Scramble for the Arctic

Great-power rivalry has returned to international politics, yet for decades the Arctic region remained partly insulated from its most confrontational dynamics. Regional institutions and law preserved practical cooperation in science, environmental protection and maritime safety, while geographical remoteness and high costs limited what states could achieve in the north. Norway’s “High North, Low Tension” formula captured an order that rested on a shared interest in keeping practical and pragmatic cooperation workable.

That relative stability is now weakening across different theatres of the Arctic. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO reshaped the European High North. Modest joint Russian-Chinese operational activity added a signalling element in the Bering region, while US pressure over Greenland has created friction within NATO itself. At the same time, climate change is reducing physical barriers to access and raising the prospective value of shipping routes, energy projects and critical minerals.

The current Arctic “scramble” centres on bottlenecks, difficult-to-replace capacities that turn physical access into economic or strategic power. The article treats Arctic competition through asymmetric interdependence, where states gain leverage when others depend on assets or relationships that are costly to replace. A narrower form appears when control over a hard-to-circumvent hub allows a state to restrict critical flows. In the Arctic, these dependencies run through transport infrastructure, mineral processing, finance, jurisdiction and military access. Control over such a bottleneck can create leverage when other actors lack affordable alternatives. Even then, leverage does not guarantee political control. The key geopolitical question is which actors can exploit these positions while limiting their own exposure elsewhere.

Climate Change Opens the Arctic Unevenly

The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the global average. Since the 1980s, summer sea-ice extent has declined by about half, while more than 95% of the oldest and thickest ice has disappeared. Retreating ice does not automatically translate into easier access. Thawing permafrost, coastal erosion and unpredictable ice conditions damage infrastructure and increase operating costs. Longer ice-free periods can nevertheless extend navigation seasons, while resource projects can generate the cargo needed to sustain maritime activity.

Arctic Council data show that between 2013 and 2025 the number of unique vessels entering the Polar Code area rose by 40%, while their sailing distance increased by 95%. Fishing remains the largest category, while much of the growth in bulk and LNG traffic comes from resource projects rather than routine global transit. A busier Arctic is still far from a mature transport network, as the constraints facing its two principal routes make clear.

The Northern Sea Route (NSR) along the Russian Arctic coast is the best-known and most developed Arctic route. On paper, it can shorten Asia-Europe distances from roughly 24,000 to 15,000 kilometres. In 2024, the route carried 37.9 million metric tonnes of cargo. Yet transit cargo remained below 10% of the total, leaving the NSR primarily a Russian resource and resupply network rather than a global transit corridor. Even during the major disruption to Suez traffic in 2024, liner operators largely redirected ships around the Cape of Good Hope rather than towards the Arctic. The distance advantage narrows once seasonal uncertainty, lower speeds, ice-class requirements, higher insurance costs, limited repair options and political factors are accounted for.

The Northwest Passage faces even greater constraints and a shorter navigation season. Multiyear ice continues to drift into the narrow channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, while icebreaker and emergency-response capacity remains limited. The route also carries a sovereignty dispute, with Canada treating it as internal waters and the United States as an international strait.

Climate change is therefore an enabling factor rather than a guarantee of usable access. Where infrastructure and dependable cargo already exist, reduced ice can reinforce an operating network. In less developed areas, the same physical opening may remain commercially unusable for years.

Infrastructure Turns Resources into Power

Climate change is increasing the accessibility of the Arctic, but resources give that access strategic significance. A 2008 USGS assessment estimated that the Arctic may hold about 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered gas, around 84% located offshore. The actual commercial value of these resources depends on an interdependent chain of exploration, financing, extraction, transport, processing and market access.

Russia holds the strongest existing Arctic production position because much of that chain already exists. Yamal LNG connects gas production, liquefaction at Sabetta, specialised shipping and export markets through infrastructure largely established before the current sanctions regime. Arctic LNG 2, however, shows how sanctions restricted access to finance, specialised technology, insurance and shipping capacity. Sanctions neither produced Russian autonomy nor halted exports. Instead, they redirected dependence towards a narrower group of Asian partners, especially China, showing how a strong upstream position can gradually become more vulnerable downstream.

By contrast, Canada and Greenland possess significant rare-earth reserves of approximately 830,000 and 1.5 million metric tonnes, respectively, yet the USGS recorded no rare-earth mine production in either country in 2025. Neither has an operating infrastructure system comparable to Russia’s, while remoteness and political approval requirements further complicate new projects. Canada is trying to reduce northern infrastructure constraints through projects such as the Grays Bay Road and Port. In Greenland, restrictions on uranium-bearing deposits effectively blocked Kvanefjeld, showing how domestic authority can stop development despite geological resources and foreign commercial interest.

The United States occupies a different position and faces a specific bottleneck. It has capital, domestic demand and mining capacity, but processing remains its weakest and most politically sensitive point. Across 2020-2023, imports from China equalled 67% of US apparent consumption of rare-earth compounds and metals. Furthermore, the IEA identified China as the leading refiner of 19 of the 20 strategic minerals it tracks, with an average share of nearly 70%. This concentration can create structural leverage over mineral supply chains far beyond its territory, although it does not lead to direct control over Arctic deposits. Washington has responded by investing in domestic mining and processing, critical-mineral partnerships and stockpiles. The EU has moved in the same direction and adopted the Critical Raw Materials Act. It targets domestic processing equal to 40% of annual consumption by 2030 and seeks to keep dependence on any single non-EU supplier below 65% at a relevant stage of the value chain.

This is why Arctic power cannot be read directly from a map of territory or reserves. A state that owns a deposit may still depend on foreign capital, transport or refining. Another actor may lack sovereignty over the resource but control the technology or processing needed to bring it to market. The strongest position comes from controlling a difficult-to-replace part of the chain while limiting exposure elsewhere. Because extraction and navigation still depend on legally allocated rights, control over access also rests on rules about who may authorise activity and on what terms.

Law Allocates Gatekeeping Power

The Arctic’s legal order, centred on UNCLOS, allocates rights across territorial seas, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. Coastal states exercise sovereign rights over resources within their maritime jurisdiction, while other states retain defined navigation rights and may gain access through investment or agreement. Jurisdiction gives coastal states gatekeeping power as they can license extraction, regulate navigation and set conditions for access.

Law, however, does not eliminate political conflict. Russia, Canada and Denmark have long-standing overlapping outer-continental-shelf claims around the Lomonosov Ridge. Recognition of one of these claims would result not only in access to new areas but also in sovereign rights over seabed resources beyond 200 nautical miles, without conferring sovereignty over the waters above. The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf can assess the scientific basis of submissions but cannot draw final boundaries, leaving delimitation to the claimants. Furthermore, the Northwest Passage dispute remains unresolved for a different reason. Canada treats it as internal waters, while the United States regards it as an international strait; accepting Canadian control could weaken Washington’s broader interest in preserving navigation rights through contested straits elsewhere.

Arctic law has also provided a basis for negotiated settlements. Norway and Russia nevertheless resolved their Barents Sea boundary in 2010, while Canada, Denmark and Greenland settled the Hans Island dispute and related maritime boundaries in 2022. These cases suggest that settlement becomes easier when legal certainty is worth more than continued ambiguity and compromise does not threaten interests beyond the dispute itself.

Individual settlements can resolve specific disputes, but they cannot alone provide the continuous coordination required across the region. Since 1996, the Arctic Council has served as the principal regional forum for environmental protection, science and maritime safety. It operates by consensus, excludes military security from its mandate and has no enforcement powers. This limited mandate helped insulate practical cooperation from wider geopolitical rivalry. High-level political cooperation was suspended after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, although scientific work has partially resumed. Despite wider tensions, Russia, the United States, China and the EU still cooperate under the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement, where shared restraint remains preferable to unilateral action.

Legal rights become strategically meaningful only when they can be exercised. Monitoring, infrastructure and sustained physical presence determine whether jurisdiction can be enforced in practice. Law allocates gatekeeping authority; material capacity determines its reach.

Infrastructure Enters the Security Dilemma

As Russia-NATO and US-China rivalries deepen, the infrastructure that enables Arctic activity increasingly serves both commercial and military purposes. Ports, satellites, airfields, icebreakers and logistics networks support access while also enabling surveillance, reinforcement and deterrence. States therefore treat control over and resilience of such assets as national-security concerns.

Russia’s 2022 Maritime Doctrine reflects this dual role. Along the Siberian coast, Russian ports, icebreakers and navigation systems sustain exports and state presence; on the Kola Peninsula, infrastructure supports nuclear deterrence and access to the North Atlantic. These priorities can conflict because Moscow wants more cargo and investment on the NSR even as its defence value encourages tighter control. Sanctions and political isolation make the further development of this model increasingly dependent on China.

China treats the Arctic as a strategic domain in which scientific activity, economic access and political influence overlap. The Polar Silk Road forms part of Beijing’s effort to achieve greater strategic autonomy and diversify access to resources and infrastructure. Vulnerability around the Malacca route gives Beijing an incentive to develop alternatives, although Arctic shipping offers only limited strategic optionality and cannot replace China’s main commercial corridors.

Moscow and Beijing formally describe their relationship as a „no-limits partnership,“ but their core Arctic interests are not identical. While both seek to reduce US pressure, Russia remains protective of its privileged role in Arctic governance and cautious about excessive Chinese influence. The relationship remains closer to a partnership of necessity than to a unified strategic front. Yet in 2024, a joint coast guard patrol in the Bering Sea and a separate bomber patrol near Alaska showed a limited capacity to operate together. For the United States and NATO, China’s growing operational presence, especially alongside Russian forces, raises concerns about the alliance’s deterrence and defence posture in a theatre previously planned primarily around Russia.

NATO has maintained an Arctic presence since its founding, but the region held a secondary place in NATO planning after the Cold War. The High North regained importance after 2014 as Russian military modernisation drove greater allied surveillance and force presence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerated this institutional and military consolidation. Finland’s accession roughly doubled NATO’s land border with Russia. Brussels and Washington have presented increased deployments and initiatives such as Arctic Sentry as necessary defensive responses, while Moscow interprets these measures as NATO force expansion near its territory. Because these capabilities serve both defensive and operational purposes, measures that strengthen NATO surveillance and reinforcement can also deepen Russian perceptions of vulnerability, reinforcing a regional security dilemma.

Greenland Moves Competition Inside the Alliance

While rivalry with Russia and China has reinforced NATO’s Arctic posture, US pressure over Greenland under the Trump administration moves part of that competition inside the alliance itself. US interest combines preserving strategic primacy in the North Atlantic with denying rivals future footholds. Greenland occupies a geostrategic position as it forms the western side of the GIUK Gap and hosts Pituffik Space Base, supporting missile warning and space surveillance. The US 2026 National Defense Strategy identifies Greenland as “key terrain” to which Washington intends to guarantee military and commercial access. The “Donroe Doctrine” compounds this by asserting American dominance over the Western Hemisphere. Greenland’s mineral potential adds another dimension, as the island contains deposits of 43 minerals classified as critically vital by the United States. For Washington, Greenland therefore offers a military position today and an option on future resource security, particularly as the United States tries to reduce exposure to Chinese-dominated supply chains.

The central contradiction in the recent tensions over the island is that Washington already possesses extensive military access under the 1951 defence agreement, while current Russian and Chinese activity in Greenland remains limited. Trump nevertheless reiterated his demand in July 2026 for American control rather than access. One plausible explanation is anticipatory control, an effort to shape the rules governing future military presence, infrastructure development and mineral investment before the island becomes more strategically valuable.

What Washington perceives as a strategic vulnerability, Denmark and Greenland regard as political authority over the island’s future. Denmark retains sovereignty, while Greenland exercises broad authority over resources and seeks greater autonomy on its own terms. US pressure cannot remove the need for political consent on which a durable American presence depends. Greater control might reduce one perceived vulnerability while creating another by weakening alliance cohesion and the institutions that already sustain the American position.

Trajectory

The Arctic is not moving towards open interdependence, strategic autonomy or a direct conflict. Its dependencies cut across different forms of power, so control over one critical stage is offset by exposure elsewhere. Competitive interdependence is the most likely scenario, in which states remain connected while gradually treating the terms of those connections as matters of security.

The fastest shifts are likely to occur in political access. Infrastructure and industrial capacity take years to replace, while consent, alliance arrangements and rules of access can change much faster. Reducing vulnerability is also costly. States can duplicate infrastructure, diversify suppliers and build processing capacity, but weaponising an existing asymmetry can accelerate the search for substitutes and erode the leverage it was meant to create. Cooperation is therefore likely to survive where restraint remains cheaper than separation, though in narrower compartments. The danger is that individually rational attempts to reduce exposure can create a less stable regional order.

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source of the picture: Adapted by the author using ChatGPT from a video still by Нити Истории, “АРКТИКА – Что Скрывают Ледяные Просторы? | Атомные Ледоколы и Их Устройство” [“The Arctic: What Do the Icy Expanses Hide? Nuclear Icebreakers and How They Work”], YouTube. & OpenAI. (2026). [AI-generated image]. ChatGPT

Written by Daniil Shiraliev

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