March was the fourth consecutive month in which sea ice reached a record low for that calendar period, based on a 47-year satellite record, EU earth observation agency Copernicus reported on Tuesday.

Military and commercial vessels, particularly from Russia, are stepping up activity in the region, some of which is expected to be ice-free during summer within a decade, said Rebecca Pincus, former director of the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute. US President Donald Trump’s desire to take control of Greenland has increased attention on the area’s critical minerals and importance for trade and military strategy.

“The navigation season when you can take ships up there is growing,” Pincus said. “The trend line is one direction.”

Ice cover was 6 per cent below average in March, which typically marks the end of the Arctic winter and the start of the melt season, when ice reaches its maximum annual extent. 

The world’s polar regions are warming considerably faster than the rest of the planet, in part because of a feedback loop in which regions that lose more ice absorb more heat. 

The bright white surface of sea ice plays an important role in slowing warming as it reflects sunlight back into space, in what is known as the albedo effect. Conversely, its melting creates a feedback loop by extending the sea’s dark surface, which absorbs more heat. 

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said the Canadian Arctic and the west and east coasts of Greenland had seen “much warmer than average” temperatures last month.

Ice sheets were particularly bare in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea. Russia has been reactivating its cold war naval bases on the coastline of the Barents Sea. 

The southern pole region was also facing melting, albeit more slowly, with sea ice in the Antarctic at its fourth-lowest level for March, Copernicus found.  Global land and sea temperatures in March were the second highest on record, and the highest on record over land in Europe for the time of year. This highlighted “once again how temperatures are continuing to break records”, said Burgess.

Global land and sea temperatures in March were the second highest on record, and the highest on record over land in Europe for the time of year. This highlighted “once again how temperatures are continuing to break records”, said Burgess.

Heat combined with topsy-turvy rainfall patterns to create some of the wettest-ever conditions for March as well as the driest, in different parts of Europe, she added.

But as the Trump administration’s own Arctic ambitions and rapport with President Vladimir Putin grow, Moscow is seeking to leverage its Arctic riches and America’s interest to lobby for much-anticipated sanctions relief and use the icy region as a testing ground for rebuilding ties with the United States.

Speaking to reporters on March 13, President Donald Trump signaled the Arctic is on top of America’s priority list and reiterated his wish to get Greenland, a Danish territory. In remarks Thursday from Murmansk, in Russia’s Arctic, Putin spoke favorably of those plans, calling it a “profound mistake to treat it as some preposterous talk.”

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy who has been ferrying messages from Washington to Moscow, suggested in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the United States and Russia are “thinking about how to integrate their energy policies in the Arctic” and “share sea lanes, maybe send LNG gas into Europe together,” referring to liquefied natural gas.

Russia, which saw an opening in Trump’s business-first approach, swooped into renewed talks with U.S. delegations with business proposals, offering access to the country’s mineral reserves and joint ventures in the Arctic.

“The Arctic is too important for Cold War-style politics. Russia & the U.S. must find common ground to ensure stability, resource development & environmental protection,” Putin’s business envoy in U.S. negotiations, Kirill Dmitriev, recently said on X.

At the Arctic Forum in Murmansk last week, Dmitriev announced that Russia would set up a special investment fund for Arctic development by year’s end that would attract funds from partners in the Persian Gulf as well as “a number of Western countries.” Dmitriev also said the United States showed “interest” in investing in the Russian Arctic region, including in LNG projects.

For Trump, expansion in the Arctic can be a way to resell cheap energy or buy minerals and rare earth metals from Russia, experts said. Cooperation with Russia would also be a way to stave off the growing interest of China, which has declared itself “a near-Arctic state,” and is building its own icebreaking fleet to explore the emerging trade routes.

For Russia, this presents an opportunity to access the LNG technologies it lacks and revive some of its key revenue makers, which have been hindered by sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine.

“When it comes to Arctic, Russia has a lot to offer,” said Russian economist and Arctic expert Vladislav Inozemtsev. “It is also something Russia cannot fully develop on its own.”

All about the gas

A warming climate has unlocked economic opportunities along the Northern Sea Route, a faster trade lane between Europe and Asia that was once frozen, and Russia aims to capitalize on this with its unrivaled icebreaker fleet.

These Arctic regions are rich in massive deposits of natural gas, with the Bovanenkovo field on the Yamal Peninsula alone holding approximately 4.9 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, rivaling major U.S. fields such as Eagle Ford Shale. Russia had invested millions in LNG facilities along the northern route — until Western sanctions derailed those plans.

In 2019, Russia aimed for 30 percent to 40 percent control of the global LNG market and hoped to boost production to 70 million tons by 2030.

But Russia’s LNG industry is heavily reliant on Western technology and equipment, and it was crippled by the post-invasion sanctions. By 2024, Russia still had only an 8 percent market share.

Echoing Witkoff’s idea, Inozemtsev suggested that Trump could strike a deal with Russia by letting the United States have a stake in developing the LNG projects in Russia and then giving them a share of gas to resell to third countries.

One possible arrangement could see the United States acting as an intermediary for Russian gas sales to Europe, which after the Ukraine invasion largely weaned itself off Russian gas.

In this scenario, Inozemtsev said, Trump could push Europe to restart Russian pipeline gas imports, while Moscow, in return, would compensate the United States with a share of the Arctic liquefied gas that it could then ship to other countries at a higher profit margin.

“Russia has lucrative things to offer to the U.S., should the U.S., in turn, put pressure on Europe,” Inozemtsev said. The United States could fulfill its gas contracts to Europe by selling them reflagged Russian gas from the pipeline network and then sell its own LNG elsewhere.

There have also been reports of efforts to restart the Nord Stream pipeline which once brought gas across the Baltic Sea into Europe.

Pushing Europe to reopen sanctioned pipelines, however, is a hard sell after the continent’s painful breakup with Russian gas and oil after the invasion. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck dismissed the idea of reviving Nord Stream, calling it “completely the wrong direction,” following a recent Financial Times report about another possible effort. Similar resistance is likely across Europe, as many countries remain wary of rekindling ties with a supplier that has shown few qualms about using its resources for political ends.

In addition to gas, Russia’s Arctic is filled with rare-earth metals the Trump administration has publicly expressed interest in. At the forum, Dmitriev said the new fund plans to invest in development “with various partners.”

The Arctic is also rich in valuable minerals and metals such as lithium, nickel and aluminum, key resources for high-tech industries, renewable energy and defense.

“It’s a key thing it can offer beyond just energy extraction,” said Pavel Devyatkin, a Moscow-based senior fellow at the Arctic Institute, arguing that Moscow sees cooperation with the United States in the Arctic not from a purely economic standpoint but as a diplomatic tool to restore ties and global status with fewer geopolitical hurdles.

“The big thing here is the narrative of Arctic exceptionalism,” he said, referring to a policy first proposed by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that suggested the region should be exempt from geopolitical tensions, “where cooperation can happen despite conflicts.”

“Working together in the Arctic is still important for Russia’s great power status,” he said.

There is also a theory in the U.S. administration that engaging with Russia, such as in the Arctic, could help it disengage from China, a goal recently put forward by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Last year, the Pentagon highlighted in an updated Arctic Strategy the threat posed by Russia and China joining up in the region. In recent years, the United States expanded its military readiness in the Arctic in response to Moscow and Beijing’s “growing alignment” in economic and military cooperation, as the two states held joint military drills in the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska.

A recent analysis by Rand noted that Moscow has grown increasingly reliant on Beijing to finance its Arctic projects.

“We could find ourselves in a situation where, whether Russia wants to improve its relations with the U.S. or not, they can’t because they’ve become completely dependent on the Chinese because we have cut them off,” Rubio told conservative outlet Breitbart News on Feb. 25.

While Russia recognizes the imbalance in its relations with China and is working to expand ties with other powers to offset this, it would be difficult to fully cleave Russia from China, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Eurasia Center.

“At present, the West in general and Washington in particular cannot offer Moscow anything so attractive that the Kremlin would agree to disengage from Beijing,” he said.

Treacherous waters

While Russia likes to promote the Northern Sea Route as a shorter alternative to the Suez Canal, the passage can be treacherous. For the largest container ships, many parts of the journey can be too shallow and the scarcity of ports is an added danger.

Likewise, the journey for American companies into Russian commercial space can be risky from a regulatory standpoint.

The legal terms of any joint U.S.-Russia enterprises are murky. Moscow has a list of “unfriendly countries” that essentially act as a tool of reciprocal sanctions. Putin would have to exclude the United States from the list.

Russia, scorched by the quick exodus of Western companies in the first weeks of the Ukraine war, signaled that any companies allowed back in would face new regulations and strictures to keep such an exit from happening again.

“Now we will demand investments not just in papers but in the land,” a senior Kremlin official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter more freely. “We will demand a situation that will prevent them further from taking a decision and leaving everything overnight.”

Before the war in Ukraine, a handful of foreign companies were involved in Russia’s Arctic energy sector, though sanctions and geopolitical tensions often restricted their footprint.

The Shtokman gas field was once planned as a major LNG export hub, led by Gazprom, French Total and Norwegian Equinor. The project stalled because of high costs and technological challenges. Western sanctions after the 2014 Crimea annexation further doomed it, and it was officially shelved.

ExxonMobil was the most significant U.S. player, teaming up with Rosneft in such major projects as the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development.

Other American firms, including Halliburton, SLB, and Baker Hughes, played supporting roles, providing technology, equipment and oil field services to Russian energy giants.

After rounds of sanctions, American energy firms had little choice but to pack up and sever ties with one of the world’s most resource-rich but politically volatile nations.

This legacy now raises questions about whether the Trump-Putin rapprochement would be enough to persuade U.S. companies to risk operating in the market with high interest rates, increasing inflation and a rule of law that often exists only in theory.

Natalya Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, and Francesca Ebel in Moscow contributed to this report. Map by Laris Karklis.

Map sources: Gas production data via Global Oil and Gas Extraction Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, February 2025 release. Gas pipeline data via Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, December 2024 release. 2024 Northern Sea Route data via Centre for High North Logistics. Discoverable gas via U.S. Geological Survey Oil and Gas Resource Assessment of the Russian Arctic, U.S. Energy Information Administration 2024 report on Russia and sea ice concentration data via University of Bremen.

Mary Ilyushina, a reporter on the Foreign Desk of The Washington Post, covers Russia and the region. She began her career in independent Russian media before joining CNN’s Moscow bureau as a field producer in 2017. She has been with The Post since 2021. She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic.

The United States and Russia represent the most relevant players in the global North. Moscow, however, is ahead of Washington by about 15 to 20 years.

The Arctic Council (AC) comprises eight Arctic States: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States, plus six Permanent Participants representing Indigenous people. It was established on September 19, 1996, when the founders signed the Ottawa Declaration. So far, this group has done little to develop the region, which has remained a blank spot on the world map. President Trump recently stepped in, but besides unfriendly takeovers by the US of Greenland and Canada, there is another way that is good for all AC members and, actually, for every other nation in the world since it concentrates on win-win cooperation instead of endless wars.

In any event, presently, the United States and Russia are the most serious players in the global North, but Moscow has already been ahead of Washington there for 15-20 years and is leaving the doors open. These issues will become the primary meanings of the transantarctic partnership forum, “Arctic: Territory of Dialogue,” which will be held in the Russian city of Murmansk on March 26-27. Bloomberg reported that Washington and Moscow may become partners in transarctic projects, where geopolitical difficulties recede into the background. The news comes as the US seeks to normalize relations with Russia and gain access to the economically important region.

The future of the Arctic is one of the most promising cases. America has significant financial and political resources and serious technological potential, which makes it possible to launch large-scale projects quickly enough. In mid-March, President Trump announced plans to order the construction of 48 icebreakers, probably within the framework of the ICE Pact project, on joint efforts for cooperation in the field of icebreaking vessels with Finland and Canada. Trump noted that Canada, a country close to the Arctic, “should have its first icebreaker,” which does not exist yet.

The White House’s Arctic plans have awakened even Canada and Greenland. According to the US Geological Survey, about 90 billion barrels of oil (10 billion tons) and about 16,700 trillion cubic meters of natural gas are hidden in the Arctic. The world produces about 4 trillion cubic meters of gas annually – these resources, according to experts’ estimates, should cover another 50 to 60 years given the current consumption rates, but adding arctic resources of gas alone could extend this period for another 40 centuries. All rare earth metals, platinoids, and non-ferrous metals – almost a quarter of the world’s total mineral reserves are in the Arctic. Russia accounts for nearly 40% of the resources. The Russians started with oil production but now produce almost the entire periodic table.

President Vladimir Putin has declared Arctic policy a state priority, approving the strategic plan for developing the Russian Arctic until 2035. Russia has the most mines and drilling platforms in the Far North of all the Arctic Council countries. Gazprom Neft Corporation’s Messoyakha fields are 250 km North from the Arctic Circle. Russia owns half of the icebreaking vessels in the world, including eight nuclear icebreakers. The St. Petersburg United Shipbuilding Corporation has built the Iceberg robotic complex, which allows year-round mining of mineral deposits in the waters of freezing seas at depths up to 4,500 meters. The Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy has created a project for a nuclear–powered underwater gas carrier with three atomic reactors that develop speeds under the ice of up to 17 knots. It is an underwater gas tank with a speed slightly less than the most modern submarines of the Los Angeles-class Navy.

Russia’s plans to usher in a new era of trans-Arctic partnership deserve special attention in the context of global geopolitical transformation.

Moscow is developing shipping logistics, exploration, and development of mineral resources in the Arctic Ocean. The northwest passage through this ocean along Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, has shallow depths and does not allow large-tonnage cargo ships to pass. Russia has built Large Range 2 Aframax class tankers with deadweight of more than 100 thousand tons and can safely carry Asian container ships along its Northern Sea Route.

Ever Given, one of the world’s biggest ships, jammed the Suez Canal in 2021, incurring losses of $9.6 billion. It is impossible to run aground in the Arctic Ocean; the route from Asia and Europe is twice as short and ten times safer than through the Persian Gulf with the risk of falling under missile attacks. Russia transported 36 million tons of cargo along the NSR last year, with a target of 220 million tons in 2035. The Northern Shipping Corridor already unites more than 70 ports and transshipment bases. Russia’s strategic position is that the entire Arctic region is becoming a territory of advanced development.

Russia’s intentions to open a new period of transarctic partnership are noticeable in the transformation of global geopolitics as they are linked to new opportunities that benefit all. These are the advantages and prospects of northern maritime logistics in competition with international routes, infrastructure modernization projects, and, simultaneously, the urban issues in the Arctic.

As the United States and Russia are entering negotiations in the search for peace in Ukraine, this event is an ideal example of the roadmap from wars and destruction to peace and development.

It’s hard to imagine that dispatching more arms to Ukraine and slapping more sanctions on Russia will be successful at achieving peace. The Russian army continues its slow but steady advance, so Putin may well have concluded that his country should push for a more complete Russian military victory and defy any near-term Western peace overtures.

However, the incoming administration has an opportunity to break from the status quo and entice Russia to end the war. This should include incentives with respect to the Arctic — an issue guaranteed to capture Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attention. Such an option could also prove attractive to Trump, who approaches the world through the lens of a businessman looking to strike big deals.

Putin’s participation in a November ceremony launching the new nuclear icebreaker Chukotka elicited little notice in the West but demonstrated the Russian president’s laser-like focus on developing the Arctic region. The vessel is reported to be the largest and most capable icebreaker in the world at 567 feet in length and displacing 33,500 tons, with two nuclear reactors that provide 350 megawatts of power, allowing it to break through ice nearly 10 feet thick.

Such ships do not come cheap, and the Chukotka is priced at about half a billion dollars.

The Chukotka is the fourth in a series of nuclear icebreakers, with another of the same class, the Yakutia, also nearing completion and a fresh keel due to be laid down in 2025. In October, an even more ambitious class of nuclear icebreakers received the green light for production in a shipyard near Vladivostok, costing $1 billion, an astronomical sum in today’s Russia.

The destination of the icebreakers is the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a shipping route that runs north of Russia and connects Western Europe to the Asia-Pacific. This year, a variety of new records have been set in the NSR, including for the largest ever container ship, which traversed the NSR in September, and the most oil ever transported.

For the Russian leader confronting both political and economic headwinds, the Arctic is always near the top of the agenda because it comprises about 10% of Russian GDP and 20% of its exports. Russian energy analysts are aiming to multiply Russian resource exports over the NSR by six or seven times to 200 million tons in the next five years. According to a mid-2024 report, “Russia certainly has the Arctic resources to power this enormous expansion of exports.”

Yet, the Kremlin’s Arctic ambitions go well beyond oil and gas. As all Russian leaders understand, the country’s economic growth has always been stymied by the simple fact that most of Russia’s giant rivers, such as the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Lena, all flow north into the Arctic. Thus, a functional NSR that has year-round navigation logically holds the key to unlocking major development in the country’s vast, resource-rich interior and more broadly for Siberia — a goal almost as old as the Russian state itself.

Putin is well aware that building tanks and missiles alone will not in itself make Russia strong and prosperous in the future, but this mega-project could open this possibility.

China has also embraced the NSR through its “Polar Silk Road” and has sought to partner closely with the Kremlin in the Arctic. A 2024 Chinese analysis argued that Beijing should ensure that Chinese and Russian corporations investing in the Arctic transit corridor are profitable.

Yet despite incremental progress, Chinese and Russian analysts are aware that the Arctic passage will never achieve its true potential without Western backing. This is why focusing on the Arctic is likely to have the largest effect on stopping the war in Ukraine. The long-sought shipping route across the High North remains one of the few relatively concrete geo-economic prizes that the Kremlin prizes on par with Ukraine itself.

Crucially, a newly dynamic transport corridor should apportion some percentage of the ample profits — say, 5 percent for the next five decades — to rebuilding Ukraine’s destroyed infrastructure. This consistent stream of resources would be a form of reparations payments to Kyiv that would likely amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

Undoubtedly, China would strongly support this plan. But a number of other interested countries that are currently estranged from Russia — whether Canada, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in the West, or South Korea and Japan in the East — stand to profit from the NSR as well, with the potential to ease global tensions across Eurasia.

Parts of the U.S. could also economically benefit, including Alaska, most obviously, but also northern ports like Seattle and even Boston. Western countries at the table for the NSR, moreover, will likely mean sounder environmental standards.

For this deal to have meaningful results, the U.S. would need to lift sanctions that have been applied against NSR projects. It would also be helpful if they acted to facilitate major European shipping companies like Hapag Lloyd and Maersk to green light the route. These steps might be sufficient, but the U.S. and Europe could further sweeten the pot with encouragement and even incentives for Western investment along the NSR.

During the first Trump administration, the president made some bold gestures in foreign policy and commendably took some political risks for peace. To be sure, the difficult issues with respect to separation of forces, the rights of citizens in eastern Ukraine, and the yet to be determined security architecture for Eastern Europe will remain paramount in any settlement.

Yet by appending peace proposals with a carrot guaranteed to catch Putin’s attention, negotiations having a substantial Arctic component could gain Trump’s favor and find success. Trump’s embrace and marketing of this large-scale business deal could not only help bring peace back to Eastern Europe, but could also revitalize the continent’s prospects more generally.

Lyle J. Goldstein is a research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College. The founding director of CMSI and author of dozens of articles on Chinese security policy, he focuses on Chinese undersea warfare. On the broader subject of U.S.-China relations, Goldstein published the book Meeting China Halfway in 2015. Over the last several years, Goldstein has focused on the North Korea crisis. Goldstein speaks Russian as well as Chinese and is an affiliate of Naval War College’s new Russia Maritime Studies Institute.

Russia is the Arctic’s largest legitimate stakeholder by way of geography (over 50 percent of the Arctic coastline is Russian territory). Decades of managed competition and collaborative policies protected the Arctic region from broader global politics. Despite the prickly heights of the Cold War and this sharpened period of enhanced militarization throughout the region, communication between Moscow and Washington endured.

In 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Arctic status quo was irreversibly ruptured. Those of us who cautioned against the cessation of Arctic engagement with Russia were branded Putin apologists at best and “useful idiots” at worst. Nonetheless, the Arctic Council (the region’s sole governance forum) suspended work programs with Russia. While select engagement has resumed, Moscow strategically capitalized on the West’s shunning of Russia in the Arctic forum and worked to diversify its Arctic partnerships elsewhere.

China and India have been the main benefactors of Washington’s short-sighted Arctic position. Simply put, Russia has little to no interest in performative Arctic status quo endeavors anymore. This is a critical challenge on the horizon for all Arctic stakeholders, whether in terms of their legitimate national interest (territorial or economic) or global interests in future supply chains and transportation routes. Washington has insignificant leverage to bring Moscow back into the Arctic tent.

Much ink is spilled on imagining the future histories of the Arctic. “New Cold Wars” are hotly debated, and fears of an “Asian Arctic” are routinely hyped. While I have long argued the era of Arctic “exceptionalism” is gone, it is perhaps pertinent to hear from Moscow. So, I asked Russia’s senior Arctic official—long-time Ambassador-at-Large for International Cooperation in the Arctic, Nikolai Korchunov. Korchunov is less sure the Arctic has passed a point of no return when it comes to international engagement, stating a glimmer of “common sense…is still present judging by the statements of some United States representatives” means he is hopeful for a “return to inclusive pan-Arctic dialogue sooner or later.”

China’s rationale for engagement in the Russian Arctic Zone is hotly contested by Arctic experts. Korchunov notes that “cooperation with China facilitates the development of…efficient supply chains,” which is no surprise given the strategic prize that is the northern sea route. The northern sea route is a game-changer that could cut off some 40 percent of the traveling distance of the traditional Suez Canal voyage for goods transiting between Asia and Europe.

Beyond its engagement with Russia, China’s Arctic identity is largely built upon its physical position at the Yellow River Station, Svalbard. Just recently, Beijing celebrated research triumphs at the station, clad with Chinese flags and personnel in military uniform. Does Russia believe the Svalbard Treaty—a cornerstone of the rules-based order in the Arctic—will be maintained? Korchunov diplomatically reiterates Russia’s interest in “its preservation and good faith implementation of all the provisions.” Of course, “good faith” implementation is just as important as interpretation. This is where both Russia and China manage to out-fox us. Washington doesn’t handle “gray zones” well.

Dismantling the Arctic status quo for short-term perceived political messaging gains has backfired for Washington. And it is not just about hard security affairs. As Korchunov laments, “lower effectiveness of existing mechanisms of decision-making by Arctic states on a range of non-military issues (environment, climate change, conservation of biodiversity, resource management, encouragement of sustainable economic development, and promotion of well-being of indigenous peoples of the North) shapes a space of uncertainty and vacuum which attracts other actors.” These actors are not merely drawn to strategic space or saber-rattling opportunities on America’s doorstep; they are looking for long-term economic gain. As Korchunov highlights, Russia has witnessed interest from states and organizations far beyond the Arctic, from Asia, and, more recently, the Arab states.

Washington has yet to realize it has entered the post-exceptionalist Arctic age. The repercussions are numerous. The focus remains on questions of “will they or won’t they” build a deepwater port at Nome (Alaska), or which of the two American icebreakers is not on fire this week? Biden’s Arctic legacy can be summarised in two basic talking points: bans on drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a second-rate attempt at updating the U.S. National Strategy for the Arctic Region. Washington’s vision for the Arctic (as sketched in the National Strategy for the Arctic) is at odds with the reality of the Arctic today.

Geostrategic competition is not “looming”; it never left. China has all but internationalized the Arctic, so it really serves little benefit to speak in terms of “non-Arctic” states. For instance, bans throughout the Arctic on Chinese rare earth firms have resulted in more and more Australian companies operating in the Arctic. Biden has allowed the shine of Arctic exceptionalism to wear off, and by dismantling the “guardrails to manage competition and resolve disputes,” Washington now finds itself yet another theater in which it is unprepared to compete with China.

Deterrence requires dialogue just as much as it demands preparatory defense contingencies. Trump 2.0 will inherit an empty Arctic pantry. Obama did the same, handing Trump 1.0, a U.S. Arctic position gutted of regional leadership and respect. Of course, back then, Washington didn’t have to contend with the Chinese Navy or Chinese Coast Guard operating on Alaska’s Arctic doorstep. Trump 2.0 now has the difficult task of prying apart Beijing and Moscow to locate a mutual interest between Russia and the United States in reviving any semblance of “low tension” in the Arctic.

Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan is a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.