Melting frontier: Great power competition in the Arctic from polar periphery to geopolitical epicenter

Abstract

For most of the post-Cold War era, the Arctic was governed as an exception to great-power politics: a “zone of peace” in which scientific cooperation, not strategic rivalry, set the tone. That exception is closing. As Arctic Amplification strips away the ice that once made the region marginal, it is exposing a geography rich in shipping lanes, hydrocarbons, and critical minerals, and drawing the United States, Russia, and China into overlapping contests for military advantage, economic access, and legal control. This article traces how each power has translated the defrost into strategy: Russia’s fortification of its northern coastline, China’s patient construction of a “Near-Arctic State” identity, and Washington’s belated pivot from neglect to competition. Using a realist-geopolitical framework informed by securitization theory, it argues that the Arctic’s cooperative governance architecture is buckling under three overlapping rivalries: a U.S.-Russia military standoff, a U.S.-China contest over norms and access, and an uneasy Russia-China partnership shadowed by mutual suspicion. The article pondered upon the positive impact of 2026 US-Denmark-Greenland Security Agreement on western security and a valued addition by Trump Administration on successful US foreign Policy. The article closes with targeted recommendations for decoupling climate cooperation from security competition, before an accident in the ice becomes a crisis on the world stage.