Melting Sea Ice Reveals Importance of Arctic Region

By Shigeru Kitamura / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:00 JST, November 21, 2025

In 2019, during his first term, U.S. President Donald Trump floated the possibility of purchasing Greenland, sending a major shock through the international community.

“Essentially, it’s a large real estate deal,” Trump said. “And, strategically, for the United States, it would be nice.” His remarks were ridiculed as bizarre, but the strategic calculations lurking behind the idea are not absurd.

Greenland is home to abundant reserves of strategically critical rare earths. The United States maintains a space force base there that is directly linked geographically to missile defense. Purchasing Greenland would help ensure the United States’ presence along the Arctic Ocean shipping route. All these elements symbolize the competition between great powers in the 21st century.

This is not the first time the United States has shown an interest in Greenland. When the United States’ relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated in 1946, U.S. President Harry Truman approached Denmark to buy Greenland, but his offer was rejected. Trump is now in his second term and has renewed his desire to own the territory.

The United States’ interest in the Arctic region is not transient. Instead, it is becoming a mainstay of politics among the great powers. The Arctic Ocean, where sea ice has been declining due to global warming, is attracting attention as a new shipping route. For shipping between East Asia and Europe, the distance via this ocean is shorter than the distance via the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal. Ships sailing through the Arctic seaway can also avoid the pirate-infested waters off East Africa and the Middle East.

The decline in Arctic sea ice is likely to increase the potential for resource development in the Arctic region. For this reason, China and Russia are also increasingly interested in the area.

On Aug. 15, the U.S. and Russian leaders held a summit in Anchorage, Alaska. It is rare for a Russian president to visit the U.S. mainland, except to attend international conferences.

Alaska, which faces the Russian Far East across the Bering Sea, is the United States’ front line in the Arctic region. The Anchorage summit underscored again the importance of this region as a geopolitical crossroads between the United States and Russia.

From ‘last frontier’ to ‘new front line’

For those involved in security policymaking, the Arctic is now evolving from a “last frontier” to a “new front line.” The area that particularly symbolizes this development is the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.

This island group lies between the Norwegian mainland and Greenland, about 1,000 kilometers north of the Norwegian mainland and about 1,200 kilometers south of the North Pole. Moreover, it is just over 1,000 kilometers from Russia’s Murmansk region across the Barents Sea.

The Svalbard Treaty, signed in 1920, recognized Norway’s “full and absolute sovereignty” over the archipelago. At the same time, the treaty set certain unique limits on Norway’s sovereignty. The archipelago has therefore become a place where multilateral interests intersect.

Nationals and enterprises from more than 40 countries that signed the treaty have equal rights to dwell and engage in commercial and mining operations in the Norwegian territory of the Svalbard archipelago. However, the treaty obliges Norway to ensure that neither military bases nor fortifications are established. Norway has the power to tax across the archipelago, but the taxes collected there must be used exclusively for the area’s development and environmental protection. None of it can be put into the Norwegian treasury. In other words, the area is technically under Norwegian sovereignty, but it is managed jointly by international parties.

The aforementioned framework of “sovereignty with restrictions” over Svalbard helped maintain stability in the area for a long time, including during the Cold War. Since the world entered the 21st century, however, the area’s stability has been wavering due to changes in energy demand and the security environment.

The presence of Russia is becoming especially notable amid these circumstances. Aside from Norway, Russia has the most significant stake in Svalbard. The Barentsburg settlement in the archipelago has about 400 inhabitants, including many Russians, whose livelihoods are supported by a coal mine operated by Trust Arktikugol, a Russian state-owned mining company.

Although Norwegian law and administrative authority apply to the settlement, the local environment is actually rooted in Russian culture and language. The area maintains its own education and medical systems, giving it the appearance of a de facto Russian enclave. It is consequently an area where Moscow’s intentions are strongly reflected.

With governments across Europe removing Russian influence since Russia invaded Ukraine, the symbolic significance of the Russian foothold in Svalbard is increasing. This is because, while the location’s importance as a coal-mining center has declined in energy-economic terms, its value as a geopolitical card remains.

Crucial space infrastructure

Another factor bringing Svalbard into the center of international politics is its importance in the space sector.

Spitsbergen, the largest island in the archipelago, hosts the Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat), which supports polar-orbiting satellites. Operated by a Norwegian state-owned company, this facility can efficiently receive data from satellites orbiting over the North Pole because the ground station is located at a high latitude of 78 degrees north.

SvalSat provides a wide range of services, from civilian and security applications, as it handles data from NASA’s Earth observation satellites, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, and U.S. and European military satellites, among others. Svalbard is a crucial point for space infrastructure.

This strategic importance came to the fore once again in January 2022, when the Svalbard undersea cable was severed. The rupture of the deep-sea section of one of the two fiber-optic cables connecting mainland Norway to the archipelago disrupted SvalSat’s data transmission and services for residents. Human involvement was more likely than a natural mishap, according to Norwegian authorities.

Russia is suspected of involvement in the incident. Undersea cable disruption — a typical example of the asymmetric warfare Russia is adept at conducting — leaves little evidence, making it challenging to identify the perpetrators. Since the act of severing an undersea cable, which requires no direct military action, does not fall under the “warlike purposes” or “fortification” prohibited by the Svalbard Treaty, it is easier to evade international condemnation. However, the impact would be immense as delays in satellite data transmission and any loss of such data would directly affect military communications and surveillance activities.

Russia seems to be employing a cunning strategy of imposing “costs” on the West through low-intensity measures while avoiding escalation. The Arctic region is the front line of nuclear deterrence and has also emerged as a testing ground for asymmetric warfare and gray-zone operations.

These developments are not merely local friction; they involve elements of modern security such as resources, military realms, space, and communications.

The United States’ focus on Greenland and Russia’s clinging to Svalbard are evidence of the dramatic increase in the strategic importance of the Arctic region. The more sea ice melts due to climate change, opening an Arctic shipping passage and enabling resource development, the more rapidly the Arctic region is transforming from a “blank zone” in international politics to a “zone of competition.”

Not only traditional military conflicts but also new forms of competition over communications infrastructure and satellite data are likely to take place under such circumstances.

Shigeru Kitamura

Shigeru Kitamura joined the National Police Agency in 1980 after graduating from the University of Tokyo. He became Director of Cabinet Intelligence in 2011 and served as Secretary General of the National Security Secretariat from 2019 to 2021.

The original article in Japanese appeared in the Nov. 16 issue of The Yomiuri Shimbun.