The Battle for the Arctic

0:28Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. the States, some of the big European powers, all vying for dominance and control here. And of course, climate change speeding up that process. So to give you a taste of it, here's an extract from this week's episode. To hear the full thing, get all the benefits of a TripPlus membership, sign up at therestispolitics.com. Let's just start off. I really did love your book. When I got to the very, very end, I love the fact right at the back of the book, across both pages, you've got this map looking down at the top of the world, looking down onto the North Pole.

1:03And I think that's a good place to start. Can you just give our listeners a kind of geographical tour d 'horizon of what we mean by the Arctic? You know, going into the reporting and research, I was much like everyone else thinking that the Arctic was a thin sliver of our planet existing at the polar north and that it was just ice and polar bears. And I also believe that it was delineated by this Arctic Circle, which is at 66 degrees and 33 minutes north. And that was like the hard stop of where this region began and ended. But the Arctic really is this conglomerate, if you will, of eight nations who possess either physical territory or littoral coastlines along the Arctic Ocean.

1:51And to define the Arctic is a real challenge. And I try to set out to understand what the different definitions were. I mean, you could say it's where permafrost ends. You could say it's where the last tree reaches into the tundra. The U.S. government, in fact, says that the Aleutian Islands, which are very far south of the Arctic Circle, are part of the Arctic. So I took a loose definition and said the Arctic is really where people believe the Arctic is. So if they think that they live in the Arctic, then that's the Arctic. For example, Iceland is south of the Arctic Circle, and it only abuts the Arctic Ocean.

2:27But they're completely an Arctic nation. They believe they live in the Arctic. Same goes for the folks in Fairbanks, Alaska. It is just in the Arctic proper, but the climate's a little different. And so if you're associating with the Arctic and feel as though you have a stake in this region that is generally populated by 4 million, and then in the subarctic, which is 13 million, and again, loosely defined as just this northern stretch of the world, then I feel as though that's appropriate to call you in the Arctic. I mean, Juneau, Alaska, the capital of Alaska, is basically the Pacific Northwest.

3:00It's rainy all year round. There's not a lot of snow. But those folks believe themselves to be Arctic stakeholders, and they are by virtue of living in Alaska. So when you look at the world from the top, looking down, you get a sense that it can creep beyond the Arctic Circle, that this region has much more of a stake than perhaps you would get if you looked at the Mercator projection, which makes Iceland look like a thumbnail. And just to go around your, your Arctic, starting at the top of the page, you've got a bit of Canada. You then go into Alaska, United States. Three miles later, you're into Russia.

3:32And you go right around, then you're into Finland, you're into Sweden, Norway. And then of course, up at the top, and we're going to talk about a lot about this later, we've got Greenland. So it really does give you a sense of just how vast it is when you see just how much of Russia is sort of attached to the Arctic? Well, not only how vast it is, but if you take that perspective, looking from the top, you realize that the geographic lines of where a country ends and starts all meet at the top, right? So there are almost these little slivers of shared ocean that exist in the North Pole. So there's really a proximity there that isn't quite explained in the general populace.

4:10Yeah. Now, let's get on to why it matters so much, why it maybe feels like it matters a lot more than it did. And am I right in thinking that there's an extraordinary irony right at the heart of this debate, which is that one of the reasons it seems to matter a lot more than it did is because of climate change. is one of the reasons that Trump claims he has to get a hold of Greenland. But actually, of course, climate change, as we famously know, is what he calls the great green scam. And it doesn't really exist. But is that what's happening, that climate change is leading to the Arctic becoming more open, the sea lanes being more open, the minerals being more accessible?

4:52Is that basically what's going on? It's exactly what's going on. And I think there is this subtle admission by the Trump administration and governments the world over who are climate deniers to say that this is a region that is becoming more accessible because of climate change. I mean, this is coming from a president who refuses to support sustainable energy projects. As the climate in the North changes, it's warming four to five times faster than the rest of the planet. And that's opening up waterways that had previously been icebound year round. To say nothing of like an increased access to areas of land masses that were previously covered in ice or snow year-round or just plain inaccessible by planes or boats.

5:32But I think the real fascinating thing is this sort of feedback loop that is occurring, right? So as the North heats more than the rest of the planet, it's thawing permafrost, which contains carbon and methane, and is then inciting an even quicker heating of the planet, which some climate scientists believe that by 2030, there won't be summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. This layer of gyrating ice that persists year-round now at the top of our world. So soon that'll be pretty navigable and easy for boats that generally wouldn't visit the north to go through. And when we talk about the resources, we're talking about oil, we're talking about iron ore, we're talking about precious metals, we're talking about graphite, lithium, cobalt, a lot of the things that we need for the kind of technological battle going on and EVs and So you've got gold, zinc, diamonds.

6:24So you can see why the kind of interest is there from a Trump or a Xi Jinping or a Putin. And just on the strategic point, again, look at your map on the back of the book. You kind of immediately get the sense of why it's potentially strategically so important. It's hard to see even then, though. I mean, to appreciate the connection. I remember a military official from the U.S. explaining to me that it's a great place to just locate troops because you can fly anywhere to all these other adversarial nations or theaters of war in like seven hours. You cross the North Pole and you're there really quickly.

7:05You don't have to circumnavigate the globe to get there. You just launch out of Alaska and you reach Russia in four hours. You can get to Norway in six. You can reach the U.K. in seven. And we're talking about major military equipment. So not just coming from New York and flying across the Atlantic. So it's a great place to position troops. But the U.S. just hasn't utilized it that way since the Cold War. And of course, when you look at that part of the map of Russia, not far from there is where an awful lot of their nuclear arsenal are located as well. Not just an awful lot. The lot. Their entire nuclear force.

7:43Pointing at you. Pointing towards you, Ken. They're coming to get you. So what's fed this kind of, we'll come on to Trump's obsession, about which I'm very, very interested. But I'm also interested, having read the book and seen just how much work you put into it and how much time you've spent in the Arctic. What has fed your obsession with this? It's a good question. You know, I was a young, near-college graduate trying to break into journalism and writing, and saw an ad online for a job posting in Juneau, Alaska for a beat reporter out there. And I said, well, you know, sounds good. I like the wilderness.

8:25It sounds crazy as well, and I'm all for that. They were going to pay for my flight and get me out there. And I said, sure thing. and as I got the plane from Seattle to Juneau, it came in sideways. So my window seat was looking out at the runway and I thought, oh man, this is horrifying. I made a terrible mistake, but we landed safely, of course. And I reported there for about six months covering the state house and education in Alaska. And just, I fell in love with it in the way many young men and young people would fall in love with the wilderness, you know, this vastness, this real humbling connection to nature and realizing that you are, at the end of the day, nothing compared to the rest of the world and how many people are living and persisting here and how much history there is.

9:10So it always stayed in the back of my mind. I eventually left to go back to the East Coast of the US, but it always stuck in my mind. And I always had an affinity for the cold and for this dreary community that has to really bind together over the winter months and through a lot because I would order the New York Times, for instance. I'd get the Sunday New York Times in Alaska. It would come two weeks late, okay? That's how removed we were from the rest of the country and the world. My center of the universe was altered forever. So I always felt this pull to go back to the Arctic. And when I had the chance to, I took it.

9:46It kind of feels like more than that. It feels to me something that you kind of can't let go of, that it's sort of, and it's strange, I think you said about how you love the cold. I mean, I swim in very cold water every morning, right? But once I'm out, I want to get warm. But you, you, you, you. Well, Alistair, you're crazy. Okay. So that's, that's different than being obsessed. Okay. But did you know, because when you started doing this, when you started going there, as you say, it was almost like a romantic attachment to a place, but it's now coincided with a place where, as you say in the book, and I've heard other people say this as well, that it's not impossible that this could become like the trigger point of major conflict between the major powers of the world.

10:34I don't know if you want to game out a scenario right now, but the first time I landed in Svalbard, that archipelago 800 miles north of mainland Norway, controlled by Norway. Which is part of the Norwegian territory. Security apparatus, too, right? I mean, it's also part of NATO. When I landed there, I felt first that I was in a community. Immediately, I felt like, have I seen that person before? Or I know that person. Do they know me? It felt very communal and very in sync with who I was originally. So I felt right at home. And you notice now the beanie and the hooded sweatshirt. So that's just who I am.

11:11And I realized that there was this disparate community with only 2 ,000 people and then some Russians in a community nearby. It's a demilitarized zone. It's a visa-free zone, so anyone can go there. It's got a major satellite relay that ostensibly isn't supposed to be used for military communications, but we learn otherwise. And if I was Russia or China and I wanted to test the strength of NATO, why not invade this place? There's no one here. Put some people here, see what happens, right? And then to gauge whether or not it would trigger Article 5, whether or not an attack against one wouldn't trigger an attack from all.

11:47Because is the strength of NATO that prevalent? Is it still as strong as it purports to be? And would they be willing to risk an outright nuclear conflict or greater conflict over such a small island, a set of islands? So I was intrigued by this notion that there are these vulnerabilities to the West. There is a vulnerability to the European Arctic, too. to the UK. It's not that far north. And the Kingdom of Denmark holds sovereignty over the Faroe Islands, which is just north of y 'all's beautiful country. So it felt amazing to me that it wasn't part of the discussion. And you can speak to that effect.

12:25When you were in government, I mean, the Arctic was a footnote. Exactly. There's really interesting you mentioned the pharaohs there, because I mean, the pharaohs in our world, for some reason, they're constantly being drawn against scotland in european football tournaments and that's about the only time we ever talk about them but i saw it was a piece in um i think the new york times last week about the pharaohs and there was a quote there from a guy from scala a politician and he said this the russians would take as if they wanted before breakfast tomorrow unless they were part of denmark and i guess that's part of the thinking that is in in greenland right now as well but here's something that, again, came from your book.

13:08And I can't remember exactly who it was. It was a Norwegian commander that you were speaking to who said, Putin is saying, I am the boss of the Arctic, and he is. Does this relate to the fact that when I look at your map, I see three American bases in Alaska, I see one on Greenland, and I see a whole lot in the Arctic Circle across the Russian bit. Very much so. I mean, the US has underdeveloped Alaska as far as its defense capabilities go for decades. But to set the scene, I was on board this Norwegian icebreaker for two weeks in the Arctic Ocean. We left from Longyearbyen in Svalbard. And dark, cold night, we hadn't reached the sea ice yet, and I was invited into the commanding officer's berth, his office.

13:58And I sat down and he wanted to show me a little bit about what he understood to be the issues in the Arctic. And he's clicking through presentations to show me the sea ice dwindling. He shows me how they use satellite imagery to navigate the ice cracks and how they try to make it more easy on the crew and the ship than saying just barreling through the ice. And he gets to news items and pictures of the new leader class Russian icebreakers, which are these massive, massive icebreakers, something like 80 times the power of the icebreaker that we were on. Just beasts, just, you know, four inches, six inches of ice like it's nothing at 10 knots, 20 knots, making a highway more or less than ice.

14:40And he's just he's marveling at them. And he's saying, wow, I mean, wow, I wish we had that on ours and talking about how neat their ships are and the capabilities. And his ship was cool. His ship had these propellers that, when turned in reverse, could shave and shred the ice. So, I mean, he had pretty cool equipment, too, but he was fawning over this Russian equipment. And that's when he said to me, you know, Putin is the reigning power in the Arctic, in part because of their equipment, but also because they've spent the last 10, 15 years opening up or reopening Cold War air bases and staffing them.

15:15I mean, historically, the Arctic was a place for the Soviet Union to test its nuclear arsenal. And now we're seeing them test their hypersonic missiles there again. So there is this push by Russia to get back there. And the rest of us are just sort of like, oh, that's been interesting. Maybe we should take notice. And meanwhile, they're far ahead. So on that, just on that point then, and we'll come on later to the whole kind of, you know, we'll really drill down on Greenland and why Trump is doing it. my view. But if you listen to anybody who listens regularly to our podcast knows I'm really not a big fan of Trump.

15:49But on this, does whatever his motivations, does he kind of have a point? Well, I think that makes two of us, first and foremost. I don't think that I don't think he has a valid argument because of the 1951 accord that we have with the Kingdom of Denmark that states we could the U.S. could do whatever it wishes as far as expansion or or basing military assets and units there. I think it's ironic because we haven't done what we could do in Alaska. The U.S. could do in Alaska. And yet the White House is focusing on a country that is much more destitute and hard to access and difficult to build infrastructure on.

16:31But they can't even do it in Alaska. And they were not even focusing on Alaska and yet want to shift gears to a whole other country. It seems wildly naive to the fact that the capabilities just aren't there. So when you say that they're not doing what they needed to do in Alaska, what do you mean by that? What should have been happening in Alaska that they now say has to be done in Greenland? Well, for one, the Trans-Alaska pipeline is slowly becoming less and less viable over the years. It's losing its barrels per day. It's not producing the same as it was before in the 80s and 90s. And we just don't have infrastructure for launching expeditions from Alaska, for instance, they're only now considering building a deep water port in Nome.

17:17And that project is still 10 years out. Ask the Russians how long it'll take them to build a deep water port. And it would take a quarter of the time or the Chinese take a quarter of the time. You know, so the people living in Alaska aren't receiving the benefits that they need, but we also just don't have the infrastructure like the plain and simple runways and ports necessary to launch military excursions or even scientific excursions. from Alaska. Is this your kind of big beef, putting to one side your kind of romantic attachment, your love of the place? Is it also as an American that you feel they have completely turned a blind eye to the strategic significance of this place, including in their own country, Alaska?

17:58Not only, I mean, yes, strategic significance, but a whole litany of other issues too. I mean, I don't know if I told you this, Alistair, but I lived in Europe, Central Europe for five years before moving back to the States recently. And I was ashamed of being American for most of that time for, like I said, a litany of other reasons. But when I started to look into the Arctic and go to Sweden and visit with the Finnish border guards and live in Norway and spend a month in Iceland and then travel, circumnavigate Greenland, making my way back to Alaska, I thought, wow, all these other countries get it.

18:31And then I spent a month and a half in Alaska and felt, what the heck are we doing? You know, I can't even get a train between these major cities because it's closed during the winter. Aren't we an Arctic nation? It was embarrassing. To hear the full episode, just sign up at therestispolitics.com.