As global players focus on the Arctic, US icebreakers are scarce

AllAfrica

29-04-2025

Nowhere on earth is global warming proceeding more rapidly than inside the Arctic Circle. Over the past two decades, the Arctic has grown five degrees Celsius warmer. And the trend is accelerating, with the Arctic warming nearly four times as rapidly as the rest of the planet.
Climate scientists expect that Arctic median temperatures will rise as much as 2 degrees Celsius annually over the coming decade.
Although temperatures normally change with glacial speed, in the Arctic those transformations are now noticeable to the naked eye: Last year marked a concerning increase in arctic wildfires and flooding.
And, as climate change continues unabated, the waters of the Arctic Sea, which stretch from Russia's northern Siberian shores across Alaska to Greenland, are opening at an unprecedented pace. This is bringing regularly scheduled commercial navigation to the Arctic for the first time in recorded history.
Attempts to circumnavigate Eurasia are certainly not new. Almost three centuries ago, in 1728, Vitus Bering rounded the strait between Alaska and Siberia that bears his name to explore the polar seas.
It was not until the 1870s that the Northern Sea route across the Arctic's Russian coast was even navigated fully by explorers. And only in 2013 did a commercial vessel actually make the entire long northern trek from Europe to Asia, even with an icebreaker escort.
Yet in the last decade, the Arctic Seas have become significantly more navigable. As a result, geopolitics is rapidly arriving in the region, a trend that I outline in my recent book, Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics.
For starters, the economic stakes are higher than ever. The Arctic is a vast, unexploited storehouse of raw materials critical to 21st century competition. The region harbors roughly a quarter of the unexplored oil and natural gas reserves on earth, as well as 150 rare earth deposits, valued at around $1 trillion. Platinum, nickel, and other rare metals stored below the ocean are crucial to high-tech industries, and therefore to the countries and companies seeking to preserve industrial power status.
The Arctic Sea, roughly 1.5 times the size of the United States, is relatively shallow, making it amenable to exploitation, climatic conditions permitting, with 240 species of fish in ample quantities, adding to all the inanimate resources.
The political-military stakes are as high as the economic ones, with the international system increasingly polarized and the Arctic a prime bone of contention. The Arctic Ocean is an area of unusual importance and a natural zone of conflict due to its geographic value. It is across the North Pole that the United States and Russia lie in closest proximity, making the Arctic seas a natural arena of rivalry in the nuclear age.
The same geopolitical reality has episodically made Greenland important: it is not accidental that the US submitted a bid to buy Greenland in 1946; that the US has maintained a major Strategic Air Command base in northern Greenland since 1951; or that President Donald Trump has been obsessed with Greenland as well.
Current international conflicts are amplifying the economic and military dimensions of Arctic competition.
Russia, in particular, has strong stakes for status-quo revision in the rapidly emerging Arctic sea lanes. Fifty-three percent of the Arctic shore lies in Russia (compared with less than four percent for America's Alaska). The Northern Seaway along Russia's northern Arctic shores is becoming navigable as the continent warms more rapidly than on the US-Canadian side.
Crucially, the opening of the Arctic Ocean to commerce and naval transport gives Russia unimpeded access to the open sea that it has sought for centuries – from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin – but never decisively achieved elsewhere in the world.
The Arctic has likewise become a zone of strong geo-economic and geopolitical interest for China in recent years. Arctic energy resources, of course, are naturally attractive to the largest energy consumer on earth. China is especially motivated to win the Arctic exploration race because it imports heavily from the Persian Gulf via vulnerable Indo-Pacific sea lanes that are dominated by the United States.
Once accessible to China, the Arctic would solve the problem of American strangulation of chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca. It would also extend Beijing's critical minerals lead, further complicating Washington's efforts to compete effectively. And Beijing's congenial ties to Russia, a powerful force in the Arctic, are an additional geopolitical plus.
Global economic and political-military stakes driving today's Arctic geopolitical competition began in slow motion. In August 2007, Russia planted a titanium flag on the North Pole. Moscow now quietly claims over 50 percent of the Arctic Ocean floor.
Two decades ago, with Vladimir Putin in power, Russia began refurbishing Cold War military bases in the North, and building more icebreakers. Today it has well over 40 bases, roughly a third more than the combined total for all the major NATO powers in the near-Arctic, including Finland, Canada and the United States.. The atomic icebreaker Yamal assisting in the dismantling of a Russian North Pole research station in 2009; Photo: Moscow Times
On the economic side, Russia has also pioneered exploitation of energy resources along the Arctic shores – with China's help.
Moscow's original proposals two decades ago were to involve Western multinationals such as Exxon, Shell, and British Petroleum, with their superior technology for drilling in Arctic climes. Western firms soon fell away, however, both for economic reasons and following the sanctions associated with the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea.
In 2013 Russia began construction on the massive $27 billion Yamal LNG project on the Arctic shores, with China's CNPC as a 20 percent shareholder. The first Yamal LNG train was completed in 2017.
In 2018 Russia also began construction on the nearby Gydan Peninsula Arctic II project, again with East Asian participation. In exchange for the provision of capital and equipment, China receives Russian oil from these specific projects today – and does so illicitly through the Northern Sea Route.
Economic logic – Russia's massive resources, coupled with the economic rise of Asia – propelled gradual Arctic sea-lane development for fifteen years in the early twenty-first century. Yet it was critical junctures – short, sharp periods of structural transformation like war – that catalyzed the age of serious Arctic maritime geopolitics currently prevailing.
Western sanctions following Russia's occupation of Crimea were one catalytic event, but far more important was Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. That led to several sweeping geo-economic and geo-political changes animating the intense Arctic maritime geopolitics now emerging.
Climate change, as noted above, is a quiet background factor raising the stakes of geopolitical conflict: When the seas are opened, economic and political-military opportunities become more realistic.
The decisive responses of key players to the new Russian aggression, however, were what gave explosive new life to simmering geopolitical rivalries. Most importantly, Finland (April, 2023) and then Sweden (March, 2024) became members of NATO. Following their actions, seven of the eight nations directly bordering on the Arctic were members of NATO, with only Russia – with the longest Arctic coastline and the strongest economic stakes – excluded.
Russia not surprisingly responded to the new geopolitical environment surrounding the Ukraine conflict with countermeasures of its own. As Putin himself has stressed, Arctic development is an 'indisputable priority' with Russia, due to its strategic importance and economic potential.
To consolidate its position in a vital region, Moscow has both escalated provocative actions of its own in the Arctic, as in the Baltic seas also, and simultaneously teamed up with China to put pressure on NATO and on the US bilaterally.
In 2023 ships from the Russian and Chinese navies jointly patrolled near Alaska; in July 2024 Russian and Chinese bombers launched a collaborative probe in the US ADIZ over the Bering Sea within 200 miles of the Alaskan coast; and in October, 2024, the Russian and Chinese Coast Guards conducted their first joint patrol in the Arctic seas.
The United States has naturally responded to Russian and Chinese Arctic brinkmanship. In 2013, following the first Arctic seaway transit of China's icebreaker Xue Long ( Ice Dragon ) and the inauguration of Russia's Yamal LNG project, the Obama administration articulated a US Arctic strategy.
In 2014 Washington made controls over the supply of advanced US cold-water oil-drilling technology a major element of Crimea sanctions. In 2024 the Biden administration's Department of Defense issued an update to the 2013 strategy, mentioning both Russia and China as primary challengers, with the goal o curbing Russia's long-term Arctic development capacity.
The US has grown steadily bolder in its Arctic response, with an increasingly bipartisan emphasis on the region.
Despite far-sighted diplomatic gestures and a laudable concern regarding environmental dangers, the United States has nevertheless been slow to address the core geo-economic challenges now deepening along the Arctic sea lanes.
Most importantly, the US has failed to build up its domestic icebreaker capacity, nor has it begun developing related naval capabilities that would allow it to actively contest and contain the rapid Russian and Chinese buildup along the Arctic sea lanes.
And it has done remarkably little, until lately, to support its friends in the Arctic with respect to infrastructure investment support. The US, for example, has no Arctic deepwater ports to host heavy container ships. Canada has only one, lying 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
Even though Russia now has over 40 icebreakers, several of nuclear-powered, and an active building program, the United States presently lacks even a single heavy or medium-duty icebreaker active in the Arctic. US icebreaker capacity, such as it is, is concentrated entirely in the Great Lakes.
The July, 2024 ICE agreement with Canada and Finland, concluded at the 2024 Washington NATO summit, does begin to address the icebreaker crisis in multilateral fashion. Yet the massive deficiency in America's own icebreaker capacity, rooted in the striking weaknesses of its own domestic shipbuilding industry, still remains.
In the emerging game of Arctic maritime geopolitics, too many of the high cards still ominously lie in Russian and Chinese hands.
Kent Calder is Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, former Special Advisor to the US Ambassador to Japan and the recent author of Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics (Brookings, 2025).