Kenneth Rosen, journalist and author of Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic, joined Susan J. Demas on First Draft to discuss the geopolitical crossroads of climate change and national security.
And this book comes at a time when were seeing the Trump Administration ramping up its own threats to the region, mainly Greenland. Rosen explains what Trump doesn’t understand about the access and the history behind it. “There have been several opportunities in the past that the U.S. failed to follow through with as far as getting Greenland as an American territory, in part because the Kingdom of Denmark just wouldn’t have it. … They have no interest in letting it go, but the U.S. has had historically great access to it.”
So what role should the U.S. have in the Arctic? Rosen says we could look at “building out surveillance operations in Northern Greenland to support our partners in the U.K. and the channel gap that oftentimes Russian submarines travel through, but is now not quite surveilled as it should be. So I think that there’s an opportunity to put a leverage or cudgel against Russia and China in the Arctic more broadly.”
Pick up a copy of Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic to get a deeper dive into the debates and discussions about the Arctic region. And watch more of Kenneth Rosen’s insights on First Draft right here on Lincoln Square.
