New Ice Age in the Arctic: Why the Polar Sea has become the scene of a geopolitical struggle

With his claim to Greenland, Donald Trump caused a scandal even before he took office. The intention to buy Greenland was not new. He had already put forward this in 2019 during his first term in office. The ultimate justification that it was an "absolute necessity" for the USA to own and control Greenland "in the interest of national security and freedom in the world" caused a stir.

Trump himself did not rule out the use of military force against NATO member Denmark if it did not cooperate. Since then, there has been a fire on the roof. In Denmark, in the EU and in Greenland itself, which, with its 57,000 inhabitants, belongs to Denmark and has been largely autonomous since 1979. In doing so, Trump at least rhetorically placed the national interests and security policy of the USA above the rules of the international community and NATO allies and made it clear that a new era has also begun in the polar region.

For decades, the Arctic was isolated. But now the polar sea has become the scene of a geopolitical struggle that poses the risk of a new cold war. You can read about this in the book "From the ice desert to the arena of the great powers. The geopolitical consequences of climate change in the Arctic" by Rudolf Hermann and Andreas Doepfner.

Both are familiar with the region, Doepfner as editor of the NZZ for Northern Europe from 1982 to 1998 at the end of the Cold War, Hermann as correspondent from 2015 to 2023, when the East-West cooperation ended due to the Russian annexation of Crimea. The authors thus survey a long period in which conditions changed radically.

The Arctic Council has long seen the USA, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia working together. But the tone is no longer "cooperation" but "confrontation" - between Russia and China and the Western states, but also between the USA and small NATO partners.

Trump's territorial claims to Greenland and Canada, Russia's dominance in the Arctic Ocean, Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO and China's ambitions for a "Blue Silk Road" in the north appear to be scenes of a drama that is escalating on the world political stage. The alleged private visit by Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. in January to Nuuk on the "Trump" plane is more than just a joke. The symbolic landing shows that Trump is serious about taking control of Greenland.

Global warming is making large deposits of strategic minerals such as uranium and rare earths, as well as oil and gas fields, easier to access in Greenland, Iceland and Spitsbergen. In the south of Greenland, near Narsaq and Qaqortoq, there are two rich deposits of rare earths that are needed for civil and military high technology. China is the world leader in the mining of such ores, and it also has a foot in the door in Greenland with a stake in a mining company. An acquisition of Greenland could therefore free the USA from this dependency.

But that is currently a rather theoretical option. Mining in Greenland is no walk in the park, as the authors Hermann and Doepfner make clear. Difficult topography, harsh climate, sparse infrastructure, fluctuating world market prices and the ban on uranium mining have so far been a major obstacle to mining projects.

Trump's strategic interest in Greenland, however, is tangible. The authors draw astonishing lines from the history of the USA to the present, which make the intention to buy seem logical. The USA has repeatedly consolidated its territory through purchases and incorporated important foreland into its sphere of influence, for example with the purchase of East Florida in the south in 1821 and Alaska in the northwest in 1867.

In the same year, the USA wanted to buy Greenland and Iceland from the Danes as an Arctic bulwark against the British colonial power in the military gap in the northeast of the USA. The plan failed, as did the offer to buy Greenland in 1946 under the Democratic President Harry S. Truman after the Second World War.

The USA nevertheless had a military presence in Greenland. During World War II, it operated several air force bases there. During the Cold War, the island became extremely important due to its location between North America and the Soviet Union, as the authors emphasize. On the one hand, the USA built Thule Air Base in the north, a large base for long-range bombers, which today is part of the USA's missile early warning system as Pituffik Space Base.

On the other hand, Greenland gained geostrategic importance in the so-called Giuk Gap. Giuk is the narrow point between Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the United Kingdom, where access to the Atlantic can be controlled. Denmark is entrusted with military surveillance of this sea area, which is important for NATO.

"If, for example, the US came to the conclusion that Copenhagen was not capable of doing this, Washington would consider taking on this task itself," the authors write. This could mean a level of rearmament that would challenge Russia to take countermeasures. Against this background, Trump's expansion into Greenland also appears to be a return to the logic of the Cold War.

"In times of increasing political confrontation between Moscow and the West, the Northeast Atlantic is becoming increasingly important for Moscow's military strategy," say Doepfner and Hermann. In fact, Russia's radius of action at sea is limited.

The Black Sea Fleet in the south cannot operate in the Mediterranean since the Bosporus was closed to warships as a result of the Ukraine war. The Baltic Sea, where Russia borders St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, has practically become an inland sea due to NATO's northern expansion to include Finland and Sweden. This leaves Murmansk, the only year-round ice-free port on the Kola Peninsula, where the Russian Northern Fleet is based with its submarines equipped with intercontinental missiles.

If the ships want to go west into the European Atlantic, they have to go through the Bear Gap, a 450-kilometer-wide passage between the Norwegian North Cape and Bear Island, and later through the Giuk Gap. As in the Baltic Sea, submarine cables have been severed several times in the sea area between Norway and Spitsbergen.

To the east, the Northeast Passage runs along the Russian North Sea coast through the Bering Strait into the Pacific. Russia uses this route to send oil and natural gas to the world market. It regards this international sea route as its territory and has built up a powerful fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers to assert its great power ambitions. The USA currently has only two old icebreakers and is not very commercially or militarily operational in the northern seas. The militarization of the Arctic zone is likely to intensify further.

Rudolf Hermann, Andreas Doepfner: From the ice desert to the arena of the great powers. The geopolitical consequences of climate change in the Arctic. NZZ Libro, Basel 2024. 236 pp., Fr. 38.–.