Six months ago, the United States provoked a transatlantic crisis over Greenland. The White House announced in early January that “acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States” and that the options U.S. President Donald Trump was considering in pursuit of this goal included “utilizing the U.S. military.” In response, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, declared that the island’s future would “be decided by the people of Greenland” and that for now it would retain its status as an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen added a warning of her own: should the United States attack Greenland, that would be the day that NATO “would stop.” For added assurance, a small number of Danish and other European NATO forces were deployed to Greenland for an impromptu military exercise. Danish forces were given instructions to destroy airport runways and open fire at invading forces in the event of an attack.
A few days later, Trump withdrew his threat to take Greenland by force, defusing the immediate crisis. But the episode—together with Trump’s repeated talk of incorporating Canada as “the 51st state”—has spurred NATO allies in the Arctic region to step up their security activities. Canada pledged $28 billion in March 2025 to modernize its Arctic radar system and upgrade the U.S.-Canadian air defense system known as NORAD. In March, Ottawa committed another $29 billion to build three forward operating sites, improve military satellite communications, and modernize Arctic airports. Denmark has allocated more than $6 billion to field three new Arctic patrol vessels, long-range drones, and air radar surveillance. The non-Arctic NATO members Norway and the United Kingdom signed an agreement in December to strengthen their anti–submarine warfare capabilities in the North Atlantic. The United Kingdom also recently sent an aircraft carrier to patrol Arctic waters as part of NATO’s Arctic Sentry mission, which began earlier this year.
U.S. Arctic policy is undergoing a seismic shift, too. Since the end of the Cold War, American defense planners have treated the Arctic as a low priority, and programs to build icebreakers, deep-water ports, satellites, drones, and military installations have been severely delayed. The problems these delays created were obvious. In 2015, the United States did not have ships that could track Chinese naval vessels in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, and had to rely on air surveillance instead. In 2024, U.S. forces struggled to quickly reach Alaska’s remote Shemya Island after 15 Russian warships fired missiles as part of a maritime exercise. But now, the region may finally be getting the funding and attention it deserves. The Trump administration’s strategy documents include proposals to integrate the Arctic into a hemisphere-wide homeland defense plan. Already, Congress has funded the construction of up to three heavy icebreakers and 11 medium icebreakers, and it is beginning to appropriate funds to improve military infrastructure along the Alaskan coast. U.S. Space Force is modernizing air and missile defenses based in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, and Congress is urging it to complete its polar missile-warning satellite program, too. As the military and companies further tap into the Arctic’s critical mineral and energy resources, the U.S. government’s interest in the region will only increase.
But fully securing the United States’ northern frontline will also require that Washington cooperate much more closely with its Arctic allies. Russia and China are steadily investing in Arctic capabilities as they seek greater access to and control over the region and its abundant resources. To counter that growing threat, the United States and its fellow Arctic NATO countries—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—will need to pool their economic resources, better integrate their defenses, and pursue technological innovation together. Trump’s challenges to Canadian, Danish, and Greenlandic sovereignty are largely responsible for the steps NATO allies have taken so far to increase their Arctic security commitments, but distrust and fear could derail the progress that has been made. The U.S. president has recently fanned the flames again by remarking on the margins of the recent NATO summit in Ankara that Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark.” If Washington continues to needlessly provoke tensions with its Arctic partners, it could spoil the best opportunity yet to build a unified defense strategy that can protect U.S. and allied interests in the region for years to come.
DANGEROUS WATERS
Adversaries of the United States understand the strategic value of the Arctic, and they have been expanding their military and dual-use economic capabilities in the region accordingly. Russia now routinely menaces North Atlantic subsea cables, and its nuclear submarines, hypersonic missiles, and subsea submersibles and uncrewed systems are all designed to evade U.S. and NATO defenses. In September 2025, French navy commandos boarded a tanker belonging to Moscow’s sanctioned shadow fleet off the French Atlantic coast, suspecting that the vessel had been used as a launchpad for a series of drone flights over Denmark. Drones suspected to have come from Russian research and fishing vessels also harassed Norwegian energy platforms in the North and Norwegian Seas in 2022. Moscow repeatedly attempts to erode Norwegian authority over the strategically important Svalbard archipelago by upgrading a military base on a nearby Russian island, fanning tensions over diminishing fish stocks in the area, and placing Russian Orthodox symbols across the island chain, including a more than 20-foot cross erected near an abandoned Soviet mining settlement.
China has been increasingly active in and around the Arctic, too. Several Chinese icebreakers are able to travel to the Central Arctic Ocean, the high-seas area surrounding the North Pole. Beijing divides its fleet of five icebreakers (and growing) between the waters north of Alaska, where the United States and Russia argue over their shared maritime boundary, and the waters between Greenland and the Siberian coast, which is also a site of overlapping outer continental shelf claims. In the latter area, China is mapping the Arctic seafloor and assessing critical opportunities for mining minerals. The Norwegian authorities recently arrested a Chinese national on charges of espionage near a satellite ground station in northern Norway; the unique geography of the far north allows this station to provide a near-constant relay of satellite data, giving whatever country that controls it superior access to missile launch information, navigational positioning, and the monitoring of military movements and weather. Beijing has also sought a larger role in Arctic governance, providing the scientific data that informs multilateral agreements on high seas biodiversity and Arctic fisheries management in an effort to shape regulations to its advantage. China’s growing economic and scientific presence will also enable its military activities; every Chinese surface ship and submarine that traverses Arctic waters provides Beijing knowledge that will help it conduct future operations.
The Arctic may finally be getting the funding and attention it deserves.
The Arctic, northern Pacific, and northern Atlantic Oceans function as effective buffers for North America, Europe, and allies in the Pacific—but only if the United States and its NATO allies can defend those frontiers. They must be able to protect freedom of navigation in the Arctic’s increasingly accessible sea lanes and to monitor, deter, and counter their adversaries’ air, land, space, and maritime activities across vast distances. All of that takes teamwork. As Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store has pointed out, it is Norway and other European allies, not the United States, that will likely first detect Russian nuclear-armed submarines when they depart from Arctic bases; should the submarines escape detection as they cross the Barents or Norwegian Seas, they could directly threaten North American cities. The United States’ northern missile defense network, meanwhile, stretches from Alaska to Canada and Greenland; without the cooperation of Canada and Denmark, there would be gaps in the shield, leaving the United States less capable of detecting and intercepting missiles aimed at its territory. If Chinese research vessels or icebreakers travel undetected in the Chukchi Sea to the northwest of Alaska, they could conduct illegal operations in U.S. waters, which is why the U.S. Coast Guard works closely with the Canadian Coast Guard to detect those ships. And to improve American cold-weather fighting capabilities, U.S. Special Forces have repeatedly turned to Canada and the Nordic countries for help in improving their training of personnel and testing new Arctic-ready equipment.
The United States and its allies have stepped up lately to fortify the northern frontline against missiles, monitor surface and subsurface maritime activity, and enhance space-based surveillance. Plans to deploy more polar satellites, Arctic patrol vessels, uncrewed systems, and sensors, to upgrade port and airfield infrastructure, and to exercise under extreme cold-weather conditions will further strengthen U.S. and allied Arctic defenses. NATO has a new battle group that began operations in northern Finland and northern Sweden in June. The alliance also just launched a task force dedicated to integrating autonomous systems to better monitor and track potential threats in the North Atlantic and Arctic territory. Most important, senior Danish, Greenlandic, and U.S. officials have been meeting monthly to negotiate a possible reopening of three U.S. military installations along Greenland’s southern and eastern coasts, where increased surveillance and physical presence would reduce detection and response times in the waters between Greenland and the United Kingdom. But the United States and NATO still have much more work to do to counter the rising threats from China and, especially, Russia.
RAISE YOUR SHIELDS
Thankfully, there seems to be an appetite for even more Arctic collaboration, despite the United States’ provocation of its allies. In May, the foreign ministers of seven Arctic countries—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the United States—released a joint statement declaring their intention to cooperate more closely on security matters. The United States needs to build on this momentum, working with its partners to ensure that their military capabilities in the region and their air, maritime, and space surveillance systems can be deployed together and seamlessly exchange data—creating, in effect, an allied Arctic shield.
Elements of a nascent shield are already in place. In July 2024, the United States joined Canada and Finland to form the Icebreaker Collaborative Effort, a plan to speed up the United States’ icebreaker production by using those countries’ maritime design and building expertise to help U.S. shipyards produce icebreakers. This arrangement will deliver a new 11-ship fleet to the United States, with the first vessel expected to arrive in 2028. In a similar collaborative effort, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom have joined forces to purchase American-made P-8 reconnaissance aircraft and surveillance drones, which will help them track Russian submarines.
U.S. allies are also making progress on jointly developing undersea capabilities. Norway and the United Kingdom signed an agreement in late December to construct 13 frigates to hunt Russian submarines in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. According to the British Defense Ministry, Russian submarine and surface activity in the United Kingdom’s offshore waters increased nearly 30 percent from 2023 to 2025. British-Norwegian patrols have already successfully detected and deterred Russian activity near undersea cables that transfer vast amounts of data between North America and Europe. Indeed, the United States’ NATO allies have begun to assume the bulk of the responsibility of monitoring the seas between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom.
Still, however important icebreakers and antisubmarine warfare capabilities may be, it will take more than that to fully develop an allied Arctic shield. Most progress so far has been in the maritime domain, but allies also need to improve their space and missile defenses and increase their polar orbital satellites and Arctic-based ground stations. They will need better intelligence sharing and data integration; for the seven NATO countries with Arctic territory, an equivalent of the Five Eyes alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) would help them develop a comprehensive picture of adversarial activities from the sea floor to outer space. On land, as allies upgrade and create new military installations for training and deterrence missions, they must make sure that these forward locations are interoperable. They must conduct more cold-weather exercises together and collaborate on the development of cutting-edge Arctic-capable equipment. NATO is the organization best placed to integrate these efforts. The seven Arctic countries are all members of the treaty organization, and non-Arctic NATO members have plenty to contribute. The United Kingdom is a natural partner because of its geography, but France, Germany, the Netherlands, and potentially Poland and the Baltic states will have roles to play, too. Arctic security is too critical for the United States to afford to exclude any of its allies.
Setting up an effective allied Arctic defense will require the United States to make a few changes at home. Those will likely include revisions in the U.S. military’s command and control arrangements. Right now, no single command has responsibility for the circumpolar Arctic. As of June 2025, Alaska and Greenland are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Northern Command, while the U.S. European Command has operational responsibilities for northern Europe and the rest of the high north. The U.S. Army’s elite Arctic forces based in Alaska fall under the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, even though that command has no operational responsibilities in the Arctic. The U.S. Coast Guard, which has the most visible presence in the American Arctic, works closely with regional commands but is not integrated into this command structure, as it belongs to the Department of Homeland Security. This fragmentation can lead to intelligence and response gaps. An effort to restructure U.S. combatant commands would face significant political hurdles, but it will be vital to defending a more militarily and economically active Arctic. Ideally, a new Arctic Command would be given primary responsibility for the region under the U.S. Northern Command and would integrate assets and forces that are currently assigned to the Coast Guard and European and Indo-Pacific Commands.
Scientific knowledge is the foundation on which Arctic commerce and security are built.
Another key task is engaging the private sector. The Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan, released in February, focuses on securing Arctic waterways by working closely with industrial and commercial partners to build drones and satellites, update communication and navigational systems, develop mineral and energy resources, and improve dual-use infrastructure such as piers, hangars and runways. Because of the region’s extreme climate conditions and extreme distances, the U.S. government must ensure that all available assets—military and civilian—are designed to meet national security requirements. And given that the government’s monitoring capabilities and physical presence in the Arctic remain patchy and limited, in many cases it will need to rely on private companies and indigenous communities for information about military and intelligence-gathering activities by Russia and China. Washington must invest in these networks the way it invests in relationships with its Arctic allies, giving companies and communities the tools they need to alert authorities about adversarial activity and respond to an incident.
Finally, the United States must strengthen its scientific missions on the Arctic seabed and in the high seas of the Central Arctic and encourage its allies to do the same. Scientific knowledge is the foundation on which Arctic commerce and security are built, as China is already well aware. The United States has also conducted a wealth of scientific research in the Arctic, but it has trouble aligning its scientific and security priorities. If Washington seeks to achieve maritime dominance in the Arctic, for example, it needs to incorporate best-in-class research on how environmental change affects Arctic waterways. It will need to prevent China and Russia from gaining advantages through their own scientific activities, too. A recently proposed bipartisan bill aims to limit both countries’ ability to “exploit scientific research as a cover for espionage” in U.S. Arctic waters, but this legislation is only a first step.
IT TAKES A TEAM
Now is the time for the United States and its allies to update their joint security plans for the Arctic. In Washington, the Pentagon is currently working on a new Arctic strategy, the latest since the Biden administration released one in 2024, and the Department of Homeland Security is considering new Arctic policies of its own, too. Each of these departments seeks to use icebreakers and other Arctic assets for defense and law enforcement purposes in the region, and merging their planning efforts would help reduce the friction between them. Congress is also due to advance supplemental Pentagon budget and defense authorization bills. Whenever that happens, legislators should seize the opportunity to fund joint initiatives with Arctic allies to develop new security infrastructure and technologies, such as forward operating locations, polar orbital satellites, and seafloor sensors.
There is a risk that the effort to strengthen the United States’ and NATO’s northern flank will be derailed before it can be fully realized. With conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, maritime tensions in the South China Sea, and military activities in the Caribbean all demanding Washington’s attention and resources, it is all too easy to imagine Arctic security falling down the list of spending priorities, and important Arctic infrastructure left unfunded. And if the Trump administration continues to threaten to take control of new territory in the Arctic, Canada and Europe will reorient their security efforts accordingly, as they did in January, building defenses against the United States instead of joining with it.
Washington must avoid those mistakes. It has all the ingredients to assemble a unified strategy with U.S. allies to improve security in a region that is steadily growing more competitive and more dangerous. A failure to bolster Arctic defenses today will only leave the United States vulnerable in the future.
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