Geopoliticsnorth

The Strategic Theatre of the High North Geography doesn’t negotiate. Norway sits at the top of Europe, sharing a 198-kilometre land border with Russia and overseeing enormous maritime zones above

In the geopolitics of the High North, few things have drawn as much attention as China’s methodical push to define itself as a “Near-Arctic State.” The phrase got its formal

In January 2018, China’s State Council Information Office released a white paper that planted a phrase squarely in the middle of Arctic governance debates: “Near-Arctic State.” The document, China’s Arctic

Early in 2018, China’s State Council Information Office dropped a white paper called China’s Arctic Policy. It did something quietly audacious. It declared the country a “Near-Arctic State.” The phrase

When Beijing dropped its first White Paper on Arctic Policy in January 2018, one phrase jumped off the page. “Near-Arctic state.” The words sat awkwardly. They had no anchor in

The Arctic is warming at nearly four times the global average. That figure gets cited so often it risks becoming wallpaper, but it’s worth pausing over: a rate of change

The Arctic stopped being a silent periphery some time ago. As summer ice retreats and great powers reposition their strategic assets, the question of who actually controls the northernmost reaches

The Arctic is not a blank slate. It never was. Overlapping claims, centuries of seasonal use, and the clunky machinery of modern treaty law all converge on a frozen map

The Kvanefjeld plateau in southern Greenland is a windswept expanse of dark rock and sparse vegetation. Beneath it lies one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits of rare earth elements,

Greenland sits under a lid of ice, vast and mostly silent. But beneath that ancient shield, the ground tells a different story—one of rare earth elements that modern economies can’t