NATO deploys to Greenland to keep Trump onside – POLITICO

But in practice, “the threat hasn’t changed since the Cold War,” said Friis, the professor.

The US can easily upgrade its early-warning missile radar system in Greenland, he argued, while melting ice will only boost the very marginal commercial shipping route in the Northern Sea Route near Russia — nowhere near Greenland. Icebreakers have few military uses and are easy to track, Friis added.

Chinese and Russian collaboration in the Arctic, meanwhile, will remain “largely symbolic,” said Marc Lanteigne, a political science professor and China expert at the Arctic University of Norway, as Moscow is “nervous” of Beijing’s long-term designs on the region and is unlikely to grant it extended access.

If there is a threat, it’s in the European Arctic. There, Russia’s Northern Fleet based in the Kola Peninsula includes six operational nuclear-armed submarines, according to Ståle Ulriksen, a university lecturer at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy.

Even so, Russia is “significantly outmatched” by NATO, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

Since its full-scale war against Ukraine, Moscow has lost two of the three brigades that had been stationed in the far north, with their replacements expected to take “half a decade or more” to train. Meanwhile, Norway, Germany, Denmark and the UK are all buying Boeing P-8 maritime patrol aircraft to better survey the region. Sweden and Finland both joined NATO as a result of Russia’s war, further beefing up the alliance’s Arctic muscle.