Between national security, trade routes and submarine warfare, the Arctic becomes the new global strategic front. The United States, China and Russia are competing for dominance in the North.
Donald Trump confirms he wants it Greenland and that he will soon get it, “by hook or by crook”. According to the president, the United States they need the Arctic territory for “national security reasons” and that the Born itself «should open the way for us to obtain it». But that is not the only empire that intends to get its hands on the area to extend geopolitical control, to manage the resources trapped within it, to put its hat on the new trade routes that the climate warming has now made it navigable.
The race for new northern routes
Washington is taking action after that already Fly And Beijing have started to take advantage of the new scenario, with decreasing sea ice drastically reducing distances between Chinese ports (such as Ningbo-Zhoushan) and European ones (Hamburg, Rotterdam, Felixstowe), to achieve a strategic advantage. The shipping company Haijie Shipping Company last fall it launched the first regular scheduled container service along the route of North Sea: a route that connects China to Western Europe in just 18 days, compared to the traditional 28 via the canal Suez. It is the most credible alternative to Belt and Road Initiativethe New Silk Road on which Beijing was counting to easily reach the Old Continent, and which instead foundered at Washington’s behest.
The world below: science and military power
Thus, today the short route is the extreme North: the China has already achieved an unprecedented result in the strategic confrontation in this area, when for the first time last summer a Chinese research submarine, the Jiaolongsailed thousands of meters beneath the Arctic ice. A technological result that goes well beyond the scientific dimension and opens up relevant scenarios not only in the commercial field, but also on a strictly level military. The American national security apparatus claims that these submarine missions represent further confirmation of Chinese expansion in the Arctic region. Throughout 2025, Beijing’s military units and research vessels were able to operate undisturbed in the waters off the coast of China.Alaska and in numbers never recorded before, as reported by the Department of Homeland Security of the United States.
Submarine warfare and technological supremacy
It is in a similar context that the United States and NATO have accelerated operations to rebalance the technological gap with China, making it an almost vital issue – of “national security” – also considering that economic competition is compounded by another growing threat: the submarine warfare. Navigation under the Arctic ice is an absolute novelty for international navies, and is based on an extremely accurate knowledge of the topography of the ocean floor and the physical conditions of the environment. According to Western military experts, China is systematically cataloging the oceans of the underwater world to build computer models capable of guiding submarines and helping them evade detection systems, playing on the abysmal depths of the oceans. As he stated Hunter Stiresnaval strategist and former consultant to the Secretary of the Navy, “China deploys the world’s largest fleet of oceanographic vessels not because it wants to save whales.”
The Beijing-Moscow axis and the risk for the West
The analysts of Pentagon they believe that the data collected during Chinese dives in the Arctic, therefore north of Alaska and Greenland, demonstrate how these scientific explorations justified by the study of climate change are in reality military operations aimed at obtaining domination of the “world below” in an increasingly strategic quadrant for a maritime superpower. According to the admiral Samuel Paparohead of the US Indo-Pacific Command, the ultimate goal of China’s strategy is to “end American submarine dominance.” To help Beijing reach this goal, there is a third wheel: the Russia. The Kremlin maintains a significant technological advantage thanks to a fleet of over forty icebreakeragainst the much smaller numbers of China and the United States, and has already opened up to structured cooperation with Beijing in the Far North.
The Arctic is no longer a two-person game
Nonetheless, even if the growing Chinese presence in the Arctic today seems to favor Russia, in the medium to long term this could turn into a problem for Moscow. Since Cold Warthe Arctic has been a remote haven for much of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, credibly threatened only by the United States. Now it’s no longer a two-person game. The Chinese navy could soon sail from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic, bypassing more easily controllable routes such as Panama or South Africa. For NATO and the United States it means that the threat in the Pacific is already present and very real.
