War in a less and less frozen Arctic

The struggle that the three great powers of the planet, the United States, China and Russia, are maintaining throughout the planet also reaches the Arctic Ocean, whose warming has accelerated in recent years, well above the global average. The three take up positions in one of the most important geopolitical scenarios, both because it holds enormous quantities of minerals and because the rapid thaw will facilitate the permanence of routes along which trade can pass uninterruptedly during all seasons. 

The last step so far has been taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin, under whose orders construction has begun at the Bolshói Kamen shipyard near Vladivostok, the largest and most powerful nuclear super-ice maker in the world. In order to reaffirm its power, this gigantic floating city of 209 meters in length and 47.7 meters in width will be called "Rossiya" (Russia), and will be the first to permanently sail the current routes of the Arctic Ocean. Helped by the progressive disappearance of the ice layer, thanks to the undeniable global warming, the "Rossiya" will be able to break up in its navigation layers superior to four meters thick, which will suppose the opening of a navigable channel around the fifty meters wide, enough size to allow the transit of merchants of great tonnage. 

Russia, which has already had its submariners plant their flag on the Arctic seabed in order to reaffirm its claims to sovereignty, understands that the fleet of large nuclear icebreakers that it will inaugurate with the launching of the "Rossiya" in 2027, will ensure it has the capacity to direct international navigation in these waters and make its dominance a practical reality. 

The United States has long seen the play coming. That is why last summer, in the midst of some international hilarity, President Donald Trump sought to buy Greenland from Denmark, whose 2.2 million km2 make it the largest island in the world, situated halfway between America and Europe. The fact that the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Fredriksen, described the White House's claim as absurd caused Trump to cancel the official visit he had planned to make to Copenhagen, but did not make him give up his claims of greater dominance or influence over the island. 

It was precisely in April of this year, at the height of the pandemic, that the United States and the highly autonomous Greenland signed an agreement whereby Washington would invest 83 million crowns (11 million euros) in various infrastructures on the island.  The agreement, described by Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen as "the embodiment of a constructive relationship with the United States", was a shot in the arm for the Danish Parliament, which accused Washington of being an unfair ally, sowing dissent and causing divisions.

In any case, the United States does not want to be surprised. It already has a base in Thule, north-east Greenland, the only one of its kind inside the Arctic Circle, which is capable of detecting ballistic missiles, all the more useful now that the various Russian-American treaties on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons have expired. This base is complemented by another, located near Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, where Washington has just opened its first consulate on the island, and which is expected to be equipped with a renewed infrastructure. 

Like Russia's ambition to mine the Arctic seabed, the United States intends to take over the uranium, zinc, rare earths and gold that lie beneath Greenland's surface, which has been 80 per cent covered by a thick permanent ice sheet but is also melting rapidly as a result of global warming. 

This is not, by the way, the first time that the United States has tried to buy Greenland. It already tried, with an offer of 100 million gold dollars, at the end of the Second World War, long before Copenhagen granted the 57,000 Inuit who inhabit it the great autonomy they enjoy today. He was luckier in 1867, when he paid Russia $25 million for the then immense sea of ice that was Alaska, and in 1917, when he paid Denmark $60 million in exchange for the Virgin Islands, which he would turn into a famous tax haven. 

China, the other great power in discord, although its territory is very distant from these polar ice caps, proclaims itself to be a "Near Arctic State", a not at all subtle denomination, which does not hide at all its claims to have something to say in such a geopolitical scenario. Its planetary project of the New Silk Road would also have Arctic ramifications, since the disappearance of the ice barrier, until now at least during half the year, would facilitate its trade, the weapon that Beijing considers decisive to achieve and make prevail its hegemony.