{"id":3828,"date":"2026-03-17T01:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/?p=3828"},"modified":"2026-03-22T15:19:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T13:19:41","slug":"the-real-threat-to-arctic-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/the-real-threat-to-arctic-security\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Threat to Arctic Security"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Donald Trump, in the face of domestic and international resistance, appears to have\u00a0ruled out<\/a>, at least for now, the use of military force to acquire\u00a0Greenland. While the heat has been turned down in the short term, the longer-term consequences of Trump\u2019s recklessness for the Arctic are unlikely to be worthy of celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Trump\u2019s blustering over Greenland was genuinely meant to improve American security, it has almost certainly failed already. Instead, history may record this as the moment when the starting pistol was fired in an Arctic arms race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s ever-shifting rationales for \u201cneeding\u201d Greenland, such as the bizarre and unfounded assertion<\/a> that hundreds of Chinese and Russian vessels are swarming around the island, were obviously false and effortlessly swatted aside<\/a>. But Trump and others in his administration continue<\/a> to raise dubious concerns about security threats in the Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe new domain of international competition is going to be polar competition,\u201d asserted<\/a> White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. \u201cThat is where more and more resources are being spent by our nation\u2019s adversaries and rivals, [on] the ability to control movement, navigation, lanes of travel in the polar and arctic region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the U.S. Army declared<\/a> that the Arctic is \u201can arena for competition, a line of attack in a conflict . . . and a platform for global power projection.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"An
An expedition ship off of Greenland’s west coast, September 2015. Gordon Leggett (CC BY-SA 4.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The problem with this worldview is that it is nonsense. Notwithstanding breathless assertions to the contrary, conflict in the Arctic is entirely avoidable and unnecessary. The greater threat to the region is a self-fulfilling assumption that conflict is inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is undeniably true that the Arctic is transforming rapidly as a result of climate change. The region is warming<\/a> at four times the rate of the rest of the world and summertime sea ice is declining<\/a> by more than 12 percent per decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also true that Russia is increasing<\/a> militarization and industrialization along its Arctic coast and that China is investing in icebreakers and has expressed<\/a> interest in developing a \u201cPolar Silk Road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Russia\u2019s interests are focused on the Northern Sea Route, the ice-strewn passage to the north of its Arctic coast. And, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s stated desire<\/a> to develop it into a seaway to rival the Suez Canal, the navigational challenges it entails mean it is used primarily<\/a> for domestic transport and shipping commodities to China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s own Arctic ambitions merit<\/a> just a few passing mentions in Beijing\u2019s most recent five-year plans. And while the total of 1,781 ships that operated<\/a> in the Arctic in 2024 is an increase of 500 over 2013, it is hardly significant globally when considering that 1,000 vessels are handled<\/a> in the port of Singapore daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, Arctic nations have proven more than equal to the challenges facing their region. In 2018, six of them, including the United States and Russia, joined China and three other countries in signing an agreement<\/a> to regulate commercial fisheries in a future, ice-free Central Arctic Ocean. Russia and Norway reached concord<\/a> after forty years of disagreement over their maritime boundaries in the Barents Sea. Canada and Denmark found<\/a> a Solomonic solution to their territorial dispute over Hans Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is not to say there are no tensions. Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine brought Arctic diplomacy to a grinding halt<\/a> and prompted long-neutral Sweden and Finland to join<\/a> NATO. Moscow in turn sees that move as confirming<\/a> its long-standing paranoia about NATO expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no Arctic nation had come close to outwardly threatening another\u2019s sovereignty and security\u2014until now. And it is Trump who is doing the threatening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s bluster seems to have earned him little. The deal he says he struck<\/a> with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, looks very much like an agreement that has been in place since 1951. Yet the cost of the President\u2019s statements and actions will likely be significant. Far from improving America\u2019s Arctic security, Trump has cast<\/a> the country as the region\u2019s most unreliable and hostile neighbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arctic is facing an actual threat to its security after all. And that threat is coming from the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source – https:\/\/progressive.org\/op-eds\/the-real-threat-to-arctic-security-mulvaney-20260209\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Trump\u2019s blustering over\u00a0Greenland\u00a0in Arctic was genuinely meant to improve American security, it has almost certainly failed already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"yes","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3830,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions\/3830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}