A Luncheon and Discussion: “Is War Coming to the Arctic ?” with Dr. Thomas Rotnem

Climate change is thinning the Arctic ice, promising to create a northwest passage for international trade and reigniting the competition with Russia, China, and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources. The historic ties of Russia and China and their Arctic ambitions reveal that the Arctic is likely to be an arena for future strategic competition. Furthermore, Greenland has become a focus of the U.S. and other countries because of its strategic location as well as its mineral wealth. 

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has temporarily bolstered the West’s position in the Arctic, as previously neutral Finland and Sweden joined NATO. Finland’s accession into NATO not only increased the NATO-Russia land boarder by over 650 percent, and moved the defense alliance a mere 250 miles from St. Petersburg, but it also contributed to creating a divided Arctic, where nearly half belongs to NATO while the remaining half is Russian territory. 

Russia already operates a third more Arctic military bases than the U.S. and its NATO allies. Now Putin is moving soldiers, icebreakers, warships, and submarines, many of them with nuclear capabilities, to the region, as well as conducting Arctic drills that test hypersonic missiles capable of evading American defense. 

Dr. Thomas Rotnem, Associate Director, KSU

Thomas Rotnem is the Associate Director of the School of Government and International Affairs, and Professor of Political Science at Kennesaw State University (KSU). His area of expertise is Comparative Politics, with a specialization in Russian domestic and foreign politics. At KSU, he teaches courses on Comparison Politics, Russian Politics and Culture, Russian Foreign Policy Comparative Democratization, Arctic Policy, and Politics and Security in a Changing Environment. 

For a little over a decade, he’s been studying and writing about Russia’s policy interests in its Arctic realm, as well as its evolving relationship with China in the region. He has received grants or fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, IREX, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of State, the National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright Organization (for lectureships or scholarships in the Russian Federation and Latvia). Most recently, he has worked as a co-principle investigator on a NSF Grant studying climate change’s impact upon economies in Greenland and Iceland.