The United States Is Not Ready for the Arctic Age

Rana Foroohar's new book ‘Sea Change’ argues the United States is badly unprepared for Arctic competition even as melting ice opens access to shipping lanes, fisheries, energy, minerals, and seafloor cable routes potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The review notes Trump wrote ‘WE DON'T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!’ on TruthSocial in late August while announcing new tariffs on Canadian exports, even though the US depends on Canada for roughly 4 million barrels of crude oil daily plus electricity, aluminum, and auto parts.

The review points out that Trump's Arctic moves, including talk of annexing Greenland and ordering 11 icebreakers built via no-bid contracts after a golf game, undercut the independence they're meant to project. Those icebreakers, the piece notes, are being built by a Finnish shipbuilder owned by a British company with Canadian roots, meaning the vessel meant to assert American self-sufficiency can't be built without the very neighbor being antagonized.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.