what has been estimated at 30% of the world's remaining natural gas.
It's believed that the High North is home to over $1 trillion in hydrocarbon resources.
This makes the North Pole one of the most financially and strategically valuable places on Earth.
The problem with all of this is that the world hasn't figured out exactly who owns it yet.
The resulting territorial dispute between the 5 countries bordering the Arctic Circle, including the United States, is falling along the old Cold War lines of the last century.
Russia believes that they're entitled to almost half a million square-mile area that extends all the way to the North Pole.
The rest of the countries, all members of the NATO alliance, fear that the claim is not only an overreach that infringes on their piece of the Arctic, but also an act of aggression that could threaten the stability of the future in the High North.
In preparation for any conflict that could arise in the Arctic, NATO member states conduct a military exercise in the northern tip of Norway called Cold Response.
So we sent David Choe to embed with the Norwegian military to see firsthand just how NATO plans to deal with the rising tensions over the greatest prize on Earth.
_ This is Cold Response, the largest military exercise of its kind since the end of the Cold War.
different countries are preparing to do battle 200 miles above the Arctic Circle in one of the harshest environments on Earth.
Oh! A group of Norwegian soldiers picked us up and brought us to their Forward Operating Base in the woods, where they'd been waiting for days, expecting an attack.
_ We just snowmobiled into the Norwegian camp and there's just soldiers, like, camouflaged and hidden in these tents all over, and it hasn't stopped snowing since we got here.
This is miserable out here.
Ha ha! In this war scenario right now, you guys are like the Russians, and they're - Yeah, actually, yeah.
Ha ha! - Yeah? It smells like puberty.
- You guys all sleep next together? - Oh, yeah.
It gets cold? Body heat? This exercise happens every year? - The winter - Yeah, yeah.
But it gets bigger every year? 16,000 soldiers? Yeah.
Why is it getting so big? Are you expecting anything in the future? - World War III? - I'm a military man.
- I'm always expecting something.
- Yeah? We got to keep our voices down because the enemy is close, and we're going to whisper.
I don't want to get shot while I'm out here.
Yes, this is primary position to over-watch the marsh.
Oh, shit! So very effective, You can take out everyone, shoot through all the trees, everything.
Yeah.
It's a very, extremely powerful weapon.
- How are you guys doing? Good? - Good.
You guys been here all night? - Yeah.
- Just watching, looking out there? Yeah, we have shifts.
This is crazy.
Oh, shit.
What is this? - Missile.
- Missile launcher? Yeah, to take out the armor.
- Like a tank or something? - Yeah.
Yeah? It blows the whole tank up? Yeah, it does, really.
What happens if you miss? Heh heh! You don't miss.
It's very precise.
To find out why this annual exercise has been growing in both size and importance, we talked to Norwegian military strategist Colonel Tormod Heier.
What is happening in Norway right now with Cold Response? I've heard this year it's the biggest it's ever been with 16,000 soldiers and 15 nations.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ It's a show of force.
"We can compete on this level.
We got tanks, too, we got guns, too.
" It's making Russia nervous.
And it's working.
Cold Response has made the Russians so nervous that they see the war games as a Western provocation, especially since they take place so close to the 121-mile border Russia shares with Norway.
And to show us just how close the Russians really are, the Norwegian Border Patrol took us out for a ride to see for ourselves.
_ - So where are we right now? - Yeah.
_ _ _ _ So that's Russia right there? We could just walk there if we wanted to? _ Ha ha ha ha! The Russian - Norwegian border isn't just a line in the snow.
The Russians have strategic resources in this area, some of which we could see right on the other side.
Wow.
What do they do over there? _ OK.
_ It looks like there's no nature growing around that factory.
_ _ _ _ Right.
_ Right.
Right.
_ From what you're telling me, this could be the beginning of another Cold War.
_ _ What is Article 5? _ War? So worst-case scenario is World War III? _ In the event of this Article America, which is by far the most powerful member of NATO, would most likely play the largest role in any conflict with the Russians.
So, to get a sense of the U.
S.
presence in Cold Response, we headed over to the Dutch warship Rotterdam to meet up with some of the American troops.
We're on an LCU boat that's transporting us over to the Rotterdam, a Dutch boat.
We're going to be joined by hundreds of U.
S.
Marines.
It's literally like we just entered the Death Star.
It's all red, dark, and menacing.
It's like GI Joes in real life.
This is the first time in 10 years that an entire battalion of U.
S.
Marines has been part of Cold Response.
We spoke to a Marine representative to find out why, after such a long absence, the Marines have returned to the North.
So why even train in this type of climate? Marines tout themselves as a, you know, "fighting in any clime and place.
" It's in our theme song, if you will.
- The Marines have been in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long.
- Right.
But that doesn't change that there are global threats, and we need to be ready for those.
That is part of what we do as Marines.
Is there a global threat? I think there's always global threats.
But is there one on the horizon that, in particular, why there's 16,000 troops practicing Arctic warfare right now? It's not for me to have an opinion on it.
I mean, there's plenty of people that make decisions higher than my pay-grade.
While the master sergeant was tight-lipped about why the U.
S.
was suddenly interested in Arctic combat, some of the younger Marines seemed to know exactly why they were there.
What's up, guys? How's it going? How long have you guys been in Norway for? _ You guys are all Marines, right? What's your whole opinion on everything that's happening down here? Is this a training exercise, or is this the beginning of something? I mean, like, Russia, they're moving into Ukraine, so, I mean, like, that's a possibility.
_ _ _ What? The fact that these young Marines were talking amongst themselves about the invasion of Ukraine was very telling.
We could only imagine what the top brass in the military were saying about it.
So to find out if the Arctic is really the front line of a new Cold War, we went up in rank and spoke with Commander David Slayton, the head of the Arctic Security Initiative.
How important is this whole thing strategically to the West? Is Russia threatening to dominate the U.
S.
in the Arctic? As they've been playing chess, we've been playing checkers.
We are lagging far behind in developing our own infrastructure to support just basic trade and commerce, let alone to support an increased presence from both our Coast Guard, followed by our Navy.
Now, even though this military exercise in Norway is one of the biggest shows of force by NATO since the end of the Cold War, Russia, on the other hand, has been conducting war games of its own, except theirs was with nearly 5 times more troops than all of the countries in Cold Response combined.
And in terms of real-world preparation, Russia is spending $3 billion renovating aging Cold War bases in the North, and also plans to invest up to $700 billion to modernize its military overall.
The changes in global climate favor Russia over the other maritime Arctic nations.
So can you see them playing fair or can you see them being, like, "Actually we're already dominating.
Why not take the whole thing?" I don't think they need to play fair, and I think that's what they've demonstrated with Ukraine.
When Putin invaded Crimea, how many international laws did he break? Numerous; the most egregious is the violation of a sovereign country.
Russia's invasion of Ukrainian-held Crimea, which was carried out in order to "protect Russian interests," is a prime example of the country's willingness to use its military to take what it needs.
And considering how important gas and oil are to the Russian economy, it's easy to see how serious Putin is in securing the Arctic's vast, untapped resources.
The Arctic is central to Putin's vision of Russia, whose lifeblood is oil and gas.
Leon Aron has been tracking Putin's Russia for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Putin believes that he was sent to save Russia from the humiliation of the 1990s, the disappearance of the empire.
He is convinced the United States and the EU are out to get Russia, to hurt Russia in every way possible.
In the Arctic as well, the idea is the reestablishment of Russia's self-respect by re-establishing control over what he claims is its territory.
And if it's in dispute, well, maybe you have to be a bit aggressive in defending those interests.
In fact, Putin's new, self-assured, and aggressive Russia has wasted no time in publicly claiming this disputed territory of the Arctic for itself.
In 2007, Artur Chilingarov piloted a submarine underneath the frozen North Pole and planted the Russian flag on the bottom of the ocean.
For claiming almost the entire North Pole for the Russians, Putin himself awarded Chilingarov the country's highest honor, the Hero of the Russian Federation medal, and then appointed him Special Envoy of the Arctic going forward.
So we asked him ourselves, "Who owns the North Pole?" _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ And then, how global warming is reigniting the Cold War.
The idea is the reestablishment of Russia's control over what Putin claims is its territory.
Don't point that camera, eh? We're inside this giant ship now.
It's literally like we just entered the Death Star.
This is the area where all the junkies hang out.
It's hard to go much lower than this.
Since the American occupation of Afghanistan began in 2001, the amount of opium cultivated in the country has increased more than 2,500%, making it by far the world's largest opium producer.
And while heroin use in the United States has doubled in the same time span, the biggest effect has been in neighboring Iran, which, despite its fundamentalist Islamic regime and the consequent strict punishments, has one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the world.
And it's fighting a massive battle against the drug, seizing nearly 400 tons of heroin a year and losing thousands of lives in the process.
So we sent Suroosh Alvi to one of the most remote and dangerous borders in the world to see what the opium war looks like at its origin.
_ _ _ So we are rapidly approaching the Iranian border with the Afghan Border Police, and the situation out here is really bad.
It's impossible for them to get all the heroin that's going through.
The commander said that there's about 1,000 kilograms every day that they are not getting that's making its way into Iran.
Can you tell us why it's so challenging? _ _ Is the weather like this often? _ _ _ _ It's crazy out here.
This is one of the Afghani Border Patrol posts.
There's one post every 50 kilometers and 4 soldiers in each one.
Imagine how difficult it is to control all that empty space in this wide-open desert.
Can you tell us what it's like fighting all the heroin smugglers? _ _ _ Then they showed us what they have to coordinate their defenses with.
This is insane.
Old-school walkie-talkies, CB radios, and wires just jimmied together with a car battery.
It's so rudimentary.
While well over 400 tons of heroin is crossing this very border each year, drug-trafficking has consumed the local economies of impoverished border towns, and many of the men being sucked into this trade are not coming back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ But the heroin consumes more than just the local economy, as it has affected their entire way of life.
_ _ _ The local youth are not only addicts, but some have also become the dealers, like these 3 boys we spoke to on the condition that we hide their identities.
Tell me about your jobs.
What do you do, exactly? _ _ This epidemic of heroin use is actually a stark contrast to the amount of drugs here prior to the U.
S.
occupation, as shortly before America invaded the country, the Taliban made opium cultivation strictly forbidden.
We spoke to Molla Mohammad Bashar Eshaqzai, a former Taliban commander turned government official, about how this policy has changed over time.
What was the Taliban's stance on drugs before the U.
S.
occupation? _ _ _ _ _ _ Under the current government in Afghanistan, the number of addicts has more than quadrupled, and it's estimated that with a total population of just 30 million, there are now well over one million addicts.
And they were quick to tell us why they think this happened.
_ _ _ The reason they feel this way is because since the Taliban was removed from power, not only do they no longer impose their ban on opium, but they're suspected of actually running parts of the smuggling operation.
In what ways is the Taliban involved with drugs currently? _ _ _ Now, the Taliban is using the same drug money to fund their ongoing fight against the coalition forces.
And with opium production increasing by 30 times since 2001, Afghanistan is now a narco-state that is threatening to destabilize the entire region, which is escalating tensions with their next-door neighbors, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
_ With 80% of the heroin that ends up in Europe now flowing through Iran, the nation's authorities, who are notorious for blocking out Western media, allowed us access inside the country to document the devastating effects.
With a vast network of walls, trenches, forts, and fences, Iran spends approximately $1 billion a year and devotes 12,000 men to fight an actual war on drugs.
More than 3,700 soldiers have lost their lives so far.
And of the approximately 2,000 executions Iran has had in the last 3 years, an estimated 70% of those were for drug-related charges.
_ But even though Iran now leads the world in heroin seizures, this lethal drug is still flowing across the border in record numbers.
So once the drugs leave Afghanistan, they come through Iran, go to Turkey, and eventually to Europe.
But a lot of those drugs end up here, getting consumed by the millions of addicts that are here.
In fact, there are now so many heroin addicts in Iran that they can be seen using in plain sight, like at a massive outdoor drug den we found in southeastern Tehran.
We were tipped off that this is the area where all the junkies hang out.
It's kind of an outdoor shooting gallery/open bazaar.
Every morning, the dealers come with a scale and a kilogram of heroin.
Now Iran is suffering the same fate as Afghanistan because wherever heroin spreads, it infects the local population.
And as a result, this strict fundamentalist country now has one of the largest numbers of heroin and opium users in the world.
It's pretty heavy.
It's hard to go much lower than this.
And while the sheer volume of addicts makes it nearly impossible to arrest users, it wasn't long before we found ourselves caught up in a police raid.
_ _ Turn it off.
We wanted to find out what happened to the street junkies who were swept up in raids like this, so we went to the Rebirth Society, a homeless shelter where the majority of the clientele seemed to be users trying to stay off the streets.
_ _ Mohammed Abolfathi told us that the reason so many junkies were hiding out here is that while the government claims to offer rehab to addicts caught up in raids, where they could actually end up is in gruesome detention camps.
_ _ _ _ _ To see just how many Iranian addicts were now suffering in these camps, we spoke to Hadi Ghaemi, an Iranian-born human rights activist.
There are 657 camps, not treatment centers in the traditional sense.
They are internment camps.
They are worse than prisons.
People are not getting treatment.
They are stacked up like sardines in rooms without having proper access to sanitation, food, or water, and many of them are dying in these camps.
The number of camps seems to be increasing, along with the number of addicts, as the government now reports more than two million users, leaving many to estimate the actual number of heroin addicts is much higher.
Since the amount of drugs coming into the country shows no sign of slowing down, we talked to the head of Iran's DEA to get the government's point of view on the problem.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The idea that America is not only directly responsible, but actually actively allowing this to occur, was not just isolated to the anti-narcotics police.
Almost everyone we interviewed felt the same, like Mohammad Mahdi Kariminiya, a Shiite clergyman.
_ _ _ _ And as this theory gains momentum, so does anti-U.
S.
sentiment, which can be felt throughout the country, like at a Friday prayer service where senior Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami was speaking.
_ _ _ _ _ _ It became clear to us that whether their theory was true or not, the tremendous spike in heroin flowing to Iran is being used as a powerful propaganda tool against the U.
S.
To get some perspective on how this happened, we sat down with Sarah Chayes, who spent 10 years in Afghanistan and served as a special advisor to Admiral Mike Mullen, who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States.
Everyone in Iran is blaming America for the explosion of heroin that's coming into their country.
What is your view on that? I wish American officials were that smart.
Quite frankly, in my experience over a decade, Iran never even came into the conversation.
When the United States is at war with a country or an entity, consciousness just stops at the border.
It became terrorism and nothing else.
We were paying almost anyone who could present himself as an anti-terrorist type of guy.
And that could have been a war lord or it could have been, you know, an extremely corrupt government official.
A number of our political interlocutors, not least of them President Karzai's younger brother, were deeply involved in opium trafficking.
After a 13-year occupation, what is America's legacy going to be in Afghanistan? We went in claiming that we were going to deliver a democracy and deliver a system based on the rule of law.
We basically delivered the opposite.
You have a system that is institutionalized lawlessness.
We're leaving behind a really remarkable and well-equipped hub for transnational organized crime.
Whatever the U.
S.
's intentions were originally, the end result is that under America's watch, Afghanistan has now become the largest opium producer in the world, with the drugs flowing out of the country generating $61 billion annually, a portion of which goes directly to the Taliban.
_ _ _ _ The Arctic is melting.
In fact, it's melting at such an astonishing rate, it's created access to parts of the world that were previously impenetrable.
Along with opening new, never-before-used trade routes, which drastically cut travel time, thereby creating savings in the billions, the Arctic thaw has also made accessible massive oil deposits and what has been estimated at 30% of the world's remaining natural gas.
It's believed that the High North is home to over $1 trillion in hydrocarbon resources.
This makes the North Pole one of the most financially and strategically valuable places on Earth.
The problem with all of this is that the world hasn't figured out exactly who owns it yet.
The resulting territorial dispute between the 5 countries bordering the Arctic Circle, including the United States, is falling along the old Cold War lines of the last century.
Russia believes that they're entitled to almost half a million square-mile area that extends all the way to the North Pole.
The rest of the countries, all members of the NATO alliance, fear that the claim is not only an overreach that infringes on their piece of the Arctic, but also an act of aggression that could threaten the stability of the future in the High North.
In preparation for any conflict that could arise in the Arctic, NATO member states conduct a military exercise in the northern tip of Norway called Cold Response.
So we sent David Choe to embed with the Norwegian military to see firsthand just how NATO plans to deal with the rising tensions over the greatest prize on Earth.
_ This is Cold Response, the largest military exercise of its kind since the end of the Cold War.
different countries are preparing to do battle 200 miles above the Arctic Circle in one of the harshest environments on Earth.
Oh! A group of Norwegian soldiers picked us up and brought us to their Forward Operating Base in the woods, where they'd been waiting for days, expecting an attack.
_ We just snowmobiled into the Norwegian camp and there's just soldiers, like, camouflaged and hidden in these tents all over, and it hasn't stopped snowing since we got here.
This is miserable out here.
Ha ha! In this war scenario right now, you guys are like the Russians, and they're - Yeah, actually, yeah.
Ha ha! - Yeah? It smells like puberty.
- You guys all sleep next together? - Oh, yeah.
It gets cold? Body heat? This exercise happens every year? - The winter - Yeah, yeah.
But it gets bigger every year? 16,000 soldiers? Yeah.
Why is it getting so big? Are you expecting anything in the future? - World War III? - I'm a military man.
- I'm always expecting something.
- Yeah? We got to keep our voices down because the enemy is close, and we're going to whisper.
I don't want to get shot while I'm out here.
Yes, this is primary position to over-watch the marsh.
Oh, shit! So very effective, You can take out everyone, shoot through all the trees, everything.
Yeah.
It's a very, extremely powerful weapon.
- How are you guys doing? Good? - Good.
You guys been here all night? - Yeah.
- Just watching, looking out there? Yeah, we have shifts.
This is crazy.
Oh, shit.
What is this? - Missile.
- Missile launcher? Yeah, to take out the armor.
- Like a tank or something? - Yeah.
Yeah? It blows the whole tank up? Yeah, it does, really.
What happens if you miss? Heh heh! You don't miss.
It's very precise.
To find out why this annual exercise has been growing in both size and importance, we talked to Norwegian military strategist Colonel Tormod Heier.
What is happening in Norway right now with Cold Response? I've heard this year it's the biggest it's ever been with 16,000 soldiers and 15 nations.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ It's a show of force.
"We can compete on this level.
We got tanks, too, we got guns, too.
" It's making Russia nervous.
And it's working.
Cold Response has made the Russians so nervous that they see the war games as a Western provocation, especially since they take place so close to the 121-mile border Russia shares with Norway.
And to show us just how close the Russians really are, the Norwegian Border Patrol took us out for a ride to see for ourselves.
_ - So where are we right now? - Yeah.
_ _ _ _ So that's Russia right there? We could just walk there if we wanted to? _ Ha ha ha ha! The Russian - Norwegian border isn't just a line in the snow.
The Russians have strategic resources in this area, some of which we could see right on the other side.
Wow.
What do they do over there? _ OK.
_ It looks like there's no nature growing around that factory.
_ _ _ _ Right.
_ Right.
Right.
_ From what you're telling me, this could be the beginning of another Cold War.
_ _ What is Article 5? _ War? So worst-case scenario is World War III? _ In the event of this Article America, which is by far the most powerful member of NATO, would most likely play the largest role in any conflict with the Russians.
So, to get a sense of the U.
S.
presence in Cold Response, we headed over to the Dutch warship Rotterdam to meet up with some of the American troops.
We're on an LCU boat that's transporting us over to the Rotterdam, a Dutch boat.
We're going to be joined by hundreds of U.
S.
Marines.
It's literally like we just entered the Death Star.
It's all red, dark, and menacing.
It's like GI Joes in real life.
This is the first time in 10 years that an entire battalion of U.
S.
Marines has been part of Cold Response.
We spoke to a Marine representative to find out why, after such a long absence, the Marines have returned to the North.
So why even train in this type of climate? Marines tout themselves as a, you know, "fighting in any clime and place.
" It's in our theme song, if you will.
- The Marines have been in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long.
- Right.
But that doesn't change that there are global threats, and we need to be ready for those.
That is part of what we do as Marines.
Is there a global threat? I think there's always global threats.
But is there one on the horizon that, in particular, why there's 16,000 troops practicing Arctic warfare right now? It's not for me to have an opinion on it.
I mean, there's plenty of people that make decisions higher than my pay-grade.
While the master sergeant was tight-lipped about why the U.
S.
was suddenly interested in Arctic combat, some of the younger Marines seemed to know exactly why they were there.
What's up, guys? How's it going? How long have you guys been in Norway for? _ You guys are all Marines, right? What's your whole opinion on everything that's happening down here? Is this a training exercise, or is this the beginning of something? I mean, like, Russia, they're moving into Ukraine, so, I mean, like, that's a possibility.
_ _ _ What? The fact that these young Marines were talking amongst themselves about the invasion of Ukraine was very telling.
We could only imagine what the top brass in the military were saying about it.
So to find out if the Arctic is really the front line of a new Cold War, we went up in rank and spoke with Commander David Slayton, the head of the Arctic Security Initiative.
How important is this whole thing strategically to the West? Is Russia threatening to dominate the U.
S.
in the Arctic? As they've been playing chess, we've been playing checkers.
We are lagging far behind in developing our own infrastructure to support just basic trade and commerce, let alone to support an increased presence from both our Coast Guard, followed by our Navy.
Now, even though this military exercise in Norway is one of the biggest shows of force by NATO since the end of the Cold War, Russia, on the other hand, has been conducting war games of its own, except theirs was with nearly 5 times more troops than all of the countries in Cold Response combined.
And in terms of real-world preparation, Russia is spending $3 billion renovating aging Cold War bases in the North, and also plans to invest up to $700 billion to modernize its military overall.
The changes in global climate favor Russia over the other maritime Arctic nations.
So can you see them playing fair or can you see them being, like, "Actually we're already dominating.
Why not take the whole thing?" I don't think they need to play fair, and I think that's what they've demonstrated with Ukraine.
When Putin invaded Crimea, how many international laws did he break? Numerous; the most egregious is the violation of a sovereign country.
Russia's invasion of Ukrainian-held Crimea, which was carried out in order to "protect Russian interests," is a prime example of the country's willingness to use its military to take what it needs.
And considering how important gas and oil are to the Russian economy, it's easy to see how serious Putin is in securing the Arctic's vast, untapped resources.
The Arctic is central to Putin's vision of Russia, whose lifeblood is oil and gas.
Leon Aron has been tracking Putin's Russia for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Putin believes that he was sent to save Russia from the humiliation of the 1990s, the disappearance of the empire.
He is convinced the United States and the EU are out to get Russia, to hurt Russia in every way possible.
In the Arctic as well, the idea is the reestablishment of Russia's self-respect by re-establishing control over what he claims is its territory.
And if it's in dispute, well, maybe you have to be a bit aggressive in defending those interests.
In fact, Putin's new, self-assured, and aggressive Russia has wasted no time in publicly claiming this disputed territory of the Arctic for itself.
In 2007, Artur Chilingarov piloted a submarine underneath the frozen North Pole and planted the Russian flag on the bottom of the ocean.
For claiming almost the entire North Pole for the Russians, Putin himself awarded Chilingarov the country's highest honor, the Hero of the Russian Federation medal, and then appointed him Special Envoy of the Arctic going forward.
So we asked him ourselves, "Who owns the North Pole?" _ _ _ _ _ _