Polar madness

 

“Polar War. By Kenneth Rosen. Simon & Schuster; 320 pages; $29.99. Profile Books; £22

 

IN RECENT weeks Donald Trump’s aggressive pursuit of Greenland, a Danish territory, has put the icy Arctic back at the fiery heart of geopolitics. European states have rushed troops to the island, and NATO is considering a new mission, Arctic Sentry, to monitor the airspace and waters around it. Mr Trump stakes his claim to Greenland on two grounds. One is the importance of Greenland to America’s defence. The island’s location means that it sits underneath the flight path of nuclear missiles fired from Russia towards America. The second is Europe’s inability to defend it. “You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security on Greenland? They added one more dog sled,” Mr Trump has talked. (The sleds, as it happens, are part of an elite Danish special-forces unit.)

 

Every author dreams of their book capturing the zeitgeist. Kenneth Rosen, a journalist and war correspondent, could not enjoy better timing. “Polar War” comes out just as Mr Trump has propelled the northern region to global attention. The book is a collection of reportage from different sites across the Arctic—from Alaska to the Norwegian island of Svalbard and from Swedish Lapland to Greenland itself. It is knitted together into a story of great powers competing over a region whose harsh geography imposes limits even on the abilities of superpowers.

 

The Arctic has no clear definition, Mr Rosen writes. Some define it as anything above the Arctic Circle. Others see it as where the semi-arid grassland of the steppe turns into frigid tundra, with a boundary that shifts with climate change. That geographical uncertainty reflects a wider sense of the Arctic as a liminal space. Even before Mr Trump’s attempted land grab, disputes over sovereignty were common: Canada says that the Northwest Passage, an Arctic sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is part of its territorial waters; America claims it is an international waterway. Ever heard of the “whisky war”? It was a low-level dispute over Arctic territory between Denmark and Canada resolved only in 2022; each of them would deposit local liquor on a remote island to stake their claim to it.

 

Mr Trump, though not known as a voracious reader, would do well to pick up a copy of “Polar War”, because it makes two points that cut to the heart of his diplomacy. One is that competition in the Arctic is growing. Global warming is melting polar ice, creating new navigable sea routes that pass through sensitive areas. Events in Ukraine from 2014 sparked a new period of military competition in Europe, one in which Russian submarines (sallying from their Arctic ports on the Kola Peninsula) and warplanes (practising bombing runs near Alaska) play a prominent role.

 

Meanwhile, China’s rise has fuelled its interest and presence in the region for economic and intelligence purposes. In 2018 China declared itself to be a “near-Arctic state”, to the bemusement of locals, and accelerated efforts to buy land and become involved in projects with both civilian and military applications in the high North.

 

That supports Mr Trump’s view that the Arctic is important. But, awkwardly for the president, the book’s thesis is that America, much more than Europe, has been asleep at the wheel. Consider Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the site of a large American radar that allows the Pentagon to observe threats from space, including approaching Russian missiles. That radar, or a future one, would be integral to Mr Trump’s plan for an expanded missile-defence system he has dubbed Golden Dome. But Pituffik, “relegated to an afterthought” in American plans, is literally falling apart. Its concrete was laid on permafrost that is now melting and shifting. Door frames have been ripped from the floor, walls spread apart and runways fractured from constant freezing and thawing.

 

Mr Trump derides the competence and capacity of his European and Canadian allies. In fact, Europeans are “arguably ahead” of America in the Arctic, one expert tells Mr Rosen. That becomes clear during the author’s two weeks aboard the KV Svalbard, Norway’s main icebreaker, as it escorts the American Healy to skirt Russia’s coastline. The Healy is larger and more powerful than the Norwegian ship. But its shortcomings become apparent. It lacks an ice-breaking propeller. Its gyroscope and radar repeatedly fail. “The American crew seems ravaged, tired and frustrated,” writes Mr Rosen. When a Russian helicopter buzzes the ship, the American sailors are “visibly unnerved by the encounter”, while the Norwegians, long used to such games, are nonplussed.

 

Amid these struggles, Russia is racing ahead, argues Mr Rosen. It has reopened and modernised more than 50 cold-war bases along its 15,000 miles of Arctic coastline. Its fleet of icebreakers “dwarfs the maritime Arctic fleets of every other nation”, and it has much greater proficiency in cold-weather operations.

 

Playing catch-up is not easy. For the book’s second point is that getting anything done in the Arctic is forbiddingly difficult. The region is a frontier that resists efforts to tame it. Satellite ground terminals struggle to connect with satellites near the equator. In Longyearbyen, a town on Norway’s Svalbard, each intake of breath is “enough to make one’s throat seize”, writes Mr Rosen. Suicide rates among American soldiers in the 11th Airborne Division, an Alaska-based unit specialising in Arctic fighting, were, until recently, disturbingly high. “I stayed too long and grew mad,” admits the author. It is hard enough to live in such places, let alone wage war in them.

 

Mr Rosen’s point is that America, despite its wealth and power, cannot succeed in the Arctic without European allies. “For all their co-operation, the United States relies more heavily on Norway than Norway relies on it,” notes Mr Rosen, pointing to American radars, drone bases and training grounds in Norway’s north.

 

“Polar War” is immersive and richly reported, with Mr Rosen speaking to military officials and ordinary citizens alike. Unfortunately, his writing is at times more flowery than the bleak landscape and serious subject call for. Nonetheless, the book speaks to the moment. A war is unlikely to begin over control of Arctic territory, but the Artic’s importance to the great powers—to America for missile defence, to Russia as a bastion for its submarine force, to Europe as its northern flank—means that a conflict elsewhere could spread there, as happened during the second world war. And if that conflict comes, Mr Trump should remember that he will need friends to operate in the harsh and lonely climes of the region he covets.” [1]

 

1. Polar madness. The Economist; London Vol. 458, Iss. 9484,  (Jan 31, 2026): 80, 81.