When looking back at Trump 1.0, one can hardly forget the diplomatic fireworks at the May 2019 Arctic Council ministerial in Rovaniemi, Finland, where his Tea Party Republican, no-nonsense Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, simultaneously duelled with China and America’s NATO (and soon-to-be-NATO) allies on the council, the former over his exuberant rejection of China’s 2018 White Paper in which it shook the confidence of the West’s national security mandarins by declaring itself a near-Arctic state.
That was even though the U.S. hardly reacting at all when Singapore, Japan and South Korea issued their own comparable Arctic strategies and policies, among others – and entirely ignored Greenland’s own Arctic strategy earlier this year, showing a persistent selection bias when it comes to who America believes has a right to articulate an Arctic policy or to have Arctic interests of their own, an imperial hubris that is not conductive to peaceful international relations.
Ironically, America’s very own state of Maine ,famously dubbed America’s “vacationland” for generations, has made a similar claim to Beijing in its hope to woo congressional and Industry investment by asserting its own near-Arctic statehood, and compete with Alaska, positioning itself as America’s eastern terminus of future Northwest Passage shipping – even though its tiny port of Portland (where the Icelandic shipping company Eimskip, with generous subsidies from the State of Maine, has a major presence) enjoys just a fraction of the maritime commerce as compared to the much larger, nearby Port of Boston, or the even bigger (though more distant) Port of New York and New Jersey, which would be more credible as the NWP’s eastern gateway.
Though Pompeo’s 2019 tussle with China generated headlines, his real clash with the council was between the United States, under Trump’s denialist (not Denali-ist) approach to climate change, and the rest of the Arctic Council’s state, Indigenous and NGO members and observers (a diverse community of asymmetrical actors) – who with the partial exception of Russia (with its own “Drill, baby, drill” ethos), stood united in their commitment to the climate change struggle, and which under the previous Barack Obama administration had found an enthusiastic partner in this important struggle confronting humanity and planet Earth.
Trump’s first surprise election led to a reversal on climate change policy, owing to the electoral platform Trump ran upon; and this second surprise election (unless you followed the futures markets, which predicted his election triumph handily, or otherwise had a Trumpian sixth sense), he will likely resurrect such a contrarian approach to our warming world.
Trump’s August 2019 overture to purchase Greenland, and thus peacefully expand the American constitutional polity, was in its own way the Trump administration’s admission that the polar thaw was real, and that a thawing Greenland presented a strategic opportunity for America. No climate change, no White House interest in Greenland, full stop. Much of Trump’s Arctic resource and energy policy was indeed predicated on the polar thaw and its increasing accessibility to Arctic resources, which favoured America’s continued energy independence.
We can thus anticipate a continuation of this paradox – a visceral, MAGA-inspired rejection of climate change science and policy while enthusiastically embracing a future Arctic with diminishing sea ice, warmer temperatures, growing maritime commerce, and increasing accessibility. Many of America’s friends and allies, particular those NATO members that still embrace “green colonialism”, will again voice their criticism with Trump’s stance on climate but those who wish to engage proactively with America will see in its pro-development policies an opportunity to position themselves for a warmer Arctic future with America as a partner in future Arctic trade and commerce.
While Pompeo’s diplomatic fireworks at the 2019 Arctic Council ministerial shook up the normally staid and predictable climate of fraternal unity of the council, one cannot overlook the more destructive approach of the Biden administration’s Arctic policy, which – breaking with a long tradition dating back to the dawn of the post-Cold War period – unwisely imposed policy linkage that punished Russia in the Arctic for its behaviour in eastern Europe, namely through its aggressive, anti-Russia boycotts and policy of isolation after Putin seized on Biden’s ill-planned and tragically implemented Afghanistan withdrawal by launching a war of territorial expansion (or restoration, as perceived through the lens of Soviet history and state collapse) on NATO’s doorstep, misreading Biden’s abandonment of our Afghani allies and brothers-in-arms as weakness and not simply apathy and indifference to yet another non-European people abandoned by America after tiring of war.
In fact, America continues to support its European allies even as it turns it back on embattled peoples across South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa as American military support collapses under intensifying domestic pressures of unpopular “forever wars.” So when Russia took aim at Ukraine, America mustered up the resolve to wage another proxy war, albeit with no American boots on the ground (and only a few bootless mercenaries to contribute to the fight), or as Russian president Vladimir Putin sarcastically observed, a newfound willingness “to fight to the last Ukrainian.”
In the Arctic, America has found a way to extend its anti-Russia crusade for defeating Putin in Ukraine by linkage to Arctic cooperation under Russia’s term (2021-23) as rotating chair of the council. I’ve written (and criticized) extensively this surreal breach of tradition, after 30 years of sustained East-West cooperation in the Far North from the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) through the 1996 establishment and subsequent maturation of the Arctic Council.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, America united with the Arctic Council’s six other democratic Arctic states – at the time, five being NATO members (Canada, Iceland, Denmark/Greenland, and Norway in addition to the US) and two formerly neutral states (Sweden and Finland) closely aligned with NATO through the Partnership for Peace, and now fully accessioned NATO members). This unity was manifested in an unprecedented and ill-conceived “pause” on Arctic Council cooperation, effectively boycotting Russia’s term as chair, regardless of the consequence to Arctic cooperation on such important issues as climate change and environmental protection.
While the Arctic Council includes six permanent participants with regional Indigenous organizations in a close consultative relationship, they were all ignored and none consulted in advance of the boycott. Once again, as we saw in Afghanistan, America simply turned its back on diverse tribal peoples while working feverishly to unite its European friends. Thus it undermined Arctic cooperation not only with Russia, a fundamental goal of Arctic policy since the Cold War, but with its indigenous peoples – revealing a worrisome shift toward Westphalian values, and away from its prior commitment to East-West and state-tribe cooperation and inclusion.
—Barry Zellen is a former Yellowknife resident who is now an independent scholar specializing in Arctic geopolitics.
