By John Conger & Erin Sikorsky
The inaugural edition of the Journal of Arctic and Climate Security Studies, a new publication from the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, features the following article from CCS leadership:
Climate Change Has Awakened the Polar Dragon
By John Conger & Erin Sikorsky
While the Arctic has long been a strategic domain, with Cold War superpowers competing across the frozen pole, climate change’s thawing of the icecaps is inviting new activity and interest in the High North. For over a decade now, China has recognized the impacts of climate change as a national security challenge – and opportunity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its evolving approach to the Arctic. Put another way, China perceives the increasingly accessible Arctic to be a “near-China region” over which it plans to exert influence, a dynamic that only accelerates as climate change makes the Arctic more accessible and less remote. For the United States, these developments take on even more urgency when viewed in the context of the broader US competition with China, as well as the deepening relationship between China and Russia.
Read the full article and the rest of the Journal here.
