economy and defined the very identity of its northern coastal communities. Significantly, 80 percent of ship traffic in the Arctic takes place in waters under Norwegian jurisdiction, much of it related to oil and gas exploration and production as well as to fisheries. Now that the sea ice is melting, Norwegian businesses and industries are also seeking to take advantage of emerging opportunities—albeit they postulate in a safe and environmentally sound way.59
Here it must be noted that Norway does not actually use much of the hydrocarbons it pumps out from under the seafloor. Instead, it exports the oil and gas while using the income to provide free health care and education and to save for the future. As a result, despite the fact that its wealth is generated largely by oil and gas, Oslo likes to promote a reputation for environmental leadership. Therein lies a paradox, for global warming caused by carbon pollution from fossil fuels produced by Norway (and other countries) is harming also the Indigenous at home, some 50–60,000 Sámi people.60 Across the region of Troms og Finnmark, the Sámi are fighting “sustainable development and economic growth” policies that they see as being disruptive to local reindeer-herding operations. These include obvious areas such as the expansion of mines, railroads, and logging, but also wind farms, which are believed to be disturbing grazing habits and disrupting reindeer migration through habitat fragmentation. And while being presented by European governments generally as a climate solution paving the way for sustainable future, the Sámi consider them as programs of “green colonialism” due to their destructive effects on their ways of life. In short, relations between Sámi and the Oslo government are tenuous, raising questions of adequate representation and sovereignty over Sápmi, the Sámis’ ancient lands spanning from the Kola Peninsula via Finland, Sweden to Norway.61
Similar to the issues of political participation and self-determination at stake in Arctic Europe between the Nordic capitals and the Sámi, the ICC (representing Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka) and the governments of the United States, Canada, Denmark and Russia disagree whether the rightful meaning of ‘sovereignty’ is either a fundamental “binary concept” (internal/external, national/global, legal/factual, formal/material, abstract/territorial) or increasingly, in these globalized times, a “contested concept” in flux.62
Greenland is situated between those two opposite views, as a state-in-the-making with almost 90 percent of its population of 56,000 being Inuit. On the one hand, their self-government is part of the transnational Inuit community; on the other hand, Greenlanders yearn for independent statehood from Denmark. In this striving, the ongoing development of more foreign policy sovereignty is an important factor in the enhancement of Greenland’s international status and in its ability to attract external investments. Yet, the latter combined with more political emancipation also raises the problem of novel dependencies; alongside economic and political opportunities lurk new dangers to ecology and cultural heritage but also to the budding polity. Put another way, protecting the environment and traditional livelihood and rapid industrial development (in part facilitated by rising temperatures) are potentially mutually exclusive goals.63
To be sure, with greater navigability of Arctic waters because of thawing sea-ice and with raised expectation for easier access to its rich mineral deposits as the Greenland ice sheet is dissolving ever faster,64 Greenland’s strategic importance has grown. Thus, its voice will be heard. But exogenous actors such as China in particular are pushing onto the scene—increasingly aggressively looking to realize ambitious infrastructure and mining projects (in exchange for supporting the local wilderness tourism industry) as Beijing seeks to expand is global influence under its Silk Roads strategy—also in the Arctic. China’s growing engagement with Greenland (as well as Iceland, Norway and Finland) may have a broader security dimension, given their relevance for U.S. global policy and NATO defense strategy. As a result, in fall 2019, Denmark—keen to remain a player at the top table in the North—has now made Greenland its number one priority on its national security agenda.65
Nowhere is the complexity of the interplay of climate change and geopolitical power games, of national interests and of the interests of Indigenous people more palpable than in Greenland. Largely overlooked as a frozen wasteland and zone of peace since the Cold War ended, Nuuk is rapidly being forced into playing it big, moving to center stage, all the while Copenhagen is looking to consolidate its strategic cooperation with Washington.66
This has not been easy given the erratic nature of the Trump administration. In April 2020, news of an American offer to the self-governing territory of $12 million in financial support and the slated re-opening of the U.S. consulate in Nuuk sparked outrage among many politicians in Copenhagen, coming barely a year after the Danish and Greenlandic governments rebuffed U.S. president Donald Trump’s awkward expression of interest in buying Greenland. And while Greenlanders appear delighted at the most recent U.S. overtures, stating that “our work on building a constructive relationship with the United States is [proving] fruitful,” the Trump administration left doubt that strategic calculations were behind its “provision of assistance:” to counter, as a Senior U.S. State Department official put it, Russia’s “military build-up in the Arctic” and Chinese efforts to “winkle their way” into Greenland.67
Since the Cold War, the United States has been the least active and least assertive of the littoral Arctic nations and has lacked a clear, comprehensive and consistent Arctic strategy for much of the post-Soviet era. U.S. administrations have not treated the Arctic region as a U.S. national security priority on par with Europe, Asia and the Middle East, nor did they pursue comprehensive or well-resourced policies towards the region. In fact, U.S. officials actively sought to keep Russian-U.S. frictions out of the Arctic. However, since Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and launched a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, Western governments have suspended most dialogue with the Russian military.
Today, the Arctic, peripheral to U.S. security policy for almost three decades, has returned to the forefront of American politics, though not entirely in its own right. Alaska appeared in the news because the Trump administration promoted its off- and onshore hydrocarbon agenda as well as pledging drilling lease sales for gold and copper mining, not because it was worried about the UN’s declaration of a climate emergency. Energy needs (and the energy lobby) and mining riches, not global warming, are the push factors why the White House is looking North.68 Indeed, America remains the odd state out when it comes to Arctic governance, still not having ratified the UNCLOS and pulling out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
The Pentagon’s April 2019 Arctic Strategy commits the Department of Defense to work with allies and partners to counter unwarranted Russian and Chinese territorial claims and maintain free and open access to the region. This reactive position in the Arctic is a sign that the United States has begun to consider how to project force in the North in the context of great power competition. The Coast Guard now plans to add six new polar ice-cutters for Arctic and Antarctic missions, in addition to its current two.69 It has also announced that it will conduct freedom-of-navigation operations in the Arctic to contest Russian claims that the NSR is an internal rather than an international body of water. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy has relaunched its Second Fleet in the North Atlantic and expanded exercises in the Arctic Ocean, while the U.S. Air Force’s July 2020 Comprehensive Strategy is premised on exercise vigilance that “recognizes the immense geostrategic consequence of the region and its critical role for protecting the homeland and projecting global power,” all to be underpinned by a combat-credible force.70
For all this recent activity and bombastic rhetoric, the United States—together with Canada, and the Nordic countries—has continued to work with Russia on a range of issues in the Arctic, including search and rescue (SAR) under the May 2011 Arctic Council agreement on Arctic SAR, and creating a scheme for managing two-way shipping traffic through the Bering Strait and Bering Sea in 2018. Some observers see possibilities for further U.S.-Russian coaction in the Arctic.
It is undeniable, however, that Putin’s Russia has played it both ways—engaging in cooperative diplomacy in the Arctic Council and over territorial questions via the UN Law of the Seas, while constantly seeking to assert itself on the global stage.71 Putin’s long-term strategy has been to rebuild Russia’s international