Arctic Worries: Melting Ice, and a Russia-China Partnership

DEEP DIVE – As more Arctic ice melts and more avenues for navigation and commerce open up at the top of the world, there’s a geopolitical competition underway for Arctic dominance – involving Russia, China and the U.S. And increasingly, experts fear it may lead to conflict.

“That likelihood has increased over the last five years,” Joshua Tallis, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, told The Cipher Brief. “The possibility of a conflict starting somewhere else, whether it’s the Baltic or the Black Sea, and expanding into the Arctic, I think has grown significantly over the last decade.”