Aboard an icebreaker, a writer got a closer look at the Arctic's 'Sea Change'

Rana Foroohar reports from the USS Healy (pictured above) in Sea Change. Crown hide caption Crown As polar ice melts in the Arctic, shipping lanes are opening up, making the region a new zone of superpower competition. Writer Rana Foroohar got an up-close look aboard the USS Healy, a Coast Guard icebreaker. She says that traversing the North Pole by ship — once a "largely conceptual" route — is now becoming a "real possibility" for two or three weeks a year. "If you are taking one of these Arctic routes, you can save as much as 40% of the time it would take you to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and depending on the price of oil, that's a heck of a lot of money," she says. "China and Russia together are clearly trying to make the top of the world an area over which they have the most interest." In her new book, Sea Change: America's New Great Game in the Arctic Circle, Foroohar makes the case that the "High North" may become as critical to world shipping as the Suez or Panama canals. But she also notes that beneath the Arctic waters are large deposits of oil, natural gas and rare earth minerals, as well as underwater cables, which carry a large part of the world's intercontine...