“Polar War”
By Kenneth R. Rosen; Simon & Schuster, 2026; 318 pages; $29.
“The arctic is the only place that, in and of itself as an environment, can be weaponized,” an anonymous Department of Defense analyst and scientist tells Kenneth Rosen in his book “Polar War.”
“How?” they continue. “By virtue of its physical location, its position with respect to the sun, its magnetic properties and its ability to project a disproportionate effect outside the arctic (from) within the arctic.”
“Polar War” is Rosen’s examination of the strategic challenges facing the world as the Arctic warms and nations along its icy edges and throughout the world turn their economic attentions and military interests towards the planet’s northernmost reaches.
It’s a region abundant with natural resources rapidly becoming more accessible as sea ice melts, and where increasing opportunities for the movement of ships through now open waters provide ways for governments to enter and militarize what former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev once envisioned as a “zone of peace.”
The picture Rosen paints is grim. A resurgent Russia has been rapidly expanding its northern fleet while building bases and airstrips across the entirety of its arctic rim. Its goal, he explains, is full dominance over the entire Arctic.
China, often in alliance with Russia, is probing the region both militarily and economically.
Western Arctic countries, meanwhile, are being caught flat footed, having largely overlooked their northern lands and shores since the end of the Cold War.
Rosen’s book is the result of several years spent traveling across the Western Arctic, often embedded with the military forces of countries playing catch up from a position so far behind current necessity that it will require decades to match the capacity of Russia’s present power, much less counter what the rogue nation will be capable of by the time other countries reach par with its current status.
(A brief note here: Owing to conflicting definitions of the geographic meaning of Arctic, Rosen opts not to capitalize it, calling it arctic instead. In keeping with my own longstanding practice, I will capitalize it here when referring to the region, but not when discussing arctic conditions.)
Despite its alarming title, “Polar War” is not a predictive work about an unavoidable oncoming war across the Arctic. Rosen is however focused on its very real possibility, and what needs to be done to prevent such an outcome.
Thus the book works as a travelogue as much as a discussion of military options and strategies. Through substantial legwork he visits Greenland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Alaska among other stops. Curiously all but absent is Canada, where an ongoing dispute simmers over whether the Northwest Passage is sovereign territory or an international shipping lane, a debate with significant ramifications for arctic security concerns.
In Greenland he finds a semi-independent state both dependent on its nominal owner Denmark and seeking to break free. This makes it a political wildcard, since its interests could tilt it either towards Russia or keep it aligned with the West.
Of the three Scandinavian countries that cross the Arctic Circle, only Norway has kept a strong presence in its north since the Soviet Union collapsed and global tensions came to what we now know was a disappointingly brief cooling.
After 1991, Finland and Sweden looked south to where the overwhelming majority of their populations live, and are only now returning to the area. The Finns feel especially vulnerable due to their lengthy border with Russia, memories of the brutal Soviet invasion they repelled in 1940 (launching a thousand memes eight decades later), and Moscow’s ongoing and thus far unsuccessful effort at annexing Ukraine.
Both countries, which remained intentionally aloof throughout the Cold War, have now joined NATO for their own protection. All three Scandinavian nations have substantially increased defense spending.
More than a third of the book is centered in Alaska, and America factors in elsewhere as well. Rosen finds our country desperately wanting when it comes to preparations for countering geopolitical challenges in the Arctic.
For starters, Russia possesses roughly 40 icebreakers now active in polar seas. The United States has three icebreakers, only one of them, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, operating in the Arctic. The ship is aging, limited in its abilities and prone to mechanical failures. Recent legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump aims at building 17 more, but as officials tell Rosen, it will be 15 years before they are fully operational. Meanwhile Russia’s fleet continues to expand.
Rosen devotes a lengthy section of the book to the Bering Sea, discussing how 100 year weather events are now becoming more frequent owing to changing climate conditions, stressing the Coast Guard beyond its abilities (an entire chapter covers Typhoon Merbok, which struck and devastated Alaska’s western coast in 2022, but the book was off to print before the even more calamitous Typhoon Halong slammed the same shores last fall).
From there he travels to Toolik Station far up the Dalton Highway, where critical climate research imperative to arctic defense is performed. Then it’s off to Delta Junction and neighboring Fort Greely, where soldiers are trained for arctic warfare, but service members rotate in and out frequently enough to hamper institutional memory.
This region is where a Chinese spy balloon famously floated through the airspace in 2023, exposing America’s vulnerabilities to unarmed northern incursions.
Rosen critiques congressional underfunding of the Untied States Coast Guard, and finds the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) unprepared for confronting Arctic threats.
Slowly America is waking up, he states, but there’s a long road ahead. How the mercurial Trump Administration will approach arctic threats remains to be seen.
“We are an arctic nation that doesn’t know how to be an arctic nation,” a Coast Guard captain tells Rosen. The author proposes a list of steps for improving America’s defensive position in a dicey part of the world where, he documents, conflicts are growing more frequent. Whether his warnings and advice are heeded is the question “Polar War” is unable to answer.
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