The Second Coming
How Donald Trump will shape the Arctic
Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency will mark a sea change in international affairs. In the Arctic, as in other corners of the world, analysts have recently expended much brainpower on deciphering what the second Trump term might look like. In 2016, the 45th president’s victory came as a shock to observers. Less so now: We can anchor at least a part of our predictions in the precedents set by Trump during his first stint in the White House. In light of those precedents, what can reasonably be expected from the U.S.’ Arctic policies in the four years to come?
Image: A somewhat gloomy AI-rendering of Donald Trump standing on the Arctic ice sheet
Climate change
While much about Trump II remains hard to predict, and dependent on the president-elect’s mood swings, personnel choices, and unforeseen events, one thing can be said with relative certainty: Donald Trump spells terrible news for the fight against climate change. In 2017, Trump put a halt to U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. In 2020, the United States - the world’s second biggest polluter - briefly withdrew from the treaty. Trump will want to instigate a second withdrawal, this time much faster and with less restraint. The Arctic, a region that has been warming at four times the global average, will inexorably be headed for an environmental catastrophe, as the 1.5 degree target is consigned to the realm of fantasy.
To add insult to injury, Trump reportedly also plans to give the green light to oil drilling in Alaska’s ‘Arctic Refuge’, a wildlife reserve covering 80 million km2 in the northeastern part of the state. Alaska is home to diverse indigenous populations, most of which - but not all - have consistently opposed drilling projects in their ancestral homelands. Alaska’s Republican governor in October dished out $1 million in state support to the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a small collective of indigenous Alaskans that lobbies in favour of oil production in their region. Fossil fuel production in Alaska is likely to go ahead next year. Should Trump further take inspiration from the Heritage Foundation’s now-infamous ‘Project 2025’, the U.S. can also be expected to dismantle various climate and maritime science organisations, such as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In regards to environmental protection in the U.S. Arctic territories, there is little ground left for optimism.
Image: Mars Ice Island, a 60-day offshore exploratory well off Cape Halkett, near Nuiqsut, Alaska (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Arctic governance
Then there is the brittle Arctic governance system. For one thing, the idea that the U.S. might finally join the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea - a cornerstone treaty for the Arctic - is now even more of a distant pipe dream. The opposition to a ratification of UNCLOS among newly strengthened Senate Republicans remains firm. There is less clarity, on the other hand, over America’s future approach to the Arctic Council: From its very inception - and long before the body-blow dealt to it by Russia’s war - the Arctic Council has relied on the support of the United States. When Canada’s prime minister first pitched the idea of establishing an Arctic Council in Leningrad in 1989, most other Arctic states made it clear that such an organisation would depend on America’s support and participation. But in spite of its important role, Washington’s engagement with the Arctic Council has often been lacklustre.
In a fascinating study of the history of the Arctic Council, Douglas C. Nord describes how the Canadian government fought valiantly between 1990 and 1996 to win over first Bush Sr., and then Clinton, to the idea of establishing a multilateral organisation for the Arctic. Bush, in particular, did not want a new Arctic governance club to distract the U.S. from its traditionally security-minded perspective on the region. As the world’s only remaining superpower, Washington could not see much value in pooling regional responsibilities with Russia or Scandinavian states.
By the time the U.S. finally agreed to co-found the Arctic Council in 1996, it had succeeded in watering down Ottawa’s original proposals almost beyond recognition. At Washington’s behest, the Arctic Council stopped short of being a fully-fledged multilateral organisation. Instead, it initially became a small problem-solving club with no headquarters or permanent staff. There would be no Arctic Treaty, and the Council’s work would be project-oriented, with a preference for environmental issues. Membership would be restricted to states, and military matters were bracketed out of the Council’s purview at the Americans’ request.
Video: Documentary on the 1996 signing ceremony of the Ottawa Declaration, which established the Arctic Council after years of negotiations with the U.S.
During the U.S.’ first-ever rotating chairmanship of the Council from 1998 to 2000, most practical work related to the organisation’s work was delegated by federal authorities to the State of Alaska. The lack of U.S. engagement with the Arctic left much space for Nordic states to shape and advance the regional agenda. Washington only begun to seriously involve itself in the Council when, in the 2010s, shifts in international security and the deteriorating climate catastrophe brought the region back into the focus of U.S. voters. Significantly more diplomatic capital was allocated to the Arctic Council by Washington thereafter.
Still, even within more multilaterally-minded Democratic administrations, enthusiasm for the Arctic Council could not always be taken for granted. This will clearly also be the case for Trump, who so openly disdains multilateral setups that do not cater to U.S. interests in a straightforwardly transactional manner. During his first term, Trump withdrew - or threatened to withdraw - his country from many an international organisation, including the WHO. At the time, the U.S. mostly made use of Arctic Council summits to put forward its case against China’s growing presence in the region. Still, the U.S. continued to participate in the Council’s activities. Unlike in other fora, environmental cooperation under Trump continued with more limited, but ultimately assured U.S. involvement.
Five years later, the Council still reels from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent suspension of its activities. It seems unclear whether the format will be able to offer Trump enough of immediate interest, and motivate his administration to make any efforts to salvage it. While the Council’s survival has recently been assured through the hard work of the Norwegian chairmanship, it is unclear whether the upcoming Danish-Greenlandic stint at the head of the organisation will be able to continue those efforts, especially given a possible lack of backing from the U.S. State Department after January 2025.
But history teaches that an Arctic Council without participation by the United States - or Russia - is not feasible, and will not marshal the support of other states in the region. In 1996, the U.S. was convinced to support an organisation it deemed broadly unnecessary through a clever mix of diplomatic insistence, flattery, and pandering to America’s hegemonial idiosyncrasies. The benevolent U.S. disengagement that followed was exploited by the smaller Arctic states to advance a multifaceted regional cooperation agenda. With a little luck, a similar approach could function once again, thirty years later.
Image: Brian Mulroney, Canada’s Prime Minister, speaks on his country’s original proposals for an Arctic Council during a state visit to the USSR in 1989 (Source: Screenshot taken from the Soviet Television Archives, net-film.ru)
China, Russia and Arctic security
Donald Trump is effectively the architect of the U.S.’ current Arctic strategy, which identifies China as America’s greatest strategic challenge in the region. Given that China is not an Arctic state, and that it has a limited military presence in the area, this has not always been the case. China was not mentioned once in the 2013 U.S. Arctic strategy, brushed upon briefly in the 2016 iteration, but suddenly identified as a major threat in the 2019 version, which was released during Trump’s first term. Following the handover to Joe Biden, the focus on China did not diminish, but expand. In the recently published Arctic strategy of the U.S. D.o.D., China was identified unambiguously as the U.S.’ major Arctic threat.
As Jo Inge Bekkevold has argued in Foreign Policy, the U.S. has reverted to thinking of Alaska - and, by proxy, the Arctic - as a strategic flank in great power conflict, this time with China. There are two reasons for this: For one thing, China’s Arctic engagement did indeed become more assertive during Trump’s first term, culminating in the 2018 publication of China’s infamous ‘Arctic white paper’. The U.S. has historically considered the Arctic a strategically sensitive area, and would have reacted to a near-peer competitor’s efforts to gain a foothold in the region under any circumstances. But, secondly, U.S.-China relations also deteriorated on a more global level after 2018, when the Trump administration unleashed a trade war against Beijing. Ties have not recovered since, and anxieties over China’s rise, as well as agreement over the need to contain and deter China, are now underwritten by a bipartisan consensus between Democrats and Republicans.
Opposing China is a popular cause among U.S. voters of all backgrounds. Trump is almost certain to double down on his confrontative approach to the country. For the Arctic, this will have two consequences. Firstly, the ‘China question’, as well as hard security issues, will become an even more crucial facet of Arctic diplomacy. In 2017-2022, U.S. diplomatic pressure on allied countries in the region brought about a wide economic disengagement with China. Today, it is likely that other Arctic countries will again be asked to “do their part” in containing China in the region, or face Washington’s costly ire. This may become especially important in efforts to keep the U.S. on board with salvaging the Arctic Council.
But secondly, the U.S.’ reinforced hyper-focus on China will probably be accompanied by a reduction of pressure on Russia, at least at first. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Trump spoke of his grandiose ambition to 'un-unite’ the partnership between Beijing and Moscow. In this - potentially misguided - Kissingerian mission, Trump could try to win over Moscow to the U.S.’ efforts at containing China. This would require making concessions to Russia over the war in Ukraine, which Trump seems unsettlingly keen to promote. In its public communication, the Kremlin played down the importance of Trump’s victory. On the morning of Trump’s election, Kremlin speaker Peskov even declared that the launch of Russia’s new icebreaker was a “more important” event for his country than the U.S. election. But in reality, Trump’s inauguration is likely awaited eagerly in Moscow. Russia anticipates the U.S. to relent to its some of its key demands and lift sanctions, especially on Arctic LNG production sites. While Washington may soon try to dial down its pressure on Russia, the European Arctic states are unlikely to follow suit, as they view Moscow’s exterminatory onslaught on Ukraine as an existential security threat. Within NATO’s northern flank, the allies’ priorities might thus come to diverge.
Should Trump’s hopes to lure Russia away from China fail, however, it is likely that NATO’s current approach to Arctic security will continue. For now, the alliance (somewhat awkwardly) frames Russia and China as a joint regional threat - an assessment perhaps less grounded in the reality of Sino-Russian Arctic relations, and more in intra-NATO efforts to reconcile the differing security priorities of European and American allies.
Buying Greenland
Greenland has long been considered a keystone in the northern defensive flank of the North American continent. During WWII, security tutelage over the island was effectively transferred to the U.S., in line with the Monroe Doctrine and to keep it out of the reach of the Wehrmacht. When the Cold War kicked off, Greenland was integrated into the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW), a chain of radar stations intended as a first line of defence against incoming Soviet bombers. There have been discussions of making NORAD, the DEW’s successor structure, stretch to Greenland. Today, there are concerns that the island may act as a weak link in the defence of the continent against incoming ICBMs. To add to this, Greenland holds vast treasure troves of natural resources of great importance for current and future industries. It is therefore no surprise that American policy-makers have traditionally paid a good deal of attention to the island.
Image: The Distant Early Warning Line (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
In 2019, Donald Trump proposed to buy Greenland off the Kingdom of Denmark after discussions with Republican Senator Tom Cotton and being briefed by an American geologist on the island’s rare earths reservoirs. The proposal was rejected by the Greenlandic government, the Danish government, and the entire spectrum of Denmark’s and Greenland’s political parties. With characteristic maturity, Trump cancelled a planned state visit to Copenhagen out of annoyance over the rebuttal. But Trump’s move was not the first American attempt to buy the island, and probably won’t have been the last. In 1867, 1910 and 1946, various U.S. administrations negotiated with Denmark over a transfer of Greenlandic sovereignty (see this great Wikipedia article).
And while plans over the purchase of Greenland were shelved under Joe Biden, especially among parts of the Republican Party, the idea has continued to enjoy high currency. For example, the Georgia House Republican and Trump friend Mike Collins on November 7 implied in a post on X that Trump should have another stab at gaining control of Greenland - and that the island’s inhabitants might, presumably out of gratitude, throw their votes behind a future Republican presidential candidate as the 52nd U.S. state. In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Gray of the American Foreign Policy Council suggested that Trump should disregard the island’s ambitions for independence, the responsibilities of which it was “ill-equipped to handle.”
Image: Screenshot of the 7 November X post by Mike Collins, a Republican lawmaker from Georgia
Within the U.S. Arctic policy community, the resurfacing of the Greenland debate was widely dismissed. In a LinkedIn post, Marisol Maddox, an analyst at the Wilson Center and Dartmouth College, wrote: “Please stop with this ill-informed nonsense.
There are many great ways the US could further engage in the Arctic to secure our interests but this isn’t one of them.” Is it likely, however, that parts of America’s foreign policy and security establishment will continue to pursue the idea, especially as Greenland moves further and further towards establishing independence from Denmark.
What fate for America’s Arctic ambassador-at-large?
Lastly, Trump is likely to axe the newly-minted U.S. ambassador-at-large for Arctic affairs, Mike Sfraga. Sfraga is an academic geographer from Alaska, and the first U.S.-American ever to hold his post. He was first put forward by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, a staunch internal opponent of Trump’s MAGA wing of her party.
Within a Republican Party firmly in Trump’s hands, the breaking of MAGA lines does not normally go without punishment. This circumstance - as well as Sfraga’s controversial past appearances at Arctic events and discussions involving high-ranking participants from Russia and China - led to his nomination being blocked for close to a year by MAGA-affiliated Senate Republicans. Prominently, one of the Republicans who voted against Sfraga’s appointment was Marco Rubio, Trump’s designated Secretary of State. In his announcement regarding the placement of a “hold” on Sfraga’s nomination, Rubio referred to the Ambassador as “unqualified” and a political appointments of President Biden. It thus looks likely that Sfraga will be out of his job after only a few months in office. Who, if anyone, will succeed him is thoroughly unknown.
Image: Marco Rubio tweeting on Russia and China in the Arctic, July 2024
Rubio, meanwhile, belongs firmly into the camp of Arctic China hawks. On X, he has expressed his belief that Russia-China cooperation in the region is a direct threat to American national security, albeit with a strong focus on the activities of “Communist China”. Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News commentator nominated by Trump to become the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, has not gone on the public record over Arctic matters - but has spoken much about his belief that climate change is, essentially, an anti-American hoax of global proportions. Experts on the ‘climate resilience’ of the American military (which, if a nation state, would be the world’s 47th biggest polluter, ahead of Peru, Norway or Switzerland), including in the Far North, have rung the alarm bells over this lack of care - given the fact that in the Arctic as elsewhere, a warming planet will produce manifold challenges to keeping military systems operational.
Regardless, the U.S. military is likely to pursue its expansion of Arctic capabilities. The acquisition of new icebreakers - a pet project of Donald Trump - will stay high on the presidential agenda, potentially aided by his scrapping of the Jones Act. A first sign in this direction was Trump’s early congratulations call with the Finnish President, Alexander Stubb, during with a continuation of the Biden administration’s ICE Pact was reportedly discussed.
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