But in practice, “the threat hasn’t changed since the Cold War,” said Friis, the professor.
The U.S. can easily upgrade its early-warning missile radar system in Greenland, he argued, while melting ice will only boost the very marginal commercial shipping route in the Northern Sea Route near Russia — nowhere near Greenland. Icebreakers have few military uses and and are easy to track, Friis added.
Chinese and Russian collaboration in the Arctic, meanwhile, will remain “largely symbolic,” said Marc Lanteigne, a political science professor and China expert at the Arctic University of Norway, as Moscow is “nervous” of Beijing’s long-term designs on the region and is unlikely to grant it extended access.
If there is a threat, it’s in the European Arctic. There, Russia’s Northern Fleet based in the Kola Peninsula includes six operational nuclear-armed submarines, according to Ståle Ulriksen, a university lecturer at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy.
Even so, Russia is “significantly outmatched” by NATO, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
Since its full-scale war against Ukraine, Moscow has lost two of the three brigades that had been stationed in the far north, with their replacements expected to take “half a decade or more” to train. Meanwhile, Norway, Germany, Denmark and the U.K. are all buying Boeing P-8 maritime patrol aircraft to better surveil the region. Sweden and Finland both joined NATO as a result of Russia’s war, further beefing up the alliance’s Arctic muscle.