New Ice Curtain Or Headed To A Meltdown?

Arctic affairs saw a thaw period after the Cold War, with focus mostly on cooperation between the eight Arctic states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the US) on soft policy issues such as climate and environmental issues, human security, and indigenous people’s rights. The establishment of the Arctic Council, a multilateral body designed to deal with these topics, was symbolic of the Zeitgeist.

Until recently, the Arctic 8 were able to keep the Arctic largely to themselves, with little outside presence and interest in the region. This fostered the idea of “Arctic exceptionalism”: that the region is isolated from the rest of the world not only geographically, but also geopolitically, and peace and cooperation reign supreme in the Arctic regardless of tensions elsewhere. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine finally froze the cooperation, which has been largely on ice since then except for some online working group cooperation that has been resumed with Russia.

Even if the idea of Arctic exceptionalism may seem silly now, the Arctic remains an exceptional region for the uniquely harsh climatic conditions – despite the change in temperature that is rising much faster than the global average.

With rising temperatures, also interest in the Arctic is increasing. China (in)famously describes itself as a “near-Arctic state” and has been building up its Arctic presence since 2014 with the aim to become a major polar power by 2030. In Europe, the UK considers itself “the nearest neighbour to the Arctic region” – with considerably more geographical credibility than China – and France published an Arctic Defence Strategy in 2025. Germany’s Arctic Policy Guidelines from 2024 state that “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has fundamentally changed the security environment for Germany’s engagement in the Arctic. The Arctic can no longer be regarded as an isolated region.”

At the same time, the Arctic 8 has become the Arctic 7 after Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and may be devolving into the Arctic 6 due to US volatility, leaving Canada and the Nordic countries to deal with both Russian and US activity in the Arctic that may go against their interests.

The increased friendly and adversarial interest in the Arctic poses a dilemma for the small European Arctic states. In times of heightened great power competition, the Arctic transforms from a periphery to a central area for both offensive and defensive strategies: the shortest way for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to fly between Russia and US homeland is over the polar region (this year’s Danish military intelligence report has a good graph on this on p. 33), and the Arctic sea lanes cut the shipping distance between Europe and Asia significantly.

Russian Arctic: Balancing Dependence on China

Amidst the heating physical and political temperature in the Arctic, Russian interests in the region have remained stable and fairly predictable. Russian Arctic territory covers over three million square kilometres and reaches from the European to the Pacific Arctic. More than half of Arctic coastline is in Russian territory. Geography gives Russia both an opportunity and, in its own view, a justification, to attempt to control the Northern Sea Route (NSR).

Russia had ambitious plans for the NSR already before it initiated the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the need to redirect energy exports to China and India in the wake of Western sanctions has further increased the urgency to exploit the NSR’s potential. The Arctic is crucial as a source of Russia’s hydrocarbon exports: 83 percent of Russia’s natural gas is sourced from the Arctic areas. Having lost access to Europe through pipelines, Russia is now aiming to further expand in its LNG capacity.

Chinese companies are investors in many of Russia’s largest energy infrastructure projects and have become even more crucial since Western companies have withdrawn their investments due to sanctions. Furthermore, the Sino-Russian partnership has evolved into featuring an increasing number of joint military drills, including in the Arctic Ocean.

The European part of the Russian Arctic is crucial for Russia’s status as a nuclear power and enables it to project power globally. Russia can threaten US homeland territory from the Arctic and harbours its second-strike nuclear submarines on the Kola Peninsula. To protect these strategic assets, Russia maintains a Soviet-era strategy that Western analysts have dubbed the so-called “Bastion defence”: a layered defence posture around the Kola peninsula, encompassing the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea and further west to the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. The Bastion defence concept aims to ensure both the security of the assets located on the Kola Peninsula and access of the Russian Northern Fleet to the North Atlantic and beyond.

The Arctic is therefore a strategically sensitive area for Russia, both with regard to China’s increasing push into the region and with regard to NATO’s growing Arctic presence. Russia has created a dynamic in the European Arctic where it unlikely wants to provoke a conflict in the region due to the high priority assets located there, but its military posture has prompted NATO countries to respond by increasing their military presence.

The Nordics: Sandwiched Between Great Powers

The five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) in the European Arctic are on the one hand geographically exposed to Russia’s strategic goals and interests between the Kola Peninsula and the GIUK gap, with the Russo-Finnish and Russo-Norwegian borders only about 200km from Kola. Russian military exercises and other signalling activity also frequently takes place in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea.

On the other hand, the geographical vicinity to Russia also elevates the strategic value and relevance of the Nordic countries within NATO and from a US perspective: Norway, for example, has profiled itself as “NATO’s eyes and ears in the north” due to its unique capability to collect and share intelligence on the much-feared Russian submarines’ movements. Both Norway, for intelligence, and Iceland, for anti-submarine warfare purposes, thus have relevance even for US homeland security. (Btw, NATO’s submarine exercise has an epic name: Dynamic Mongoose.)

While especially Canada has traditionally wanted to keep the Arctic off NATO’s agenda and focus on the bilateral cooperation with the US, this is now changing rapidly as more non-Arctic allies seek to increase their presence in the region and the alliance is ramping up its exercise and other activity in the High North. Finland and Sweden have for their part increased NATO’s footprint in the Arctic since joining the alliance in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Sweden is taking on the role of a framework nation in a new NATO Forward Land Force contingent that is being set up in Northern Finland, with contributions from the other three Nordic countries, France, Italy, and the UK.

Greenland has real strategic value for the US, as early warning radars on Greenland are crucial for detecting Russian ICBMs flying towards US homeland territory across the Arctic airspace. However, the erratic and irrational US policy under President Trump towards Greenland, including threats of military means to gain control over the island, has made accommodating US interests on Greenland much harder.

Combined with rumours about potential US-Russian cooperation on Arctic energy projects, as was reported after a May meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss the Ukraine war between an American and a Russian delegation and again indicated in the recent 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, alarm bells are ringing in the Nordic region.

The biggest Arctic headache: US volatility

Arctic security is currently in flux mainly due to the unpredictability of US Arctic policy. While many current dynamics are reminiscient of the Cold War, especially Russia’s growing strategic emphasis on the Arctic, the Trump administration is is shaping the US role in a very different way than European allies are used to. The Danish military intelligence said the quiet part out loud in their recently published annual report: ”the Unite States is leveraging its economic and technological strength as instruments of power, also against allies and partners”.

China’s growing presence in the Arctic is a factor that causes uneasiness both in the West and in Russia that for a long time did not want to give China too much access to the region. If Trump seriously means to resume nuclear testing – a thought that Xi Jinping seems to successfully have induced to Trump at their meeting – and China and Russia follow suit, the US-China-Russia triangle will become even more explosive.

While it has been the smaller Nordic countries’ preference to keep the Arctic to themselves, they are now better off getting other European allies involved in the region. Instead of unpredictable bilateral relations with the US, the more Arctic military activity is coordinated through NATO and other multilateral formats, the better.

The Nordic countries should therefore increase cooperation with the UK, which – as the main European naval power in the North Atlantic and one of Europe’s two nuclear states – in turn needs to make Arctic operations a strategic priority. The Nordic countries should also welcome and encourage the growing French interest in developing cold weather capabilities and increasing its presence in Northern Europe. Nordic regional cooperation is important and can offset some vulnerabilites that stem from the countries’ limited capacity, but given their close proximity and the Arctic region’s strategic importance to Russia, the Nordics need especially nuclear allies’ involvement in and commitment to Arctic security.