The Global Competition of the High North and Its Consequences
Europe's decoupling from Russian energy has quietly shifted its dependencies north, and its Arctic defense planning has not caught up with its own energy infrastructure there.
Read in the PDF →Moscow and Beijing share an incentive to overstate how functional the Northern Sea Route and Polar Silk Road already are — and economic analysis shows the gap.
Read in the PDF →As the Polar Silk Road matures, the Malacca Strait's chokepoint monopoly over Chinese trade begins to erode, with consequences for Southeast Asian leverage over Beijing.
Read in the PDF →Russia's courtship of non-polar BRICS partners in the Arctic reads less as expansion than as anxiety over its own overreliance on China.
Read in the PDF →A framework for reading hard power as leverage built through economic expansion, applied to Russia and China's competing Arctic ambitions.
Read in the PDF →Nuclear submarines, undersea cables, and mineral deposits converge beneath Arctic ice as an underexamined layer of great-power competition.
Read in the PDF →Outnumbered in icebreakers, the US pivots to autonomous and AI-enabled systems to project Arctic capability it does not yet have in steel.
Read in the PDF →Dense satellite traffic and GNSS reliance make the Arctic a second frontier for the same competition already playing out on the ice below it.
Read in the PDF →Cables carrying 99 percent of the world's data traffic make the Arctic seafloor a question of sovereignty, not merely connectivity.
Read in the PDF →China, Russia, and the United States each read the same melting ice as a different kind of opening — and act on it differently.
Read in the PDF →Great powers have built legitimacy through Arctic presence for a century, with Inuit communities largely excluded from the politics conducted in their own homeland.
Read in the PDF →Georgetown University · Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier (DIIS) · Institute for the Study of Diplomacy · UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) · University of Vienna · International Leadership of Texas · Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) · Liberty University · Lahore College for Women University · San Diego World Affairs Council · United States Coast Guard Auxiliary
Jack M. Lindstrom — Founder & Publisher, Arctic Ledger. Master of International Affairs candidate, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. Junior Researcher under Leonard Hochberg, The Mackinder Forum. See also work published through Geostrategic Pulse and the Center for Maritime Strategy.
Gregor Kossman — Arctic Affairs Researcher. M.S. candidate in Foreign Service at Georgetown; graduate research assistant, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, working with senior diplomatic and military fellows; scholar of Cold War history, the Arctic, and energy supply chains and volatility. Contributed “The Arctic Lifeline: Fortifying Europe's Energy Security.”
Leonardo Gomez — Chinese Strategy Researcher. Geopolitical risk analyst and Ph.D. candidate in Chinese affairs specializing in open-source intelligence (OSINT), scenario-based threat modeling, and Indo-Pacific security dynamics, drawing on over seven years of firsthand operational experience in China. Contributed “Strategic Anxiety in Southeast Asia.”
Bohdan Bernatskyi — Sanctions Research & Expert. Researcher at DIIS (Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier) in Denmark; former policy advisor to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; graduate researcher at Vilnius University working on strategic sanctions and their consequences. Co-authored “Insurance and Icebergs.”
Aimen Wasim — Chinese Influence & Regional Researcher. International relations graduate focused on great power competition and the expansion of Chinese influence beyond Southeast Asia, including the Middle East and the Arctic; intern at the ISPR, working with national security briefings and senior officials. Contributed “An Open Door in the High North.”