“Fighting it out over the Arctic, with the vast resources of the Arctic, is going to be the new great game of the twenty-first century,” Steve Bannon, who served as chief strategist early in President Donald Trump’s first term, declared in an interview in February. The power struggle unfolding in the far north does indeed have much in common with the original Great Game, the nineteenth-century competition between the era’s two great powers, the British and Russian Empires, over access to strategically and economically valuable territory in Central Asia. In today’s contest, China, Russia, and the United States are similarly pursuing territorial expansion and influence. The modern powers are again eager to access economic riches and build protective buffer zones. And should the competition intensify, the players’ military adventures could even end the same way their predecessors did: thwarted by cold weather.
With nineteenth-century power dynamics resurgent, the former U.S. diplomat Mary Thompson-Jones’s recent book, America in the Arctic, offers a timely and informative narrative of how the United States acquired and maintained its status as an Arctic power. After a largely successful history of building a U.S. presence in the Arctic, Thompson-Jones warns, Washington is now paying insufficient attention to a region that has become a focus of the world’s great powers.
Even in the short time since America in the Arctic was written, new developments have raised the stakes. After taking office, Trump trained his sights on potential Arctic acquisitions, making frequent, controversial references to Canada as “the 51st state” and vowing that the United States would “get” Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, “one way or another.” Cooperation between Russia and China, meanwhile, has been growing since their 2022 announcement of an “unlimited partnership,” which in the Arctic has translated to joint scientific, space, and military operations, including coast guard and naval patrols. And Washington’s recent outreach to Moscow has introduced a wildcard: should talks yield some kind of grand bargain, the resulting geopolitical realignment could change the game entirely.
Whatever happens, a contest over critical minerals, maritime routes, fisheries, natural resources, seabed mining, and satellite communications is coming, and the United States is not ready for it. For years, Russia and China have been preparing to take advantage of new Arctic shipping routes, improving their undersea military and scientific capabilities, and honing their hybrid warfare tactics while U.S. attention has been elsewhere. To compete, the United States will need to dramatically increase its military, economic, scientific, and diplomatic presence in the Arctic, in close cooperation with U.S. allies. If Washington does not resolve the deficiencies and contradictions of its Arctic strategy soon, it may find that it has already lost the new great game.
MEET THE CONTESTANTS
Thompson-Jones provides a rich history of the United States’ experience in the Arctic, including its active role in shaping the Arctic policies of Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden, incorporating memorable vignettes from each Arctic country. A former U.S. diplomat who served in Canada, Thompson-Jones conveys her deep admiration for the people who live in the Arctic and her appreciation of the unrelenting effects of climate change, the desire for security, and the value of friends and allies “when the ice breaks,” as the Inuit proverb goes. The book closes with a stark—and accurate—lament of Washington’s distinct lack of ambition in its recent Arctic policies. Thompson-Jones, writing before the U.S. presidential election last year, recommends that future leaders increase their focus on climate change and multilateral diplomacy in an expansive Arctic strategy. That advice, unfortunately, quickly became outdated with the return of Trump.
More likely to suit the sensibilities of the U.S. president is Thompson-Jones’s suggestion that the United States have what she calls a “Longyear moment”—a reference to a Midwestern industrialist named John Longyear, who in 1901 sailed to the Svalbard archipelago in the sea north of mainland Norway and “saw iron ore and big possibilities.” In 1906, Longyear founded the Arctic Coal Company and sought to build and sustain an industrial presence in the Arctic, with the eventual support of the U.S. government. Thompson-Jones writes that this venture represented a “profound conceptual shift” in U.S. approaches to the Arctic, ushering in an era of heightened ambition.
Over a century later, the United States needs to pursue “big possibilities” in the Arctic once again if it is to compete with its rivals, Russia and China. All three players are invested in the region, but in different ways. For Russia, which holds vast swaths of Arctic territory, the region is vital to its military and economic survival. For China, the Arctic represents an opportunity to diversify its global economic interests. And for the United States, which secured its Arctic presence with the 1867 purchase of the territory of Alaska from Russia—a sale that Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s former deputy prime minister, has described as a “betrayal of Russian power status”—the region is a northern frontline of defense.
The Arctic animates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical strategy. He seeks to develop a maritime passageway, the Northern Sea Route, that traverses Russia’s northern coastal waters and is dotted with new port infrastructure linked by rail to the country’s sub-Arctic regions. A new fleet of Russian icebreakers would escort registered vessels along the route, which would facilitate the export of Russian natural resources and the east-west transit of Chinese goods. In that kind of large-scale project, Thompson-Jones traces echoes of a brutal legacy: the savagery of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s Arctic infrastructure campaign, in which roads, railways, and mines were built by prisoners and forced laborers, many of whom died during the construction. One road was known as “the Bone Road” because so many workers were buried in its foundation that “there is one body for every meter of road.”
Putin’s economic and military buildup in the region is less ruthless than Stalin’s but similarly ambitious, driven by Russia’s chronic sense of insecurity and fear of losing control over its territory. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arctic military bases were closed, damaged infrastructure was left unrepaired, and many Arctic populations, cut off from state subsidies, moved elsewhere. Today, Russian authorities are trying to prevent a further deterioration of the Arctic population by delaying residents’ requests to leave. Polar gulags are also the preferred place to send political prisoners who threaten the government, such as the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died under suspicious circumstances in one such prison in 2024. Russia is constructing and refurbishing Arctic military bases, in part to improve its monitoring capabilities as commercial activity increases along the Northern Sea Route. The sudden appearance of Russian flags, crosses, and Orthodox priests across not just the Russian Arctic but also, worryingly, the Norwegian High North are declarations of Russia’s past, present, and future ownership.
China joined the Arctic game more recently. Despite lacking Arctic territory of its own, China has declared itself a “near Arctic” state on the basis of fifteenth-century maps and its interest in Arctic governance. Beginning in 2004, when it established its first research station on Svalbard, it has used scientific cooperation to boost its Arctic presence and knowledge. Later, China pursued business ventures with Canada and the Nordic states, but these countries were wary of its investment terms—and under pressure from Washington—and slowly restricted Beijing’s access. Another opening came with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As Moscow faced the loss of its European markets, the end of its partnerships with Western energy companies, and wartime budgetary limitations, it welcomed Chinese investment as a way to fill the gap. China increased funding for Russia’s liquefied natural gas projects in the Arctic and related infrastructure development along the Northern Sea Route, expanding its commercial presence in the region.
For its part, the United States has been an Arctic economic power since it acquired Alaska to secure access to the territory’s natural resources. It first attempted to purchase Greenland in 1868 for the same reason. (Further attempts to acquire the island—in 1910, 1946, and 2019—had a mix of economic and security motives.) After World War II, the United States expanded its Arctic presence through a network of regional alliances and infrastructure projects. In the 1950s, it built the Distant Early Warning Line, a string of radar stations that traversed Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands and remained operational until 1993 to defend against a potential Soviet missile attack. In cooperation with Canada, the United States constructed the Alaska Highway and created an integrated air defense system known as NORAD. Together with NATO allies, U.S. forces patrolled the waters and airspace of the North Atlantic, particularly around Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, to detect Soviet, and later, Russian nuclear submarines and bombers.
The Arctic remains vital to U.S. economic and security interests. Anchorage, Alaska, is home to the fourth-busiest cargo airport in the world. Nearly all of the United States’ radar systems and ground-based missile interceptors are located in the state, whose high latitude enables earlier detection of incoming threats. Recent bilateral defense agreements with all five Nordic countries and the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, in 2023 and 2024, respectively, have strengthened collective defense in the Arctic. But Washington has neglected its own capabilities in the region. U.S. military officials often decry the lack of port and aviation infrastructure, icebreakers, satellites, sensors, and cold-weather equipment and training that are necessary to defend Arctic territory.
THE GAME BOARD
The prize that Russia, China, and the United States are all after is control. As the American aviator Billy Mitchell quipped in 1935, “Whoever holds Alaska will hold the world.” Control of Arctic land offers several advantages. Crossing over polar regions shortens the distances that cargo vessels, airplanes, undersea cables, or intercontinental ballistic missiles must travel to reach their destinations. The region hosts satellite ground stations and orbital launch sites that are important to both civilian and military operations. High-latitude communications infrastructure, although limited, is vital for tracking vessels, monitoring weather, and integrating surveillance systems. Arctic lands and seabeds also hold vast quantities of critical minerals and energy resources, and Arctic waters are becoming an increasingly important source of food as warming ocean temperatures compel fish to swim north seeking cooler waters.
The main battle lines will thus be drawn along the Arctic seabed, in international waters, and en route to outer space. U.S. and Russian nuclear submarines already patrol zones where undersea cables connect Europe and the United States, and security is likely to get tighter as Russian and Chinese vessels target new cables. Countries will also be looking to lock in access to critical minerals. In 2023, a United Nations commission associated with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) issued recommendations that supported most of Russia’s claims to extend its outer continental shelf deep into the central Arctic. (Russia must eventually negotiate with Canada and Denmark to resolve overlapping claims.) Seabed mining in this area could increase Russia’s commercial and military presence in international waters.
Disputes over the status of two Arctic maritime routes, the Russian Northern Sea Route and the Canadian equivalent, the Northwest Passage, are likely to continue. Both Russia and Canada claim these passages as internal waters, but the United States and other countries consider them to be international waters and therefore not subject to national laws or restrictions. As polar ice melts, a third transpolar route that lies almost entirely in undisputed international waters could open up, and the United States will need additional maritime and monitoring infrastructure to prepare for its increased use. China has already begun testing the viability of the route, sending an icebreaker through it in 2012. Finally, the positioning of satellite ground stations and polar orbit launching stations in the Arctic will be a key front of the space race. As Russia has demonstrated in its war in Ukraine, the country that controls global navigation systems and can disarm the satellites of its adversaries will have enormous military advantages.
PLAYING TO WIN
The United States is woefully unprepared for the emerging competition. Despite efforts from Congress, especially the delegations from Alaska, Maine, and Washington, to push successive administrations to devote the necessary resources to the region, the U.S. defense community has treated it as a low priority. Insufficient funding and insufficient attention create a vicious circle, producing uninspired Arctic strategies that lack adequate budgets and clear command structures. To get back in the game, the United States needs to ramp up its military and economic presence in the Arctic, working closely with its Arctic allies to strengthen its scientific and surveillance networks to better identify and defend against threats.
The most visible sign of the United States’ inadequate preparation is its aging icebreaker fleet. The U.S. Navy has no ice-strengthened surface ships, a class of ship that can navigate mostly ice-free waters. The U.S. Coast Guard has only three icebreakers—a stronger ship designed to clear passages through solid ice—but just two are operational today, and they must serve both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Just one, a 50-year-old ship, can break through 20 feet of ice. In 2024, Washington purchased the third, a commercial icebreaker built in 2012, but work must be done on it before it becomes operational, expected next year. This ship, which can break nearly five feet of ice, is meant to serve as a backup to the United States’ older icebreakers until a new, more powerful icebreaker that the first Trump administration commissioned in 2019 is constructed. The target date for that project, currently 2030, has been delayed by repeated design changes and the erosion of expertise at U.S. shipyards, which have not built a heavy icebreaker—one that can cut through ice 21 feet thick—since the 1970s.
The problem goes well beyond icebreakers. The United States does not have sufficient military presence or maritime infrastructure, such as deep-sea ports, to defend large swaths of Arctic territory. U.S. forces are able to operate Pituffik Space Base on the north coast of Greenland, for example, but they cannot secure the entire island. The Trump administration has also been jeopardizing critical Arctic alliances. Its aggression toward Canada and Denmark has pushed both countries to enhance their capabilities—Canada announced plans to construct two new icebreakers and three new Arctic military bases earlier this year, and Denmark announced a $2 billion security upgrade in January and another $600 million for surveillance vessels in April—but threaten to damage their relationships with the United States in the long term. If Washington is to compete with China and Russia, it needs its Arctic friends fully on its side.
Washington must also start putting real money behind the development of U.S. Arctic capabilities. Trump has spoken repeatedly about U.S. interests in the Arctic, and since 2021 Congress has pushed for multiyear funding for an Arctic security initiative to be included in the Pentagon’s budget. It is time to make that plan a reality. The U.S. Navy needs ice-strengthened ships. Trump has repeatedly called for the construction of 40 icebreakers, but this quantity is unnecessary and unrealistic. The Coast Guard has said it needs eight or nine, and even reaching this number within a reasonable time frame would require most of the building to be done by foreign shipyards. Runways, radar systems, and other military installations damaged by thawing permafrost must be repaired and stabilized. Increased deployments of personnel and long-range bombers, more and better port facilities and sensors along the coasts of Greenland, and upgraded satellite communications, underwater drones, and sea-floor mapping are necessary to monitor the vast expanse of the Arctic and particularly to detect Russian or Chinese military activity. As U.S. General Gregory Guillot, the head of the U.S. Northern Command, put it in his congressional testimony in February, “You cannot defeat what you cannot see.”
The U.S. military must also streamline responsibility for operations in the Arctic under a single regional command. In the existing structure, developed in 2011, operational responsibilities are divided between the U.S. European Command, which covers the European Arctic, and the U.S. Northern Command and the U.S.-Canadian organization NORAD, which together cover North America. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, meanwhile, manages the bulk of the U.S. Army’s cold-weather and airborne capabilities based in Alaska. With each command focused on its own area, no single entity has eyes on the Arctic as a whole. Even the east and west coasts of Greenland fall under separate military jurisdictions. A unified subregional U.S. Arctic Command would be able to detect and respond to adversaries’ activities across the Arctic and support regional commands.
There are clear steps the United States can take to access the Arctic’s critical minerals, too. One is for the Energy and State Departments to create a dedicated Arctic initiative, building on the Minerals Security Partnership (a grouping of 14 countries, plus the European Union, formed in 2022), to boost public-private investment in sustainable mining and related infrastructure in Alaska, Greenland, and other Arctic locations. Another step is to enlarge U.S. Arctic territory—not by trying to buy Greenland or incorporate Canada, but by extending the U.S. outer continental shelf in the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The Biden administration began this process in 2023 by mapping 151,700 square nautical miles as an extension of the land mass of Alaska, as defined under UNCLOS. Although not a signatory to the treaty, Washington can still submit a claim to these waters to the associated UN commission. The United States, moreover, ought to ratify this treaty, which both China and Russia have signed, in order to shape future governance of seabed mining and to use its provisions to hold Beijing and Moscow accountable for violations of maritime law.
For the past two decades, Washington has written dozens of Arctic strategies while letting its Arctic capabilities atrophy and, more recently, alienating its Arctic allies. But this is the time for concerted action. Russia and China have already made their opening moves. The United States, following a line from Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 book, Kim, set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Central Asia, must now “go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.”
No comments:
Post a Comment