Excerpt
The Arctic, during the Cold War a locus of intense military competition between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, is rapidly reemerging as a geostrategic flash point. As accelerating climate change melts the Arctic’s perennial sea ice, littoral as well as peripheral actors are preparing to exploit emergent economic and strategic opportunities in the High North. Although the possibility of armed conflict over Arctic resources has been somewhat discounted, a fair amount of saber rattling in recent years among the “Arctic Eight”—the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—has given rise to the notion that circumpolar security actors may be priming for a “new kind of Cold War” in the North.1 Russia, for example, has warned that countries could be at war within a decade over resources in the Arctic region.
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