In the Arctic, Washington and Brussels are competing for control of Greenland, trade routes, and resources – even as they remain NATO allies
This September, the Arctic quietly widened the rift between presumed transatlantic allies. Brussels’ attempts to mitigate growing US influence in the region have so far been unsystematic but intense. The Arctic Summit held in Finnish Lapland and the subsequent EU-Canada talks, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed granting Ottawa associate member status, should be viewed in the context of the new agreement between the US and Greenland.
The EU is using its usual competitive methods in the polar race, plunging into a de facto confrontation with the US. An alternative to this could have been attempts to find its own legitimate place among the major players; however, the window of opportunity for such initiatives has closed, which leaves the space no alternatives other than the prospects of a hybrid war in which Brussels and Washington are rivals.
The EU’s familiar patterns beyond the Arctic Circle
Twelve EU countries and the bloc’s leadership attended the Arctic Summit in Lapland this month, where they agreed upon a radical securitization of polar policy, officially recognizing the region as a “geopolitical hotspot.”
To understand the specifics of the bloc’s Arctic ambitions, it’s important to note that the union’s members lack any significant infrastructure of their own on the polar map. In the wake of Brexit, the EU no longer has its own sovereign Arctic borders directly connected to the Arctic Ocean. Norway and Iceland remain outside the union, Greenland remains an autonomous Danish overseas territory, and Finland and Sweden are geographically cut off from the ocean. Moreover, the EU as a single bloc completely lacks its own Arctic icebreaker fleet – the few national vessels of the Scandinavian countries are incapable of ensuring true strategic dominance.
Lacking either geographical rights or military hardware, Brussels has reduced its Arctic strategy solely to environmental concerns, climate monitoring, and the protection of indigenous peoples. In 2008, the EU formally designated the Arctic as a zone of its strategic interests, and in 2016 and 2021, key EU Arctic strategies were adopted.
This approach began to change in 2022–2025, when, against the backdrop of a rapidly shifting geopolitical situation in the world, US claims to Greenland triggered the performative landing of European troops on the island. The Arctic Summit in Rovaniemi this month, which was informal in nature, confirmed the shift in the focus of the EU’s interests.
The final agreement formalized the shift from an environmental agenda to a “hard power” strategy: the parties pledged to sharply increase investment in military mobility, satellite surveillance, and cross-border infrastructure in the north, as well as coordinate the blocking of Russia’s “shadow fleet” under the pretext of environmental protection. These decisions, reinforced by the leaders’ demonstrative visit to the Finnish Lapland Air Wing military airbase, formed the basis of the new EU Arctic Strategy, which Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas promised to present in October 2026.
After the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen went on to invite Canada to become an associate member of the EU in the context of trade and tariff disagreements between Ottawa and Washington. The mere suggestion of such an alliance has maximized the politicization of the Arctic agenda, making the outcome highly unpredictable.
It’s worth noting that Brussels’ aspirations for leadership are always specific. It’s enough to recall Francois Duchene’s concepts of “civic” power and Jan Manners’ idea of “normative” power, which explain that Brussels projects its influence on the international stage through its economic model, diplomacy, and the export of legal and ethical standards. This approach has been further developed by Mark Leonard, who called the EU an expanding “invisible empire” and argued that the EU’s influence is based on the mechanism of attracting and integrating its neighbors, and Ana Bradford, who described the phenomenon of the “Brussels effect” – a mechanism by which the EU’s vast internal market allows it to unilaterally dictate regulatory rules to transnational corporations and governments around the world.
It is precisely in this vein that we should understand what is happening. Brussels is employing its standard, decades-old methods of supranational control. Unable to compete in the realm of real icebreaker technology and innovative logistics, the EU is attempting to redirect the race to its familiar channel of bureaucratic regulations, climate quotas, and virtual budget allocations, all while cloaking it in the most anti-Russian, defensive rhetoric possible.
Its urgent proposal to pursue a “unique” alliance with Canada is a classic attempt at normatively co-opting another country’s sovereignty. Brussels seeks to act as an “environmental and technological sponsor” and thus gain access to Canadian resources, thereby legitimizing its presence in the high north through the use of foreign geography.
It is for this reason that seemingly unrelated countries, including some of Moscow’s most committed foes, were invited to the summit in Lapland: a crowd had to be assembled to give the story a larger scope. It included Mediterranean Greece and Black Sea Romania, as well as the Baltic states, which were simply counting on participating in the new EU “polar” grants.
Why doesn’t this work?
Until recently, European activity has served as a mere backdrop for US policy in the Arctic. Washington has spent decades building an Arctic empire of steel, radar arrays, and military bases, relying on a strategy of strict deterrence. In Alaska, the US has deployed a powerful air force hub of fifth-generation F-35 and F-22 fighter jets, and American nuclear submarines have learned to maneuver under the ice. In September 2026, the White House and Ottawa began the practical phase of deploying Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radars (A-OTHR) as part of the modernization of NORAD, which will allow US command to monitor airspace all the way to the Arctic Circle in real time.
At the same time, Washington is accelerating the elimination of its main vulnerability – its backlog of icebreakers: the Bollinger shipyards are assembling the first heavy polar ship in half a century, the USCGC Polar Sentinel. Washington’s plans by 2030 include the launch of two more heavy icebreakers and the construction of the deep-water military port of Nome near the Bering Strait. Furthermore, active lobbying is underway to promote the concept of “freedom of navigation” to allow unimpeded passage through the Northwest Passage, significantly shortening the sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
The US’s greatest geopolitical victory, however, was the signing of a trilateral agreement with Denmark and Greenland in September. Under the agreement, the Pentagon takes permanent military control of Greenland’s security, urgently reopening the bases in Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig and expanding and modernizing the Pituffik air force base in the north. This document imposed a direct veto on major investments by non-NATO and non-European countries, turning the island into a closed American bastion and blocking European businesses from accessing local rare earth metals.
In the European press, attitudes toward the trilateral defense agreement range from irony to muted relief, but the key leitmotif is the thesis of Donald Trump’s “defeat” and concessions. However, an analysis of the benefits to both sides reveals something else. The United States, having expanded its defense rights on the island and gained complete control over its economic resources, skillfully left any social obligations outside the agreement.
American strategists magnanimously left the obligation to provide benefits, subsidies, and social guarantees for the local Greenlandic population of fewer than 60,000 people out of the state budget, as it was the “sovereign right” of Copenhagen. Washington pocketed all the geostrategic and raw material dividends while shifting the maintenance of the depressed territory to weakening European taxpayers. It turns out that Trump’s European allies were willing to sign what he wanted, while publicly declaring that they had won.
This episode aptly characterizes the nature of the escalating standoff between the allies, in which the US, with its aggressiveness, puts the Europeans on the defensive, leaving them unable to maintain their positions. What makes this standoff unique is that there is no direct military clash between the US and the EU in the Arctic – they ostensibly remain NATO allies facing Russia and China. However, the region has de facto become a zone of intense geoeconomic espionage, trade wars, competition for ports, and the monopolization of polar resources, with the US securing military control of Greenland and the EU attempting to maintain its economic position through Canada and the Scandinavian countries. Interesting developments in the struggle for the Northwest Passage are likely to emerge.
The EU is extremely vulnerable in this standoff. This is due to its geographic isolation, a complete lack of hard power instruments, and a critical defense dependence on its main competitor. The attempt by European “hawks” to turn Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty into a political shield and send symbolic contingents to Greenland in January turned out to be a bluff, which Donald Trump simply ignored, blackmailing countries with the threat of 25% tariffs. In the context of harsh American neo-mercantilism, under pressure from competition with China, Anu Bradford’s vaunted “Brussels effect” has collapsed: by establishing strict “green” standards at the Lapland summit, Europe had hoped to regulate the polar market. But the US, acting on the principle of “like it or not,” is hijacking the agenda, proving that in this polar race, Brussels’ old models simply will not work.
Prospects and Alternatives: Effects for Russia and China
As political scientist and Valdai Club program director Timofey Bordachev rightly notes, historical experience shows that conflicts among the Western elites have typically led to the large-scale restructuring of the international order, helping to keep the global system under the control of a narrow group of states. However, today, in the changed historical context, the results of the polar confrontation between Washington and Brussels are completely unpredictable. On the world stage, the number of sovereign players has radically expanded, and the West’s influence over them is either completely absent or negligible.
The growing transatlantic rift is opening up crucial strategic advantages for the Arctic’s major players – Moscow and Beijing. Russia is systematically developing the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a key, protected, year-round global artery. While Washington is still attempting to complete its first heavy icebreaker in half a century, Russia possesses the world’s only and absolutely unparalleled nuclear icebreaker fleet.
For China, Brussels’ polar impasse serves as a direct call to action. Under American pressure, Beijing is pushing forward with its “Ice Silk Road” doctrine. Chinese businesses are freely redirecting investments into Russia’s Arctic LNG megaprojects, bypassing vulnerable southern routes. The EU states, having maneuvered but failed to escape American traps, are leaving the region with nothing, cementing the absolute geopolitical dominance of Moscow and Beijing in the ice.
