CDR SALAMANDER: Opportunity in the High North.

Before the Russo-Ukrainian War kicked off in February, on the Top-5 lists of any navalist worth their salt was the Arctic. If you are an Atlanticist/NATO type, it was in your Top-3.

Sea lanes/SLOC, resource access, resource protection, environmental protection and monitoring, and just good old sound military planning kept the Arctic on everyone’s mind. The fact that especially in the USA there was no small bit of “out of sight out of mind” neglect, specifically with our icebreaking capabilities, brought as much concern. The non-Arctic nation of China deciding she wanted to be a player only made it even more important that policy makers wake up.

When you look at the playing board in the Arctic, the nations who have square-footage in the game are the USA, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Russia. You can even throw in the island nation of the United Kingdom as she is the dominate North Atlantic power outside the USA and any problem north of her can get existential real fast.

Note the outlier in this list? Yes, Russia.

A must-read for anyone interested in naval issues.