Confrontation in the Arctic is not inevitable, argues Kieran Mulvaney

The big players don’t need to view every adversary’s moves as a threat

This guest essay is one of three we have published to mark the centenary of the Svalbard Treaty coming into force on August 14th 1925. The others are by John Bolton and Mikhail Komin.

Illustration: Dan Williams

FOR MORE than four centuries, wave after wave of explorers experienced failure as they searched for an east-west maritime passage through the ice-choked Arctic. Despite those defeats, interest in such passages never fully waned—and it is once more on the rise as climate change alters the parameters of the equation.

The Arctic is, by some estimates, warming at close to four times the rate of the rest of the planet, and maximum sea-ice extent is declining by an average of 12% per decade. As a result, shipping companies and governments are paying renewed attention to potentially ice-free seaways that could shorten the journey between Rotterdam and Yokohama by up to 12 days and 11,000 kilometres, compared to going via the Suez Canal.

At the same time, the prospect of Chinese or Russian vessels enjoying unencumbered travel through the region has Western military planners on edge. Such sentiments have been stoked by Donald Trump, who, after complaining about “Russian boats and…Chinese boats, gunships all over the place” in the region, has declared that America needs Greenland “very badly”.

The two main seaways under consideration are the Northwest Passage through the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the Northeast Passage to the north of Scandinavia and Russia (which refers to the segment in its waters as the Northern Sea Route). The latter was first transited in 1879, the former a quarter of a century later. The Northwest Passage had seen only 11 transits up to 1969 and 68 by the end of the 20th century; that has since soared to 430. The Northern Sea Route, meanwhile, saw about 38m tonnes of cargo in 2024, up steeply from the 1.4m tonnes that crossed it in 2013.

However, the vision of Arctic shipping is clouded by the uncertain legal status of the two seaways. Canada and Russia assert that their respective passages are national waters under their strict control, while America insists they are international. Although the differences have so far largely been filed under “agree to disagree”, tensions have occasionally flared up, including between America and its northern neighbour.

Uncertainty over the passages’ status and leeriness over possible national control over future Arctic shipping lanes has helped reignite interest in a notion first raised in the early 1500s: a potential Transpolar Passage across the Arctic Ocean basin, via the North Pole and entirely through international waters. Partly in response, the so-called Arctic rim nations—America, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark (on behalf of Greenland)—have all staked territorial claims to some of the Arctic Ocean basin. In 2007 Russia went as far as to drop a flag to the seabed beneath the North Pole.

Much of the interest in the region remains merely that. Virtually no cargo is yet transported through the Northwest Passage, which is narrow and shallow in many places and mostly devoid of infrastructure. A Transpolar Route remains purely hypothetical. The Northern Sea Route is, thanks in part to Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia, used mostly for domestic cargo. The undersea resources that may be awaiting retrieval are largely found in Arctic rim countries’ territorial waters. As for China, its interest in the region is genuine—it has invested heavily in icebreakers, and now has more than America—but its Arctic aspirations merited merely a passing mention in its most recent five-year plan.

China’s interest in Arctic shipping and other opportunities in the region is undoubtedly growing. Add in the prospect of retreating ice allowing access to an Arctic seafloor that may contain 90bn barrels of oil, and an increasing Russian military and industrial presence along the Northern Sea Route, and the ingredients are in place for rising tension.

In 2019 Mike Pompeo, then America’s secretary of state, declared that the Arctic “has become an arena of global power and competition”. A US Army strategy document published since then makes the case for “regaining Arctic dominance”. China, for its part, “cannot rule out the possibility of using force” in the coming “scramble for new strategic spaces” such as the Arctic, according to internal military texts.

Few if any of these proclamations and policies provide a clear rationale for increased regional tension. There is just an assumption that, as sea ice melts, such tension is inevitable. It is hard to escape a sense of military and foreign-policy establishments finding their comfort zone: linking a potential future challenge (in this case, a melting Arctic) with a possible security threat, and focusing on the more familiar threat at the expense of the more intractable challenge.

There are more productive ways to reduce Arctic tensions. In 2010 Russia and Norway agreed on a maritime border in the Barents Sea after decades of disagreement, and even since the former’s invasion of Ukraine have continued working together on fisheries quotas in the region. In 2022 a five-decade territorial dispute over an island between Canada and Greenland ended when the two countries channelled Solomon and agreed to divide it roughly down the middle.

Can such co-operation become a blueprint for an increasingly iceless Arctic? Or, given the stakes, is confrontation inevitable? One thing is clear: should Arctic nations talk themselves into regional conflict, it would be a geopolitical failing of the highest order.

Kieran Mulvaney is the author of “Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World” (2025).