Legitimacy and Locals: Great Powers and the Voiceless Power of the Inuit in Arctic Politics

Men, some no older than 17, stand on the bow of a steel ship, its engines roaring as the waves break beneath the speeding mass of flesh and metal. They wave at other ships in the convoy, flags waving; cheers can be heard, the glint of teeth in the sunlight marks the thousand smiles coating that small region of the much larger ocean, the much larger world. These men are American, of all colors and creeds, who have survived a day at war, who have won a battle against what they see as powers of evil, utilizing underwater weapons to strike their ships in the Atlantic. They villainize those who drive planes into their comrades’ hulls in the Pacific. These men are American; some are immigrants, others have been native to the land since before the continent had a name, or borders.

The United States has held a unique position in the world order and in world history alike; no other nation has ever been so constantly engaged with war, and retained legitimacy as well as it has. War is unpalatable; a nation driven purely by it overexpands and collapses, like the exertion of a sprinter in a marathon; it is left floundering. Internationally, nations that war constantly only gain and retain power in the world order for their lack of opposition; who would dare challenge a nation so mighty in combat? The unique reason this fate has not fallen upon the United States is due to the exigence and justification of these wars. Although there are a fair share of regretted American wars, a large number were fought- or at least were justified fighting- by the notion of justice, freedom, and democracy. A fight of good against evil, of moral against immoral; if the fight is legitimate, there is no international cost of legitimacy for fighting.

It may be easy to picture those boys and men in black and white photographs, still frames of smiles and flags, wherein the imagination can’t help but add touches of color- the red of the flag, the dark of their eyes, as well as motion in their hands, expressions, and the wind. Nonetheless, legitimate warfare has not been the recent strong suit of the United States; military strikes in Iran, the conflict between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip, much of the conflict in the Middle East, and so forth. The United States has held to its habit of war, and its reputation of power, while risking time and risking loss of legitimacy. It has retained it, in large part due to its initiation of organizations such as the UN, and more diplomatic actions taken internationally. The support of aid to Ukraine is a key example; the United States did not risk intervention with Russia, but did wish to show its support for a nation being invaded, and so it engaged in a supporting role of finances and material. The US also responded to nuclear threats with economic warfare in Iran, prior to the 2026 outbreak of conflict in Iran, as a means of strategic, non-harmful pressure.

The American soldiers fought a legitimate battle, and the response was legitimacy; a seat at the international table reserved for the United States, purchased by force. Some nations did not have that force, and were instead quietly left without power or legitimacy on the world stage.

Yet some nations cannot war; some nations have very quiet voices among the great powers gallivanting around the world. The Inuit Communities of the Far North are one such people. The indigenous Arctic community is represented on the world stage by the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), an organization with some voice, but not a significant amount relative to key Arctic players such as Russia or the United States.¹² The ICC never had an army, nor held a UN Security Council seat; the convoy crossing the Atlantic had no mirror in the High North. Despite that lack of force, the traditional Inuit territory covers roughly 40% of the Arctic region, more homeland than any single Arctic state can claim.

So the question remains for the role of the ICC: what does a seat at the table look like for a people without an army to back it?

The waves flag and ripple, cracking in the cold boreal wind, but not American flags, and not upon any convoy. Instead, it is a flag of blue and white, the logo of the Arctic Council, an Arctic fox; a delegate steps into the building and through the corridor; step by step, the delegate enters an Arctic Council ministerial in Rovaniemi. There are no naval guns, the size of men, nor any flags of the ICC and Inuit peoples; merely a briefing folder and a seat which cannot cast a vote.

Nonetheless, Inuit communities are not powerless; it is just that power takes different forms. Some nations and peoples are more clearly hawkish; with a motif of an eagle holding arrows- others are more foxlike.

The ICC’s seat on the Arctic Council is that of a Permanent Participant. Founded in 1977, the ICC represents roughly 180,000 Inuit across Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka.³ The ICC holds a UN ECOSOC Consultative Status II; its seat on the Arctic Council, one of six indigenous organizations who sit as Permanent Participants, sits merely a tier above observer, and one below member.⁴ Crucially, however, the Permanent Participant status holds no power to actually vote. Only the eight Arctic states are able to vote; nonetheless, Permanent Participants serve as co-constituting the Council’s development over time, without a formal decision power.^{5 6} Influence need not manifest itself in the casting of a vote, but can instead take the form of subtle guidance, strategic conversations, and actions. Despite this form of manifestation, it does not change the simple fact that an organization representing 180,000 people across three continents lacks a practical vote in a council which determines the affairs of a vital region of the world, one populated largely by those 180,000 people.

In 2019, the Arctic Council failed to issue a joint declaration; reportedly due to disagreements on language concerning the climate.^{7 8},⁹ The ICC leadership publicly called the failure a "moral" one- the phrase came from International Chair Dalee Sambo Dorough, who noted the organization then represented roughly 165,000 Inuit- making the specific designation that the Inuit communities suffer directly from the effects of climate change daily, while states debate semantics over a text concerning it.¹⁰ Such is the cost of bureaucracy and legitimacy- inaction. This is the cost of a presence without a voice; a shadow in the room and a fly on the wall- the ICC is not able to make any meaningful impact within the Arctic Council; in turn, it is also unable to have any impact outside of it. No economic might, no military force, merely a seat at a table it cannot change.¹¹ The conclusion that follows is rather stark; those who suffer the most from deliberation can do the least to stop it. The abstraction of climate change does not hold any real bearing on representatives from nations whose people do not directly see the effects of it; the ICC, however, does, and yet cannot do a thing within the ICC.

Real Ice, a company focused on preserving and researching Arctic ice, began an operation in Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay), and did so in a way no Arctic Council ministerial required of the state; it asked permission through the Nunavut Impact Review Board, through field tests with local partners, plans presented to the affected community, and obtained permits.¹² It also obtained a letter of support from the Ekaluktutiak Hunters and Trappers Organization, a community-based non-profit Inuit organization with a strong presence in the community and town.¹³ The board itself, upon reviewing the same project, concluded the work to date is unlikely to cause adverse effects either socially or environmentally.^{14 15} The hunters and trappers organization of a town of under 2,000 people held more practical physical authority over the consequences of a project than the ICC holds over any Arctic Council resolution. It is a control over the local to affect the international, although such policy often goes over the head of such an organization.

The ICC’s international chair, Sara Olsvig, has spoken out against testing a similar seabed-curtain geoengineering idea in her native Greenland, presenting arguments that governments need to seek the free, prior and informed consent of local communities prior to unethical interference.^{16 17} This cultural and communal bypassing by industries and organizations leads to native disgruntlement; nonetheless little action can be enacted. A UK-funded geoengineering trial met with the hunters and trappers organization, and found within that community that such an organization has more impact and influence than any Arctic Council ministerial conducting the same question and research.¹⁸ The fact of the matter is, to rule an army, one must individually rule over the rank and file. The Inuit communities are no different; in fact they are arguably harder to hold such power over because they lack conventional governing roles.

In Greenland, a nearly identical proposal sits gridlocked because it lacks any channels for enactment and approval; because it did not ask for local support and approval initially. Without the rank and file, there is no army, and certainly no empire.

Such rank and file allowed for the successful combat operations of the US Navy in their convoys; the Inuit have a different kind of army, not a material one, and one which does not fight with guns or steel, but instead with community resistance.

To own this army, however, and to appeal to its best interests, where the Arctic Council has failed, is nothing more than an opportunity. The power which holds sway over the Inuit and ICC communities in turn holds sway in a critical region of minerals, energy and geopolitical strategic power. As such, the nation which appeals to the best interests of the Inuit and ICC gains a critical foothold in a critical region.

Enter: China.

Chinese outreach in the Arctic takes one clear form above all others: money. Positive cash flow. Investment. China provides funding for mining projects and offers collaboration with Chinese polar research vessels, as well as financial support for badly needed infrastructure, such as transportation links and broadband internet.¹⁹ Undersea cables and bridges, ports and docks which aren’t just used by the native peoples, but also by the Chinese providing the infrastructure and research therein. China builds long-term infrastructure, but it also owns it, benefits from its existence, and uses it. Additionally, should China hold leverage over the Inuit, and thereby the West, through this infrastructure and debt, then it forces alignment within the Arctic Council and Arctic region as a whole. Given that the Arctic Council has been largely frozen since the icing out of Russia in 2022 due to the Russo-Ukrainian invasion,²⁰ nations must deal with all interested parties, not just those with a flag. And so, China capitalizes on Russia’s isolation from the Arctic Council, and its inactivity thereby.

The offers provided by China are not theoretical but instead such infrastructure investment offers from China appear attractive because they address what specifically these communities need. Listening to the people on the ground; that is how to win over the rank and file. Ottawa, Washington and Copenhagen have neglected and underfunded the Inuit community projects and needs; the cumulative effect, warns Elizabeth Donkervoort, a Canadian security researcher, is "an incremental strategy which builds access relationships and influence in the Arctic over time."²¹ The Polar Silk Road already serves as a waterway extension of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s masterplan for expansion of trade throughout the world.²² In fact, China did attempt to construct undersea cables and discussed a project involving Russia to do so, until the plan was abandoned and companies pulled out; China tried to work with the larger nations, but upon failing to get a foot in the door, found its way into a smaller, more manipulable room.^{23 24},²⁵ Smaller nations worldwide have been indebted to Beijing, subject to its political coercion through infrastructure-as-alignment; the ICC is no different, except it emphasizes Chinese influence in a region of the world China cannot get another claim to, the Arctic.

Greenland represents the furthest extent of this case; China’s declared 2018 Arctic policy dubbed the nation a "Near-Arctic State,"^{26 27},^{28 29},³⁰ and Beijing’s continued strategic interest in the region is telling of China’s interest in Greenland. Additionally, from a strategic psychological standpoint, it makes direct sense; the US has expressed continued, direct interest in Greenland through threats and bluster. China sees the same strategic value- perhaps because the US so bluntly pointed it out. In turn, China used the carrot, rather than the stick, to win Greenland over. Greenland holds a significant rare earth deposit, part of the reason the US has acted so strangely possessive over the island. Beijing, controlling roughly 60% of all rare earth mining and around 91% of its processing, has a vested interest in retaining that monopoly.^{31 32},³³ Greenland is a region which could break that monopoly and weaken China’s position- naturally, that is to be avoided. As such, China, by winning over Greenland, would be able to help secure such a monopoly, as Kvanefjeld specifically holds deposits of neodymium and praseodymium, used for permanent magnets, as well as dysprosium and terbium, which are critical for jet engines and missile systems.³⁴ The Chinese rare-earth firm Shenghe Resources took a 12.5 percent stake in Greenland Minerals in 2017; its largest shareholder is China Geological Survey, a government-owned research institute under China’s Ministry of Natural Resources.^{35 36},^{37 38} All roads lead to the CCP, as it were. Greenland’s own minister of business and resources has stated plainly that without Western investment and involvement, Greenland must turn to other buyers; namely China. As recently as March 2025, Greenland’s foreign minister publicly identified stronger cooperation with Beijing, including discussions about a trade agreement, as a government priority.³⁹

The Inuit Ataqatigiit party has campaigned against critical mineral mining, particularly on uranium mines in Greenland, as well as for shelving the Kvanefjeld project altogether.^{40 41},⁴² Despite this, the native voices in Greenland are divided; a documentary filmmaker, Jørgen Chemnitz, has spoken outright that "I think we should be very, very afraid of the Chinese."^{43 44} Despite that, Greenland is, in the eyes of some officials, left with few alternative buyers, and as such faces continued pressure to engage China.

However, China’s courtship has stalled, as the Kuannersuit (Kvanefjeld) project ground to a halt after Greenland reinstated its ban on uranium mining in 2021^{45 46}; as a result, Chinese firms have found mining in Greenland costly, particularly due to a lack of infrastructure, which must be constructed from scratch for each project. Furthermore, Chinese offers to invest in infrastructure led to concerns over security risks. It is imperative to remember, however, that such Chinese costs and investments do not run back to a firm but to the Chinese government. As a result, no cost is too high for China’s monopoly- a national security concern. Denmark, in the end, holds a formal check: the current security arrangement between the US, Denmark and Greenland effectively grants Copenhagen veto power over Chinese investment on security grounds.⁴⁷ Despite the public contention between the US and Greenland, no formal changes have been made to that arrangement. Nonetheless, keeping it that way is crucial to retaining Western influence over a nation which would otherwise allow a Chinese presence directly in the Arctic.

Russia and China both hold an anti-western influence in the Arctic, and Russia cannot be forgotten. Russia holds leverage directly over the ICC not through infrastructure but instead through government power. The Inuit population of Chukotka need not infrastructure to be told what to do; instead they already serve as citizens of Russia.⁴⁸ Moscow has the final say in Russian territory- Moscow thereby has the leverage to cut a quarter of the ICC’s constituent population off from the three other sectors, spread across the Arctic Circle, as it benefits Moscow. The ICC represents 180,000 people in total; Russia was the sitting chair of the Arctic Council in 2022- hence the Council standstill.⁴⁹ As such, the Inuit population of Russia effectively holds no say in Arctic Council affairs, and struggles to hold influence or a voice within the ICC itself, due to their isolation in Siberia.

On March 7, 2022, the ICC received a joint statement from the Senior Arctic Officials of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the US announcing a pause of participation in Arctic Council meetings- a request the Russian chair agreed to.⁵⁰ The ICC is not the only native population, however; the Aleut International Association and Saami Council are also Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council, and their influence in the Council was likewise frozen and constrained.⁵¹ The Arctic Council’s halt saw roughly a third of its nearly 130 circumpolar projects paused- spanning science, shipping lanes, and Indigenous youth suicide prevention.^{52 53} Such projects bore the burden of the split in the Arctic Council.⁵⁴ ICC Canada’s leadership has tread carefully to ensure the war does not erase the prominence of the fourth region, at least rhetorically; ICC Canada president Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk has said the organization "cannot but cast our eyes to Russia, which occupies a very large part of the Arctic," raising support for the ICC Russia sector.⁵⁵ Nonetheless, it is more difficult to amass international strength and credibility when a fourth of the members of that organization are effectively cut off from the Arctic Council. Russian influence is not a stick so much as a wall, cutting off the Inuit population, rather than granting them infrastructure or not allowing them to voice a vote. A Permanent Participant which speaks for four regions holds less legitimacy when it can only fully act for three. Three-fourths of a voice is hardly a voice at all. At the very least, not a firm one.

Dust and smoke rise from the pits of Greenlandic soil, extraction here, infrastructure there. Simultaneously, a fourth of a faction loses its voice as the nation it resides in wages a war widely regarded internationally as illegitimate. Nations vie for power over a nation without a flag or army, the rank and file of Arctic policy. Russia isolates, China invests, but the West does something different. The West, namely the United States, has leaned into Greenland with excessive pressure.

Since January 2025 the US has sustained pressure, and threats of force, to annex Greenland as a whole.^{56 57},⁵⁸ Trump has stated that the US requires Greenland for defensive purposes- "we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense," he said in January 2026⁵⁹- and as of January 2026 the administration openly discussed a range of options, including the potential use of military force, as well as floating a Compact of Free Association arrangement; such a legal structure the US also utilizes with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, which would require Greenland to separate from Denmark first.^{60 61},^{62 63},⁶⁴

The ships cut through the choppy waters, steel hulls gathering layers of thin ice, patterned frost, elegant and fragile, but which stick the warm fingers of the men to the hull as they grip it. The flag does not wave, there is no wind, nonetheless the cold pierces the vessel, like a long sharp blade, which nothing can stop. There is, in the eyes of many critics, little legitimacy in this pressure campaign, only what they characterize as ambition and leverage dressed in vague claims of defense. The legitimacy, built on the power the US once wielded so carefully, would be spent for little if a military enforcement to annex Greenland were ever undertaken.

In January 2026, Trump threatened tariffs upon Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland, "until such a time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland."^{65 66},⁶⁷ Days later, at Davos, a substantial reversal of this policy was made public, with Trump describing instead a negotiated "framework of a future deal" on Arctic security reached with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and no tariffs or force ultimately imposed to annex Greenland.^{68 69}

The legitimacy of alliance, and the threat of force thrown around so bluntly, mark not an evolution in the US role in the world order but instead, in the view of many allied observers, a small decline- the principles of legitimacy strained by a moment of raw ambition.

Denmark’s own prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, stated that "if the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop" in terms of NATO and therefore "post-second world war security."⁷⁰ The response was brief and telling: NATO’s Secretary General pledged publicly that the US is "absolutely committed" to NATO.⁷¹ Denmark and Greenland already contribute to Arctic security; antagonizing the nations does nothing to advance US national interests, and only harms it in the view of many analysts. It is such antagonism which some observers argue emboldens Russian assertiveness- seen as the US straining relations with allies- as well as Chinese opportunism. Critics of the pressure campaign argue that a hegemon pressuring an allied nation sends a troubling signal to other alliance members about their own security. It is threats and needless aggression, in this reading, which erode legitimacy; it is power, used carefully, that reinforces it. The protection of power allows for the enforcement of alliance and peace through deterrence; legitimacy fades if deterrence is invoked for goals other than peacekeeping.

A question lies at the center of these powers dueling for influence in the Arctic- who has the consent, exactly, to favor one nation over another? Denmark’s consent is formally required; nonetheless Frederiksen bluntly stated the nation "cannot negotiate our sovereignty."⁷² Such is rather telling- Greenland is self-governing and its leaders have made a point of answering for themselves as opposed to allowing Copenhagen to call the shots from afar. Greenland’s Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, spoke directly, urging Trump to forgo his "fantasies of annexation."⁷³ The population, mostly indigenous, is a mere 57,000.⁷⁴ The smallest, local actors, such as the hunters and trappers in Canada, are among what determine the pivot of the Arctic as a whole. Should Greenland and the indigenous communities throughout the Arctic favor China specifically, it would give that nation incredible influence in a region it claims no land in. If instead influence accrues to Russia, through pressure exerted via the quarter of the ICC located in Russia, then Russia holds substantial leverage over the region. Greenland’s role is a linchpin in Arctic geostrategy, and pressure from the US risks fracturing NATO the way the Arctic Council itself was fractured by Russia’s war with Ukraine. The Arctic’s real leverage point is not the formal institutions nor the great powers alone; it is the careful navigation of local governance, native claims, and the protection of legitimacy and power alike.

Arctic Council votes that lack the voice of the natives play into a narrative of a neglectful, less-than-fully-legitimate institution. Nonetheless, such votes are far from the only contests of power on the ground. The competition is no longer fought with warships crossing the Atlantic, nor merely icebreakers cutting through the Arctic; it is the infrastructure within the native communities, the resources extracted and who they belong to. It is also who is appealed to, what nations or individuals are asked for input, and the value of that simple ask. The consent of the people- be they the ICC Russian Inuit, the Greenlandic people considering sovereignty and the threats of the US, or the Canadian native hunters and trappers- is at the center of it. It is the people, the rank and file, which construct the army that the convoy of geopolitical pressure consists of. The native peoples of the Arctic may lack an army, they may lack a formal vote, but that does not change their pivotal role in the future of the Arctic. China could very well gain a foothold in the Arctic, as it desires; the war in Ukraine could halt Arctic Council projects and influence for years to come, and further delay could mean stalled permitting for nations like Canada regarding deep-sea mining, or reduced assistance to native communities.⁷⁵ Thus, they, like Greenland and its mines, could be pushed to turn to whoever will help- despite how that helper may take advantage of the situation. The policy fix favored by many Arctic analysts is not sanctions on China, nor threats on Greenland, nor extraction in the Arctic alone; it is the act of consulting natives, working with the people of the Arctic rather than around them. Russia’s leverage over the ICC means international unity within the organization is a vulnerability, and Arctic policy should treat the ICC’s four-region structure as something that can, and likely will, be fractured again. The value of the Arctic cannot be understated, but it also cannot simply be conquered; there is power and there is legitimacy, and both remain crucial for a stable, successful world order.

The men in the photograph smile for they know they have fought what they, and many at home, considered a good war- a legitimate battle which provided their nation with influence on the world stage; influence not merely to extract or expand, but to organize, support, and protect. The Inuit Circumpolar Council has spent almost fifty years fighting for a seat at the table, and while it holds a seat, it still lacks a vote. With no army, merely a scattered population trying simply to do what is best for its people, spread across three continents in one of the harshest environments in the world, the influence of the ICC stands as an example of what people, even separated, isolated and pressured, can accomplish. 2025 and 2026 provided a timeline of expansion in the Arctic driven not by these native peoples but instead by those attempting to win over their voice and their land- whether through investment, pressure, or both- to secure a seat at the table in the Arctic. Such, after all, is one reading of China’s strategy: to work with and through local communities to justify a durable Arctic presence.

The convoy’s flags meant something because an army stood behind them. The ICC’s flag, and the hunters-and-trappers’ letters, and a Greenlandic government’s refusals, mean something differently- no army stands behind them, and yet great powers are finding themselves trying to win over the locals all the same.

Power takes many forms, and while it is most obvious on the fore of a barreling battleship, it exists just the same in the bleak tundra where hunters and trappers gather. Legitimacy is most obvious in the banner rippling in the wind, so vivid a color can be seen despite the monochrome nature of an old photo. Legitimacy likewise can be seen not only in the signatures of the Arctic Council, but in the voices of natives raised in favor of, or against, foreign investment, and against uranium mining. Who controls the balance of legitimacy and power depends upon the nations; but nations are made of people, and it is those people- particularly the natives of the region- who will continue to shape the fate of the Arctic.

Notes & References

Notes