CHACRCRITIQUE APRIL 2026
#19
FROZEN FOOTSTEPS WORTHY OF RETRACING
Published by Profile Books, Hardback, £22, 291 pages, ISBN: 9781805229124
TITLE Polar War: Submarines, Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic AUTHOR Kenneth R. Rosen REVIEWER Professor Andrew Stewart, Head of Conflict Research, CHACR
In March 2022, the then Conservative Government published a policy paper setting out a proposed British approach to the Arctic region. Four years before, a specially convened Defence SubCommittee had published the results of a long-running inquiry warning about the potential consequences of a lack of investment (or even interest) in what was more generally referred to as ‘the High North’.1 This new document was intended to guide Defence efforts over a 10-year period, including long-term capability decisions. Noting that Russia had “increasingly militarised its Arctic territory” and China also had ramped up investment and activity, it concluded with the observation that the “era of Arctic exceptionalism is ending”.2 This has proven foresightful although, at least in part, for reasons that nobody just a few years ago could have anticipated. Instead of Russian military adventurism, it has been an increasingly erratic and bellicose American leadership that appears to pose the greatest threat to the regional status quo. So much so that, less than five years later, Parliament has once again turned its eye to the region with the Defence Committee recently announcing a new inquiry.3 Examining current and emerging regional threats and Britain’s defence and security interests, the focus now lies with if the correct strategies, capabilities and alliances exist to respond to an increasingly complex strategic environment. As the committee members get underway with their work, they would do well to read Kenneth Rosen’s recently published book. With its excellent research, vivid story-telling and compelling argument, Polar War: Submarines, Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic offers a timely reminder of the Arctic’s increasingly vital – and contested – position in the global security system. Yet, it is much more than simply an attempt to make sense of President Donald Trump’s
POLAR WAR // CHACR CRITIQUE
fascination with Greenland.4 It begins with what appears one of the world’s friendliest territorial disputes, dubbed ‘the Whiskey War’, which was contested by fellow NATO members Denmark and Canada through and beyond the Cold War. It revolved around ownership of the Hans Island, “a spit of land – a large rock really, slightly longer than a half mile”, north of Baffin Bay and on which nobody is recorded as ever having lived permanently. ‘Hostilities’ were restricted to both sides periodically replacing one another’s flags and bottles of aquavit with Canadian Club whiskey. With neither side wanting to give the appearance of yielding sovereignty, what the author terms as ‘polar madness’ continued until June 2022 when a settlement was agreed in which the island was divided between the two creating the first and only Canadian-Danish land border.5 There are some threads which run throughout. One – increasingly put forward by other writers – is that, despite the apparent evidence of recent events elsewhere, in the Arctic the United States has surrendered military supremacy to Russia
The inquiry report was published in August 2018 as ‘On Thin Ice: UK Defence in the Arctic’, 15 August 2018, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/ cmselect/cmdfence/388/38802.htm. For an explanation of this ‘elastic’ concept’s origins, see Odd Gunnar Skagestad, ‘The ‘High North’: An Elastic Concept in Norwegian Arctic Policy’, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, FNI Report 10/2010, 1-4, https://www.fni.no/publications/the-high-north-anelastic-concept-in-norwegian-arctic-policy
1
‘The UK’s Defence Contribution in the High North’, 5, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uksdefence-contribution-in-the-high-north
2
‘New inquiry: Defence in the High North’, 28 January 2026, https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/24/ defence-committee/news/211600/new-inquiry-defence-inthe-high-north
3
The author’s foreword is dated September 2025, before the most virulent of the threats made by the White House, but it still is able to reference an “egregious campaign to ‘get’ and ‘secure’” the world’s largest island; Rosen, Polar War, 1.
4
Rosen, Polar War, 6. For details on the Hans Island Peace Treaty, see https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2022/06/ the-hans-island-peace-agreement-between-canada-denmarkand-greenland
5