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- [00:01]
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- [01:17]
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- [01:44]
Mia Sorrenti
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Why is everyone suddenly fighting over the Arctic? On today's episode, journalist and author Kenneth R. Rosen joins us to explore the Arctic's rapidly shifting role in the global order. In conversation with Adam McCauley, he examines how climate change, military ambition, and the race for resources are transforming the Far north into a new arena of great power rivalry, where melting ice is opening shipping routes, exposing natural wealth, and raising the stakes for conflicts between the world's major powers. Let's join our Host now, Adam McCauley, with more.
- [02:25]
Adam McCauley
Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Adam McCauley. Rewind just a few years and you'd be hard pressed to hear substantive discussions about the Arctic. The high north, that frigid expanse of the planet, had at least since the end of the Cold War, cooled as a topic for political pundits and strategists in recent years and amplified in recent weeks. The Arctic has surged into the headlines with alliance rippling comments from the American president about his commitment to asserting American control over the Western hemisphere and most acutely, proclamations about Greenland and who ought to control the territories that stretch towards our polar north. For these reasons, our guest today, journalist Kenneth Rosen, should be praised for his sound timing. Kenneth is a foreign correspondent who has reported from more than two dozen countries, including Syria, Iraq and Ukraine. And his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Atlantic, among other publications. And he joins us today to discuss his most recent book, Polar Submarine Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic. Kenneth, welcome to Intelligence Squared.
- [03:30]
Kenneth R. Rosen
Thanks, Adam. I'm excited to be here.
- [03:32]
Adam McCauley
As one might guess, this is an incredibly timely conversation given the headlines of the day. But I know that books germinate over many years, so I wonder if we could start at the beginning. Can you explain a little bit the impulse or drivers behind writing this book as you saw it?
- [03:46]
Kenneth R. Rosen
It came out of a magazine assignment for which I was sent to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. I was assigned to go and look around the world outside of Eastern Europe and outside of the Middle east to determine where a next potential conflict for the US could be. Of course, we've well known about sub Saharan Africa, we know about the Middle east, we know about the potentials in the Pacific Ocean. But where were some other key hotspots in the globe post pandemic, post, post invasion of Ukraine that could flare up that weren't receiving the attention they deserved? And the Arctic seemed like a natural spot to begin asking those questions, in part because of a lot of the more subtle news that was coming out of the region was about gray zone tactics and hybrid warfare that when read in a silo didn't seem all that big of a deal, a severed undersea cable or the protesting of Russian residents on a faraway island. And so that immediately drew me to say nothing of the potential opportunity to see beautiful vistas and icebergs and all different wildlife that I wouldn't see otherwise in my then base in Central Europe.
- [05:06]
Adam McCauley
One of the interesting things your book does is it really tries to shift the optics, as it were, around the Arctic. And you've got a section in the early part of the book where you sort of talk about how we may have once thought of this place is more or less determined by polar bears and indigenous community that was committed to sort of surviving what is a complex and harsh environment. And all of a sudden we introduce Russian spies and submarines and the undersea politics as it were of this part of the world. But I wonder, before we can get in, or before we get into some of those more complicated topics, let's start with the first principles question. What is the Arctic? You tackle the Arctic as defined by many different sort of actors in this space. And I wonder if you could just unpack how you see perhaps how the people you met saw this region and see it today.
- [05:54]
Kenneth R. Rosen
So I think coming into the reporting and writing of the book, I was under the impression that the Arctic was defined precisely by the Arctic Circle. Everything north of that was the Arctic. Anything south of that was subject to an open discussion. I wasn't quite sure what the subarctic was, but I knew that there was an Arctic. I quickly learned that there wasn't an Arctic. That depending on who you were, where you worked, what your interests were, that's what defined the Arctic. There was a congressional scientific act in the 70s or 80s that defined the Arctic as the Aleutian Islands, to include the Aleutian Islands, which are far removed from the, the Arctic Circle. And so it depends on where you live, but also how you plan to operate in the Arctic. So whether you're a scientist, whether you're in the military, whether you're in Washington D.C. whether you are kind of close to the Arctic Circle, you know, you know, Icelanders would, would balk at the, at the notion that they weren't in the Arctic, though they certainly brush up against the Arctic Circle and certainly are situated just south of the Arctic Ocean. So I made a deliberate point, a small protest, if you will, to not capitalize the word Arctic unless used in a proper noun throughout the book, to sort of demonstrate the fluidity of this region and to say that you can't really peg it as one place in the north, it's more encompassing, more all encompassing than that, I think.
- [07:39]
Adam McCauley
So sitting here in sort of the Canadian context, the Arctic is obviously quite front of mind for us at the moment and has been for a number of years. And we tend to distinguish between threats to, and threats through the Arctic as it were, and often in the military and defense sense. But your story, at least in part, is far more historical and it's a sometimes glacial paced story around the jockeying for access and placement and the ability to move and shape this region. So I wonder if you could just set up the stakes of the Arctic today. You know, you were sent there to unpack whether or not this could be a place where war might emerge or start. Individuals or experts told you in more or less direct terms that War is coming. But what did you find when you reported this story? What does the Arctic mean in that sense, especially in this age of strategic or renewed great power competition?
- [08:33]
Kenneth R. Rosen
Well, to take a step back, we had for so long after the Cold War looked at this region as one of potential cooperation for understanding our planet, for conducting earth sciences and biological research, and focusing on a region that was more or less icebound all year round. You know, Mikhail Gorbachev had said in his famous Murmont speech that it was a zone of peace, that the Arctic was more or less a heat sink into which the world's climate goes. And I think that drew the attention of many nations, primarily the Arctic eight, who consider themselves the primary stakeholders, though that could be argued depending on whether or not they, they maintain a littoral interest in the region. But slowly over time, that cooperation became more convoluted and more difficult to maintain because of the, the rapid climate change that was occurring in the North. As I'm sure you know, and you've read the book, it was four to five times faster, is four to five times faster than the rest of the world. So the changes there were happening at an extremely hyperactive pace. And what I found most interesting was that, you know, instead of rallying around this notion that our planet is sick and is being tormented by carbon pollution, instead nations were saying, oh well, this is an opportunity for so many other things. And I was frankly stricken by the notion that we would continue to put into the public sphere these narratives of potentially extinct polar bears, about the sadness of the icebergs melting and cleaving into the oceans, about all various different climate narratives, that for me, living in a mid latitude nation, or at least a mid latitude state in America, didn't really bother me, it didn't really affect me. But to see that my government and the governments the world over were looking at this as a potential competitive sphere, one that should be overtaken with great power competition, by politics, by military, strategic nuisances was shocking. And I think that was the story that I wanted to tell in the way that I told it throughout the book was, you know, whether or not you believe in climate change is one thing that's neither here nor there. This is how other nations are responding to it. And it's not the way you think.
- [11:11]
Adam McCauley
I think our present headlines and certainly the conversation around Greenland captures the political valence, let's say, of the Arctic in some or to some degree. I wonder if you could unpack for our listeners today though, if we think about the three major actors or adversaries, depending on where you sit, who are jockeying for or at least working towards their own particular interests in the region. You have China, Russia and the United States. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about their approach. What is they seek to achieve? What are they looking to maximize by moving into and acting in this space? Or at least, how do you understand this, having now sat with these questions and sat with experts over so many years.
- [11:52]
Kenneth R. Rosen
Well, see, that's interesting, because maybe six months ago I would have said you're wrong. There are only two nations vying for more assertive power in the North, China and Russia. Russia being the primary stakeholder with 60% of its country above the Arctic Circle, most of it's underlain by permafrost. They have the largest city by population in Murmansk, 225,000, if I'm correct. They are the dominant force, full stop. But ever since Trump reignited his rhetoric about taking Greenland, it does seem like there's a third power jockeying for space. But again, six months ago, I would have said no. The US Is so far behind, and I highlight this in the book, is so far behind in capitalizing on its interests in the north that, that it's almost a moot point to include them in the conversation outside the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Council, excuse me. And now with the desire to really, or the more rambunctious, bellicose rhetoric to get Greenland coming out of the White House, it doesn't make sense and doesn't track with the realities of what China and Russia are actually A doing, B, seeking, and C, capable of, frankly, in the north. So when it comes down to what China and Russia are doing, Russia is seeking to open up its northern sea route above its Arctic coastline for commercial vessels. China's assisting in that by building up and funding port expansions and defense structures and infrastructure that would assist in facilitating A, a route above the Russian coastline. But Russia is also very conscientious of the fact that it does maintain this primary function as a stakeholder in the north, that it doesn't want to welcome China in too closely because it is also aware of what its initiatives have done in Africa. So while China seeks out this polar Silk Road, Russia is also saying, look, you know, we need the help in part because of Western sanctions, but we also don't want to welcome a stranger or a bad actor into our backyard. So what the US Wants out of these past few months is not quite plain, even if it is wholly staked on. We need Greenland Full stop. What that means in reality, what that means when a nation can't actually operate in the high north. But once an Arctic nation is something of a longer debate and also perhaps the job of Cassandra, insofar as figuring out what's happening within the ethos of the White House.
- [14:39]
Adam McCauley
Yeah, no, it's fair. And we obviously live amidst a significant amount of uncertainty at the present moment. I think one of the things that makes the Arctic maybe an interesting microcosm of the present challenge is both that we seem to have acute power politics at play and we have environmental changes that are terraforming this region in ways that were struggling to grapple with. And part of this story is obviously a story of critical minerals and resources and the extraction of which seems to be driving both the politics in Washington perhaps today in ways that it hasn't necessarily in the past, but it's also very clearly on the menu for Beijing and for Moscow. And so I wonder if, if you could speak a little bit, not necessarily just to the resource extraction challenge, but this is that moment where we can sort of contextualize this within the climatic moment perhaps that we're facing right now to, to one of your earliest concerns, right. This common goods challenge we might have in the, in the North.
- [15:41]
Kenneth R. Rosen
It's a complicated notion to think that the desire of the US is primarily a function of the availability of rare earth minerals and precious materials in Greenland, in part because, as you're well aware, our government revolves around a four year presidential cycle. And if there's not the support of a unified Congress to get anything done in the north, and we've seen this with the Polar Security Cutter Program, which was a. OR is a U.S. coast Guard initiative to build out the ice capable vessels that the US possesses. If they can't rally around that and get that through the funding channels necessary to put those boats in the water, it's hard to believe that we need these nations or this land for mining and extractive industries. Certainly what we've seen from the US Geological Survey from decades ago is that there is a potential for these minerals to benefit our national defense and our photovallic industries and our EV industries and all these things that are nice and potentially on the horizon. But we're talking about 25, 50 years, maybe even a century out, not something that can be done overnight and certainly not within the bandwidth, current bandwidth of the US mentality, both in the executive branch and in Congress. So I think that there's this divide again, right? We have Russia and China saying, well, we're going to do commercial shipping lanes. China doesn't need any more rare earths. It has what it needs and it sells it the world over to, to the nations that rely on it. And then you have the US which is sort of caustically approaching in a, in a combustible and also erratic way. Something it's not clear. That's the narrative in today's media and it's certainly broached in the book of a potential opportunity. But there is no real plan in the US as far as I can tell, for what we need and why we would look to Greenland for it. We certainly have partners elsewhere in the world, India for one, who can help us with some of the things that we've so called needed for or from Greenland.
- [18:01]
Adam McCauley
So one of the interesting parts, or one of the many interesting parts of your book here is that even before we get into sort of the stickiness and perhaps the uncertainty or hanging questions around Greenland, it's also very clear that there are other Arctic states in the mix and that the jockeying 4 position and influence, either by the near polar power, China, or certainly the present and most persistent polar power, Russia, has real implications for northern Europe and what the balance of influence perhaps in some of these areas looks like over time. And so I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about how the states near or in or adjacent to the Arctic in the European context are responding. You know, are there different cultures of response to the Arctic and its potential threat or its potential opportunity? Or just give us a sense of maybe the diversity of approaches or maybe a growing concentration of, of approaches around how we think about the Arctic and its importance today.
- [19:00]
Kenneth R. Rosen
So if we situate that question post invasion of Crimea or annexation of Crimea and then the invasion in 2022 of mainland Ukraine, we see that the European Arctic had started to invest more heavily in its infrastructure, both militarily and for its citizens in the north. And that was not a product of the first Trump administration's desire to push more, push those NATO members for more military spending, especially when Sweden and Finland were not part of NATO at the time, but we saw them increase their defense budgets anyway. And you might be aware of this, but the Nordic nations, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, all have this principle of total defense, where every citizen within the country, it is incumbent upon them to defend their homeland, that they all have a stake in the matter. And if there is an invasion or an attack, they all are called to arms. That's what they believe in. That's how they function as a military in part through conscription, but also through mass trainings and understanding that together they. They form a more adversarial unit to a bigger nation. So over those years, since the invasion of Ukraine, those nations have been putting more and more money into their defense budgets, and they've been placing more and more troops in the north, in part also because the former Secretary General of NATO had more or less called the Arctic NATO's Achilles heel. That there was this understanding that there were a lacking, lacking infrastructure and lacking planning, military planning for this region. And I can highlight that a little more by, by bringing us forward to 2023, 2024, when Sweden and Finland acceded to the NATO treaty. And when they did that, I remember sitting with a commander in the Swedish armed forces in, outside of Kiruna in northern Sweden, and he said, finally, we now have these two major puzzle pieces that were missing part of this broader European Arctic strategy and previously their Arctic military plans. There's three separate plans. There's one for the Arctic for the north of Europe, there's one for the central of Europe, and there's one for the south of Europe. But the northern plans for NATO military planners were absent of these two massive puzzle pieces. And now they were able to start beginning to plan. Okay, if we get American troops landing in Narvik, then we can move them all the way to Finland in 2448 hours. What we saw then was sabotage on the rail line that would have deposited those troops from Narwik to Finland. So that is all couched within this notion that, okay, they understood that third nations were under threat, that they were more worried about a potential incursion from Russia, and that they were spending more money on their, Their, their military apparatus, despite the narratives coming out of the White House, which were saying that they, you know, they simply weren't. The US had requested 2.5% of gross domestic product put into defense spending, and I think Sweden was closer to 5%. You know, they were doubling down and really putting an effort into securing a region that is more or less not fully inhabited, but of strategic value.
- [22:28]
Adam McCauley
There's lots to unpack here, and I'm going to do my best to sort of lead us through, because I think the next two question intertwined in an interesting way or a challenging sense. The first question is really around, especially given your exposure. I wonder if you could just unpack what below threshold and gray zone tactics look like, at least as you understand them in this northern context, because I take your point. I think there was a great deal of investment and interest in northern European states around the Arctic as a function of what they saw as a belligerent Russia on their doorstep to the East. And it is the case, clearly, that Russia has sought to influence these spaces in different ways over time. And so I wonder, just for the listeners today, if you could just unpack what some of these tactics look like. How do they present, what do they seek to achieve, and how pernicious are they as you sort of understood them over time?
- [23:24]
Kenneth R. Rosen
You were generous enough in the introduction to note that I have been a war correspondent, and then I was in conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and these were very plain and clear conflicts. We would go into an area, there were bad guys over there and there were the good guys over here, and we would shoot at one another or we would bomb them, and then we would wait and then we would bomb them again. But we knew where they were, and we more or less were cordoned off from populations and staging areas for humanitarian aid and all these other great things. Gray zone tactics and hybrid warfare persists in daily life. So for people who are going to work or taking their kids to school and seeing a Russian drone flying overhead and wondering whether or not that is a sign of an invasion, but then the government says, oh, it was a mistake. They didn't mean to fly that drone over here. But in reality, knowing that they were testing whether or not the communications of that drone could connect to Finnish networks, cellular networks, telecommunications network, wireless networks, that's when it becomes hybrid. Whether we can attribute it to Russia, whether maybe it was a faulty computer program that sent it across the border, it falls below the threshold of war because it's asymmetric and it's not very clearly attributable. Another. Another example would be the submarine line that I had. Submarine cable that I had mentioned earlier, too, was. It was severed in the middle of the night by what was ostensibly a fishing vessel. And that line connected the world's largest satellite relay on Svalbard to mainland Norway and the rest of the world. And ostensibly, defense contractors were not allowed to use that satellite relay for anything other than scientific research, for weather tracking and. And information sharing with NATO allies. But who cut the cable and why they cut the cable isn't exactly clear, but it is more or less apparent to those who are watching that who would benefit most from severing communications to a small archipelago in NATO territory, then? Maybe NATO's antagonists. But you can't attribute it, so you can't fully call out that nation or that bad actor, lest you start a conflict that they had hoped for, which is called a black flag operation, wherein they goad a actor, goads another actor into blaming them for something or initiating a conflict that is more plain cut and clear. So when I was traveling in the north, a lot of those issues were happening, including NATO military drills wherein GPSs were jammed, even commercial airline GPS for airlines were jammed and went dark and made pilots fly through more regular instrumentation devices. So it's a really complex warfare that doesn't rise to the occasion of bad guy here, good guy there. And we see this more and more regularly in nations like Moldova, where the meddling in elections in the US Also meddling in the elections can be attributed to any number of different people or potentially other different people. But it's never very clear. And I think I, I've been asked a lot over the last few weeks what I think President Putin feels about the Trump, the, the Trump White House's desire to get Greenland. And I think that this is straight out of the Soviet playbook. Let them eat each other apart and then we'll come in and reap the benefits later. Right. That's a classic, classic Soviet tactic. And they had hoped it would work before the end of the Cold War. It didn't and perhaps now they're trying to test it again.
- [27:24]
Adam McCauley
Yeah, it's interesting to understand or to try and understand how many layers of influence are sort of at work at once here and how they aggregate and what effect they generate in that strategic domain too.
- [27:40]
Kenneth R. Rosen
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- [32:22]
Adam McCauley
I'm going to, I'm going to pivot only slightly from your last comment here because I think you know, what you described in terms of living in daily life with or amidst sort of latent aggression or latent influence as it might present in some of these places, is quite telling. I'm always struck or I remember kind of the military historian Rupert Smith. He talked classically about war amongst the people. Now he was thinking very much in terms of civil war or otherwise in this case. But at least a thin frontier of this same idea is very much at play here below threshold. And one of the challenges I would imagine in this region too, is that the populations that inhabit the spaces in the north are themselves not necessarily well connected politically to the capitals that have to determine the strategy and plans for these regions themselves. Greenland sort of being an easy example here. But I wonder if you could explain a little bit, given that your book sort of takes us to this unique collision between indigenous cultures and politics, at least local politics as it might be, and their interaction with or exposure or intervention from international affairs as we now understand it across these three States or many more states as it were, interacting in the Arctic. Tell us a little bit about that dynamic. Is it the case or what are some of the lessons you learned spending time on the ground in the Arctic proper and how well that political story or political understanding of the present moment is shared or if it's quite divergent, depending on where you find yourself.
- [34:06]
Kenneth R. Rosen
I think the two examples I can give the short first one and then a longer second one is, you know, Oslo, the capital of Norway is some 1800 miles from Svalbard, yet. Yet dictates how non militarized visa free zone should operate. Yet has no true stake in being there other than a governor who reports to the ministers down in Oslo. So there's a real physical divide. And whether or not their voices, the people of Svalbard or of the Finmark region of, of Northern Norway are represented, I'm not so clear on. But given the geographic distance, I'm willing to bet that it's not that great in America. I could more easily draw that comparison by saying the white. This current administration, The Trump administration 2.0 is going all in against renewable energy. It's shutting down wind farm projects off the coast of Massachusetts and Maine and New Hampshire. It's also pulling subsidies for solar panel farms and other renewable energy sources. But when I spoke to Trump administration officials working on Alaska, they had noted that that's not the reality there, that were you to invest in renewable energy, geothermal, solar, wind, hydroelectric, in Alaska. And this was a quote from an official I spoke to, the math pencils out that it does work in the Arctic because of the vast resources available. Yet when they put a broad stamp on this is what we believe to be of benefit to the nation. They neglect the smaller Arctic region that operates and functions wholly separately from the way the other nations do. In Canada, I think that's a little different given I think it's 80 something percent of the population lives apart from the Arctic and then there's a small indigenous population that lives scattered across the Arctic territory. So there's a little less of a stake for the, for the main population. But in, in America, I mean, Alaska is a huge state with, with major implications for the rest of the nation. So I think it's been naive to say that all policies should apply equally across the US or across any nation, whether it be in the European Arctic or the American Arctic.
- [36:46]
Adam McCauley
Yeah. And so one of the interesting dynamics that emerges, I think, from this dislocation, let's say, between the Arctic proper and perhaps the political capitals that determine day to day life. There is that. That's actually precisely the space where influence operations disinform. They really profit. Right. This is a space in which an adversarial actor or an actor of any kind can move in and start to change or shape the political dynamics. To what extent is that something you found in your reporting? Or at least to what extent is that, is that front of mind for decision makers across kind of the defense and security space right now?
- [37:27]
Kenneth R. Rosen
So I think there is this disassociation that you're describing, but I don't feel as though the disassociation breeds contempt or disillusionment insofar as those peoples who are far removed from the houses of power that ostensibly govern their sovereignty are unaware of the potential for incursions outside of their domain. And I think that's important to note because what we saw with Greenland and what we've seen with Greenland, even while I was reporting the book book was their awareness of the difficulties of dealing with actors who are perhaps not keeping their best interest in mind, but are tepidly aware of the benefits of operating with those people who are perhaps not in their best interest. Does not Europe still buy gas from Russia? You know, do we still not buy. We as Americans still not buy precious minerals from China? There's a way of, of working in a globalized society that is beneficial to even those who are far removed from the daily musings of the houses of power. And I think that that's really important because we've also seen that with Alaskan native tribes who are working to benefit their people in the scope of how states and parts of the nation far removed from them are operating. So they want to learn how to use the language that is being used to determine their future to their best interest. Does that. That. It's a, it's a, it's a. It's a tough thing to really grasp geographically how far removed some of these nations are and some of these peoples are. But they're not wholly disconnected is what I'm saying.
- [39:27]
Adam McCauley
Yeah, I think that's fair. And it's also, you know, to be able to summarize across all of these spaces, if there is a common theme, would be almost impossible as well. I just think, you know, given, given the nuance and the multiple layers at which so many of these challenges or adversaries find spaces for advantage, perhaps it's. It just keeps everybody, I think, far more attentive to, to the differences across time and space. I mean, one of the things that I think is fascinating about your book and again, you know, quite in the fact that it came out, let's say, long before the most recent conversation, as it were, around Greenland is actually this strange collision between militarization and investment in critical infrastructure across the Arctic. Right. So in some ways there is an acute attention and awareness and now perhaps more resources available for reasons of defense and security to really move into some of these spaces and invest in critical infrastructure. And we're talking roads, resilient power, transport, all of these things that really enable in a logistics and sustainment type of capacity here, survival in some of the harshest territories in the world. And so I wonder, is this a moment where well positioned actors who are really attentive to the challenges of climate change can also leverage this renewed attention, or is this merely an instance or episode in history where kind of the militarization of a space is going to dominate and we're going to see maybe purpose built facilities or otherwise across this region, or engagement across this region, but really only with that military or defensive mindset in mind. I'm just curious to know how you see maybe the next few years, as it were, if the attention stays high on the North.
- [41:23]
Kenneth R. Rosen
Well, I think in many parts of the world, and certainly throughout our shared histories, it's the military that does the legwork before society blooms. And that might be a stretch in some academic circles, but I found it to be true certainly in Greenland. All the airports used today were built by the US Military. A lot of the roads that are used today were built by the US military. The port in Nome, Alaska is being built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, not for military purposes, but because the military has the, the wherewithal and the ability to do so in harsh climates, but also effectively and quickly, to say nothing of a multi trillion dollar defense budget. And it's what I've seen in the Arctic is that the, the military leads to, leads the way in facilitating growth and opportunities for industry and for commercial development in those more radical areas. So I'd caution to say that by virtue of having a military presence, it heightens security issues. But I am aware that there's a tit for tat sort of combustible relationship between placing military troops to do one thing and then another nation believing it for a separate purpose. We've seen this dual use facilities issues with China the world over. So I think there's a benefit to having military capability and knowledge in the north, so long as it doesn't escalate into direct conflict. But how do you Prevent that beyond on my pay grade.
- [43:10]
Adam McCauley
Yeah. And you'd be well rewarded if you had an easy answer, for sure. So I would be remiss if I took us or brought us into this conversation and we didn't spend just a little bit of time, or a little bit more time, as it were, on Greenland in its present context. In your book, you navigate and sort of interpret the oscillations in American policy towards the Arctic very well. And many of our listeners will obviously be most familiar with the recent debates and tensions and certainly some of the conversation or lines of conversation we've already had around the Trump administration's approach or strategy, to the extent we can understand it as a strategy at this present moment. But you make mention in the book, the New York Times reporter Sulzberger, back in the 1975, who wrote that Greenland was more or less American as a function of falling under the Monroe Doctrine, which is very much the optics around the Western Hemisphere that's being adopted by the present administration. So in order to, or without throwing you into the debate of the present day, I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about what you would like the public to know about the American history with Greenland, something that places this perhaps in better context or surfaces different types of questions or implications perhaps, than just will he or won't he and how might he do it? Which tends to be where we find ourselves in our present political discourse.
- [44:30]
Kenneth R. Rosen
When Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State Seward, went about buying what was Russian America today, Alaska back in the 1800s, he was nearly laughed out of Congress, for it was just seen as an icebox. But after they purchased Alaska and realized that over time it would pay back dividends far greater than they realized, there was this notion among power brokers in Washington that perhaps we don't need to fight wars for expansion, but we could pay for expansion. At the time, the UK was looking to offload Canada, and the US Thought perhaps we should buy parts of Canada because that's a seemingly diplomatic way of going about expanding our territory and also our reach and keeps us on friendly footing with, with everyone. In 1916, when the US sold what are now the Virgin Islands to Denmark, the Danish Virgin Islands, the West Indies at the time, we acknowledged that specifically within that agreement, we acknowledged that Greenland was would fall forever in perpetuity under Danish sovereignty. Then again in 1951, post World War II, we again signed an agreement with Denmark acknowledging the sovereignty it had the Kingdom of Denmark had over Greenland, and in so doing agreed that we could operate A military base there and that we could station troops there, and that were we to decide we'd like to mine for minerals or drill for gas, explore for gas, we can do that. So there's been a long standing tradition in the, in the U S Government of this desire to buy, purchase other territories or sell territories, which, which we have. But what's interesting about the current debate and it's been brought up by the bigger traditional, traditional media outlets, is this idea that we possess all of our necessary latitude in Greenland already by virtue of a very strong relationship with the Kingdom of Denmark. And whether or not that would change if we owned outright a new nation isn't clear. But it's also not logical. There's nothing more that we can get that we don't already have. What I think I'd also like people to know about the current debate in Greenland is the more troubling notion, the more humanistic notion that what has happened with this sideshow is we have inadvertently set back the Inuit people of Greenland by at least a decade in their search for independence. They have sought independence from the Kingdom of Denmark for more than a decade and have made inroads into doing so. And now the focus is on whether or not the US Will buy Greenland, not whether or not the Greenlandic people deserve independence. I should further ahead that what has escaped the, the, the mindset of the US Is it has helped and bolstered the Danish defense capabilities through the sales of short range and medium range missiles and vessels in, in as early as December before this all kicked off. And there's this disconnect with the hemispheric approach that you mentioned, which is in the latest U. S National security. Parameters and desire that says we're just going to focus on our neck of the woods. But our neck of the woods are shared. And it's not just us and the 51st state of Canada, it's Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, the United States, Mexico working together to benefit the region. And you can't defend it by simply purchasing everything and hoping that it works out in the end. So the hemispheric approach is something new and it certainly diminishes the transatlantic partnership. But whether or not Greenland factors in in a meaningful way beyond what we can already gain from it is a sideshow that is distracting from the more pressing needs of a unified transatlantic partnership.
- [49:40]
Adam McCauley
So I wanted to, given that that time unfortunately is running out for us.
- [49:45]
Kenneth R. Rosen
At least today and as a species.
- [49:49]
Adam McCauley
And a species, yes, I want to take you, I guess, to the end of Your book, at least briefly, the premise, it seems, at least reading it from my side and recognizing when in time this book sort of emerged, was a presumption that the United States, while it might have clear skin in the game in the Arctic, really wasn't prepared to be there and wasn't ready to be there. And so while your book isn't a work of sort of policy specifically. Right. Or in its traditional sense, you do end with policy recommendations, right. Insights that you've gleaned as a function of having so many conversations over time. And these fall into two categories, at least as you see them, right. Improving the defense framework for the United States and then strengthening ties with allies. And I just wonder here in this moment, obviously many things have been overtaken by events recently. I just wonder if you could to get your opinion on how this present administration may or may not work in line with what you see as being kind of the most reasonable and most advantageous ways forward for America at this present moment and just get a sense of your reflections perhaps on where we stand and what your expectations are in the years to come.
- [51:00]
Kenneth R. Rosen
I think it's a testament to how important the region has been to know that, that I filed the last pages of this book in January of 2025. So when the White House began issuing its statements About Greenland in January 2026, everything seemed to remain true and that this has been of concern and of real practical necessity for a decade, if not more, at least in the North American mindset. One of the things that I suggest is whether or not we should or shouldn't introduce the notion of militarizing the north or at least addressing the militarization of the north into the Arctic Council. There should be a broad, broader Arctic military code of conduct through the Arctic eight who operate there, that if we are going to be sending armed icebreakers for fisheries patrols, maybe we do need some sort of agreement between the stakeholders in the region to discuss where historically there hasn't been a forum to discuss militarization and security issues. I think that there is this notion that if we come together on a treaty that governs the region similar to what we have with Antarctica, we as Arctic states and near Arctic states and observer states in the Arctic Council will come together on some fundamental shared grounding. But I don't think we're there anymore. And I think that the rhetoric has been ratcheted up to such a level that the security issues with the warming planet are not only real for the Arctic Eight, but also for the mid latitude states in the rest of the world. Whether or not we can find that cooperation now with the current president and an administration that seems to fully support everything that he says and desires and wants, it's likely to deteriorate further before it gets better.
- [53:10]
Adam McCauley
So this project is certainly a clarion call for the Arctic's importance. Right? I see this book almost as a literary invocation of the region's role as a microcosm for our contemporary moment, balancing the protection of public and global commons against the starker realities of our world on edge and our culture of convenience that sees our environment as ripe for extraction and profit. And perhaps it's hardest to look at the Arctic because of the nine con, the nine contradictions there are just so evident. And it's all the more reason that a book like yours, Polar War, is so critical today. So on behalf of all of us here at Intelligence Squared, I want to thank Kenneth Rosen for taking the time to speak with us. His new book, Polar War, is available right now online or in your local bookstore. I'm Adam McCauley. Until next time.
- [53:58]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volpatto and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, head over to intelligence squared.com forward/attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [54:42]
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