For just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the Sea.
“Northwest Passage,”Stan Rogers, 1981.
During the Age of Sail, countless sailors attempted to traverse the frigid arctic waters of the North Pole in search of a maritime route that would cut down on shipping costs and travel time. However, due to the treacherous conditions, rogue ice sheets, and insufficient advancements in naval technology, all expeditions ended in failure and death. Nevertheless, with modern-day Arctic vessels such as icebreakers and the thawing of polar ice, a “Northwest Passage” may finally be in reach.
A potential arctic shipping route has appeared attractive for centuries due to its potential to cut shipping costs and travel time by nearly half, or 6,200 miles – roughly the length of the entire Pacific Ocean when measured from Los Angeles to Beijing. Additionally, ships taking this polar express would avoid the conflict-prone Red Sea, where recent Houthi missile attacks on maritime cargo ships have required the armed intervention of the American navy to protect commerce.
Due to increasing temperatures and the unequal distribution of heat on the Earth’s surface, the poles heat up four times faster on average than the rest of the Earth for an average of 12.8% sea ice decline per decade. However, this does not necessarily mean the Arctic is completely ice-free. Instead, man-made climate change has created brief seasonal windows when the ice retreats just enough to make Arctic maritime shipping viable. Still, in an interview with CNN, the polar geopolitics expert Elizabeth Buchanan remarked, “A new global economic corridor is about to come online… This is a game changer.”
Additionally, the Arctic Circle is estimated to contain 30% of Earth’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil reserves, potentially making any nation that could control or exert influence over the region very powerful. Consequently, Canada, Denmark, and Russia have all recently invoked an obscure clause in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to extend their economic claims to the Arctic.
The United States, however, may find it difficult to justify similar economic activity in the Arctic as the United States has yet to sign the aforementioned United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, therefore making any claims outside its 200 mile exclusive economic zone illegitimate in the eyes of international law. Alaskan politicians have since lobbied the federal government to become a signatory, but progress is unlikely to be made due to long-held American fears of loss of sovereignty to the United Nations. Interestingly, if the United States were a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, not only would it be able to extend its Alaskan Arctic claims by almost 160,000 square miles, it would also potentially be able to stack the scientific panels judging international oceanic claims with American experts.
Given the highly lucrative potential of the Arctic, the power of influencing territorial arbitration would be especially important due to the many overlapping claims that cover the Arctic. For example, the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range stretching 1,100 miles in the extreme North Pole, is claimed by both Russia and Canada. The importance of the Lomonosov Ridge led Russia in 2007 to plant a Russian flag on the seabed around the Lomonosov Ridge using a robotic arm attached to a submarine. It is perhaps also no coincidence that the parts of the Arctic closest to Russia have been described as having “mind-boggling” amounts of oil and natural gas.
Whereas the interests of countries like China are purely economic in nature, the Arctic has also been militarily important to polar nations like Russia, Canada, and the United States for several decades. For example, during the Cold War, Canada and the United States’ early-warning missile-detection systems were based in the Arctic. Likewise, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has described the purpose of Russia’s Arctic military presence as being to “1. Enhance homeland defense, specifically a forward line of defense against foreign incursion as the Arctic attracts increased international investment; 2. Secure Russia’s economic future; and 3. Create a staging ground to project power, primarily in the North Atlantic.” Predicitably, Russia also has the world’s largest icebreaker fleet, numbering at 50, with some icebreakers nuclear-powered and armed. Comparatively, the United States has two, both of which are decades old.
In fact, in terms of active economic, legal, and military activity in the North Pole, Russia is the world’s foremost Arctic power. According to U.S. officials, if NATO were to regain the Arctic advantage, it would require the construction of 70 to 90 icebreakers. During the 2024 NATO summit, the United States, Canada, and Finland announced the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) to begin negotiations regarding a joint effort to construct new icebreakers. This joint nature of this agreement is notable as the United States is expected to require consistent, deliberate investment spanning decades to bring its shipyards up to global par in icebreaker construction – a problem emblematic of the larger decline of American shipyards as a whole. Inevitably, the United States is relying on polar allies such as Finland to build icebreakers for it, as in the $6.1 billion Finno-American deal announced in October of 2025, under which Finland will build four icebreakers for the United States Coast Guard and assist America in constructing seven additional icebreakers. The first icebreaker is expected to be delivered in 2028.
Although the Arctic has the potential to be the next frontier of geopolitics, environmentalists warn of the possibility of catastrophic destruction there. Counterintuitively, melting sea ice in the Arctic actually makes transiting to the North Pole more perilous in some respects, as the thawed ice now floats freely and unpredictably rather than being previously locked into unmoving ice sheets. This has the potential to damage oil tankers transiting through the Arctic and cause oil spills. Whereas oil spills in other oceans, such as the Gulf of Mexico, can be relatively manageable to clean up due to their proximity to highly developed and prepared nations like the United States, Arctic oil spills have the potential to be uniquely destructive to the environment, as the desolate and isolated nature of the Arctic Ocean makes cleanup exceptionally difficult. Not only would specialized vessels such as icebreakers be necessary, but the frigid Arctic temperatures might also require specialized cleanup equipment and specially trained crews. Not only would oil stay in the relatively pristine Arctic waters for longer than in other oceans, but the dark, black color of spilled oil would also absorb sunlight, heating the Arctic even further.
As the climate warms and more Arctic sea ice melts, more human activity accelerating climate change is expected to take place in the Arctic in a positive feedback loop akin to a vicious, environmental death spiral. Consequently, this will further warm the climate, leading to additional climate-change-contributing Arctic activity. This will, of course, lead to even more climate change.
Instead, it would do the world well to look south for guidance. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty established the South Pole as a demilitarized, environmentally-protected, scientific no-man’s-land, which it has remained to this day. Consequently, Antarctica has stayed relatively untouched. Not only would a scramble for the Arctic spell disaster for the environment, it would also inflame the growing great power competition between the United States and Russia. The Arctic is at a crossroads, and it could either become an additional theater in geopolitical struggle, or a testament to international cooperation and the pursuit of science over extraction. A treaty akin to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty should be enacted that would protect the Arctic, and put posterity before profit.
Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Arctic, Image sourced from RawPixel | CC License, no changes made