Who Will Secure the Arctic’s Commanding Heights?

The North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled US aircraft to intercept four Russian military aircraft near Alaska in September 2025. A month earlier, the US Coast Guard, Alaskan Command, and US Northern Command were monitoring five Chinese research vessels active in the Bering Sea. And a year prior, Chinese and Russian strategic bombers conducted their first joint patrol of the Chukchi and Bering Seas and the North Pacific Ocean.

Welcome to the 21st-century Arctic—a region experiencing a geostrategic reawakening amid growing tensions between the United States and Russia and China.

Warming four times faster than the global average, the Arctic is undergoing a profound transition economically, militarily, and environmentally. It is composed of the world’s smallest and shallowest ocean, the Arctic Ocean, which is surrounded by five coastal states—Canada, Norway, the United States, the Kingdom of Denmark (Greenland), and Russia—the last of these representing over 51 percent of all Arctic coastline. Although not situated on the Arctic Ocean, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland are also considered Arctic nations because they lie within the Arctic Circle. And increasingly, non-Arctic states such as China seek a larger presence in the region and a more active role in shaping its future. Beijing has professed itself a “near-Arctic state” (despite being 900 miles from the Arctic Circle), and Chinese officials describe the polar regions (the Arctic and Antarctica) as the “new commanding heights” for global military competition.

A nation that can deter or defend against over-the-horizon air and maritime threats has an enormous advantage during a global conflict.

Vladimir Lenin defined commanding heights in 1922 as the industrial sectors that the state must control to ensure future national strength. Chinese diplomats see the Arctic as a commanding height because the region provides a “‘three continents and two oceans’ geographical advantage” over the Northern Hemisphere. The region shortens distances across the Northern Hemisphere for aircraft, maritime vessels, undersea cables, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its geography is optimal for polar-orbital satellite launches, which aid global navigation and improve intelligence gathering. It’s also a useful location for over-the-horizon early-warning radar systems, which can detect airborne threats and support defensive operations. A nation that can deter or defend against over-the-horizon air and maritime threats has an enormous advantage during a global conflict.

Economically, the Arctic holds some of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals, oil and gas, and fishing resources. As the polar ice cap recedes, the region offers alternative maritime routes, such as the Northern Sea Route (NSR) across the Russian Arctic and, one day, the Transpolar Sea Route, which traverses the central Arctic Ocean. The power that can access and harness these considerable resources, particularly those located on the seabed, will have an enormous advantage in the 21st century.

America’s adversaries understand the area’s strategic value more than Washington. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has long viewed the Arctic as not only critical to the country’s future economic and military survival but a key pillar of the Kremlin’s great-power historical narrative. Russia’s economic ambitions in the far north center around liquid natural gas (LNG) exports and the NSR’s development, which, in Putin’s words, should one day become the next Suez Canal. Unsurprisingly, many of Russia’s recent economic proposals to the White House focus on future Arctic wealth, as Moscow does not have the ability to fully exploit the region’s economic commanding heights on its own.

Over the past 15 years, Moscow has refurbished many of its Soviet-era Arctic bases to support increased economic activity and strengthen the defenses of its nuclear strike capabilities.

But perhaps most importantly for Russia’s future security, the country’s nuclear submarine fleet is located in the Arctic on the far-northwestern Kola Peninsula. The region also serves as the test location for its new nuclear and exotic missiles, such as the nuclear-powered Burevestnik and the hypersonic Tsirkon. Over the past 15 years, Moscow has refurbished many of its Soviet-era Arctic bases to support increased economic activity and strengthen the defenses of its nuclear strike capabilities.

As Russia attempts to secure control of the Arctic, China is harnessing its dual-use economic and scientific capabilities and leveraging its “unlimited partnership” with Moscow to achieve greater control in the region. Xi Jinping has declared that China will become a “polar great power” by 2030. It has been advancing this goal under the guise of scientific research—particularly deep-sea exploration using sonar technology, hydrographic mapping, and acoustic seabed modeling. Beijing has five icebreakers, four of which were indigenously built. Their newest icebreaker, the Tan Suo San Hao, is designed for year-round operations in icy waters and deep-sea activities with a manned submersible. Chinese scientists on the Tan Suo San Hao were the first to explore the eastern part of the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater volcanic ridge in the Arctic Ocean marked by overlapping claims from Russia, Canada, and the Kingdom of Denmark to extend their respective extended continental shelves. The Tan Suo San Hao was in the northern Bering Sea near Alaska alongside four other Chinese icebreaking research vessels in 2025, the first time that China has simultaneously operated five such vessels in the Arctic, which ran concurrent to an annual Sino-Russian naval exercise near the Aleutian Islands.

Not since the Qing Dynasty have the Chinese been so present in the Russian Far East.

Yet for China to achieve its desired great polar power status, Russia must continue to cede territorial and economic access to Beijing across Russia’s far north. Moscow has offered China concessional stakes in its Western-sanctioned Arctic LNG projects. More recently, the Chinese shipping firm Newnew Shipping Line has pledged over $2 billion to develop port infrastructure in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk to facilitate east–west trade through the NSR. In 2023, Russia granted Beijing unprecedented commercial access to its largest port in the Far East, Vladivostok, which will serve as a domestic port for Chinese goods and a Chinese gateway to the Arctic. Not since the Qing Dynasty have the Chinese been so present in the Russian Far East.

And in a new form of cooperation, the Russian Federal Security Service and the Chinese Coast Guard are conducting joint operations along the NSR as the Kremlin increasingly relies on China’s global navigation satellite system, BeiDou, rather than its indigenous Global Navigation Satellite System.

US intelligence officials predict this cooperation will only grow. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in its March 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, noted that Russia and China will “expand combined bomber patrols and naval operations in the Arctic” as Beijing seeks access to the Arctic’s natural resources and more “efficient and direct routes to Russia and other Northern Hemisphere areas.”

The United States has much to protect in the Arctic, as American security and economic interests stretch “from Maine in the North Atlantic across the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait and Alaska in the North Pacific to the southern tip of the Aleutian Island chain,” according to the Pentagon’s most recent strategy in the region. Washington’s responsibility to protect both the western and eastern approaches to the Arctic puts the Trump administration in the unenviable position of playing catch-up with Russia and China.

Although numerous US strategies have been written over the past 15 years, in reality, little Arctic capability has been delivered. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the first US heavy-icebreaker contract was awarded. Unfortunately, the earliest this new icebreaker will be in service is 2030, and it must serve both poles. In comparison, the Chinese constructed their most recent icebreaking research vessel in just 10 months. The second Trump administration directed, and Congress appropriated in 2025, the acquisition of up to 17 icebreakers of varying types at a cost of more than $8.5 billion. In November 2025, an agreement was signed to construct 11 icebreakers for the US fleet with assistance from Finland and Canada by the end of the current Trump administration. This is a long-overdue investment in America’s ability to defend and protect its Arctic exclusive economic zone and territorial waters.

President Trump has repeatedly remarked that to ensure its national security, the United States “needs” to annex Greenland and incorporate Canada to meet the security challenges posed by Russia and China in the Arctic. These comments were very unwelcome by the citizens of Canada, Greenland, and Denmark, and eroded trust with these US allies. But the president’s remarks also spurred both Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark to substantially invest in and improve their own Arctic security, which, in turn, strengthens both America’s Arctic defenses and NATO’s collective defense posture. The Canadian government announced in 2022 a $38.6 billion package to modernize its over-the-horizon radar and space-based surveillance systems. The package will also fund new satellite ground stations and maritime sensors and create new northern operational support hubs. The Kingdom of Denmark has announced a $2 billion Arctic-security package that includes new maritime vessels, long-range drones, additional satellite capacity, a new Arctic special-forces unit, and an undersea cable connecting Greenland to Denmark. With these new security packages and Finland and Sweden’s membership in NATO, the US homeland will be more secure.

A sustainable Arctic critical-minerals initiative would diversify Western supply chains.

While new icebreakers, updated maritime sensors, and the modernization of America’s missile defense architecture through the Golden Dome are positive steps, the United States still lacks its own long-term Arctic security package. On the economic side, the US also lacks a long-term, bipartisan economic investment plan for the region, particularly in critical minerals. Although some of the world’s largest deposits of iron ore, zinc, titanium, and palladium are located in the Arctic, there is insufficient infrastructure to access, mine, refine, and transport them. A sustainable Arctic critical-minerals initiative would diversify Western supply chains. Indigenous and northern communities would also benefit from improved infrastructure and economic opportunities.

The United States and its Arctic allies have much to do. There is a growing risk that China may increasingly secure the region in the future, particularly in space and on the Arctic seabed, which it has identified as “new strategic frontiers.” The Russian government may be unable, or unwilling, to prevent the growth of China’s military and economic presence in the region, and the US and its allies may not have sufficient resources to detect, deter, and defend against Chinese and Russian economic, military, or hybrid activities. Thankfully, this future is not yet inevitable. To avoid it, the US must work purposefully to increase its security presence in the region and ensure the Arctic’s advantage remains in Western hands.

Heather A. Conley is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on transatlantic security, Sino-Russian cooperation, and geopolitics in Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic.