How Climate Change Is Turning the Arctic Into a Trade Pathway — Amanpour and Company

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Now, climate change is melting glacier caps in the Arctic, and as key shipping routes remain shut due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, alternatives are opening up in the Great Big North. But as great powers vie for control of the Arctic Circle, Washington is trailing behind Russia and China in maritime power. Rana Furuha, author of Sea Change, joins Walter Isaacson to [00:00:24] Speaker 2: discuss this. Thank you, Christiane and Rana Furuha. Welcome back to the show. Oh, thank you for having me. Your new book, Sea Change, talks about how a warming climate is opening up the Arctic to new sea routes, changing the geopolitical map. How does that affect the relations between Russia, China, and the United States? And what drew you to this book? Well, these are great questions. I am [00:00:52] Rana Furuha: basically posing the idea that we are entering a new great game between the U.S. and China. And that harkens back to the 19th century great game, which was between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. I think the analogy holds, and the Arctic is one of the theaters in which this new great game will play out. It's not a one and done competition. It's about decades, even, you know, maybe a century of conflict, cooperation, and buffer states, Russia, Europe, Canada, coming in and out of this larger conflict between the U.S. and China. And the reason I got interested in the Arctic is, as you say, climate change is creating these new pathways, these new commerce, transport, mining pathways. You know, you saw in September, China opening up a weekly transpolar shipping route that's helping the Chinese and the Russians avoid the Strait of Hormuz, which has now become a major choke point. You're seeing a search for rare earth minerals, natural gas, fish. You know, the Arctic is one of the few underfished areas around the world. And so this is all happening silently in America's backyard. And that's also something that was very interesting to me, because under Trump, too, you've seen talk about a Don Rowe doctrine. You know, the idea of hearkening back to James Monroe, that America is going to police its own backyard. There's going to be spheres of influence. China can have Asia. Europe is its own thing. America is going to police the northern and western hemispheres. But now you see China and Russia coming really onto the top of the world in America's backyard in a very new way. [00:02:33] Speaker 2: Well, this is pretty odd since China has no territory in the Arctic. It's not adjacent to the Arctic. They ended up declaring themselves a near Arctic state. I don't know what that means. Maybe down here in Louisiana, we're a near Arctic state. How can China decide they're going to do that? And why do they have such interests there? [00:02:52] Rana Furuha: Well, you know, just as a side note, in the Gulf, they're actually building icebreakers now, which is a new pilot project that America has going with the fins that build most of the world's icebreakers. America has only one ship, an icebreaker that is able to go regularly into the Arctic. We have a couple that are some of which are, you know, in the shop in and out. But the Russians and the Chinese together have about 60. So it is incredible how the U.S. is being kind of outclassed, outmanned in its own backyard. And, you know, I think that what's so interesting about this story is that it it illuminates what's going on in many other parts of the world. You saw China, as you say, becoming a near Arctic nation. But this is part of a two decade strategy to ring fence the global maritime industry, to control shipping, to control ports, and eventually to take the one belt, one road pathway, which goes through the old Silk Route into Southern Europe and and on into places like North and West Africa to take it up into the polar area. So in 2016, 2017, China started talking about building a polar Silk Road. And all of this is really about controlling the bricks and mortar of globalization. And that was something actually that very much drew me to this topic because we live in a digital world. You know, we hear about A.I., every other topic, you know, every story we talk about. But really, 80, 90 percent of the world's trade is still done on ships. It's still done in a very old fashioned way. And so the physical world matters. Ports matter. Choke points matter. And the Arctic is becoming a major one. [00:04:32] Speaker 2: Well, what I don't quite understand is whether Russia and China are in this together, they're cooperating on the Arctic, or they're going to be competitors. We somehow have gotten a foreign policy that has pushed Russia and China closer together, which it goes against 50 years of American foreign policy. Are they really allies now in the Arctic, or will they be competing? [00:04:54] Rana Furuha: You know, it's an interesting question. You often hear that the China-Russia relationship is fragile, that it's not based on mutuality. I would agree with that. I think that Russia is basically a vassal state to China. But China has a very strong long-term plan to control global logistics, global supply chains, and also to be energy independent. That's an important part of the relationship with Russia. Russia, if you look at the world from the top down, which, by the way, when I was on the U.S. Cutter Healy, which is the only icebreaker at the time that I wrote the book, all the maps look at the world from the top down. And you can see that Russia is over 50 percent of the territory in the Arctic. And that's very important to China. Russians and Chinese have taken, over the last five years, about 90 major bilateral meetings together. So I don't see this relationship being fragile. What I think is interesting is where the U.S., Canada, Europe, Denmark, the Nordic countries are going to end up. Under Trump, too, you've seen, frankly, a lot of squandering of goodwill capital with allies. It would have been a natural thing for the U.S., Canada, the Nordic nations, even some European nations to come together and say, look, we need rules of the road for the Arctic. We need to team up. Maybe we need to build ships together. That hasn't happened. And I think it's going to take time to really rebuild those sorts of coalitions. Meanwhile, the Russians and Chinese are shipping exponentially more gas through the Northern Sea route, which Russia is increasingly militarizing and claiming as its own territory. And the U.S. is really behind the eight ball. [00:06:31] Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that people who work in the shipyards down here tell me is that the problem is the change orders that the Pentagon is constantly ordering, and that if you're going to use the finished design, just use the finished design. Don't try to keep doing it. Have they solved that problem? [00:06:48] Rana Furuha: It's such a great problem. I mean, that goes to a much bigger topic. I get into my book into something called the peace dividend and the Last Supper. After the Cold War, there was an idea called the peace dividend that we would not really have to build an industrial military complex anymore. We wouldn't need munitions. We wouldn't need more more ships. All of that could be outsourced. We broke apart the commercial and the military. And there was a dinner actually in Washington with the big contractors called the Last Supper where they were told to consolidate. And, you know, that that's how it's going to be. The big were going to get bigger and projects were going to become fewer. Unfortunately, what happened was all the commercial industry, which is what was efficient and fast, went to Asia. Meanwhile, the U.S. got stuck with this big bloated military industrial complex that does exactly what you say. There's change orders coming in from the Navy, you know, every two years that create this kind of problem where you're spending half a billion dollars in 10 years to build a ship that's obsolete once it's in the water. Big, big challenge. I would give again, I would give Trump to a little bit of credit for saying we got to disrupt. I didn't love that you got some of the tech guys coming in and just willy nilly, you know, throwing up the chessboard. But it is very clear that we are going to have to have a more efficient system and that we're going to have to do what the Chinese do, which is integrate the commercial and the military. It's called dual use. And pretty much all technology is dual use. Chips, ships. We should be building all these things together. [00:08:21] Speaker 2: You talked about how China has geo-fenced the region. Tell me what you're talking about when you say geo-fenced. [00:08:30] Rana Furuha: So geo-economics is a term that hasn't been thought about much in the last 50 years or so. You know, in the neoliberal era, the market knows best era, post Reagan-Thatcher revolution, the idea was just let the market do its thing. You don't need the state to be involved. But China was the big exception to that. And, you know, when it came into the WTO in 2001, it did not follow those free market rules. It does have specific sectors that are ring-fenced by the state. Maritime is one of those. There are many others, clean tech, electric vehicles, lithium batteries, rare earth minerals. And the state says, look, we are going to control this industry. We are going to give it cheap loans. We're going to, you know, do all kinds of things that aren't necessarily abiding by WTO rules, but are helping us to dominate the most critical export industries. And so that idea of geo-economics is once again in vogue. And although I wouldn't want to see any kind of a, you know, Hobbesian world in which everyone is trying to do everything at home. I do think it makes sense for countries and regions in particular to think about resiliency. And I would point to the chip making industry, for example. You know, I think we all realized post-COVID, post-war in Ukraine, as there were more supply chain issues, that you don't want to have 92% of all your high-end semiconductors in one very contentious island. Maybe you want to make some in the U.S. Maybe you want to make some in Europe, some in Asia. So that's the kind of trend we're seeing in statecraft and the political economy at large. [00:10:04] Speaker 2: Looking at this whole issue of the Arctic, I'm wondering how Greenland and Trump's desire to have Greenland, was that just some one-off or does that fit in? And I want to read you something from your book, which addresses that. You said that Trump is, quote, not the first U.S. president to suggest the idea that the United States should own Greenland. The island has played a crucial role in U.S. security in the region since the Cold War, as a major military asset with air bases, radar sites, and even an uncompleted underground bunker meant to house nuclear missiles. So what should we be doing about Greenland? [00:10:42] Rana Furuha: So, you know, I've said this many times, but I think Trump often comes to the right issues in the wrong way. You know, going in and telling the Danes, we're seizing Greenland, we're going to take it over, we're going to make it another state. Not such a great idea. Breaking up NATO, probably not the way to make the Northern Atlantic more secure. But the point is that Greenland is a critical outpost. And one of the reasons that defense hawks and folks in the security community on both sides of the aisle have been concerned about the future of Greenland is that Greenlanders have said that they may want to declare independence from Denmark in the 2030s. Now, if that happens, you could see a bit of a free for all where, say, the Chinese could come in and say, well, you know what, we're happy Greenlanders to build out your infrastructure to provide you with health care in exchange for all your rare earth minerals or, you know, mining rights, natural gas rights. That's the sort of thing that the U.S. wants to get out ahead of. And so I do think raising the topic as an issue, making it clear that there is a strategic value to this island and having soft power influence is the way to go. Now, we saw Trump kind of pull back from some of his rhetoric, as he often does, and say, look, we're going to put more troops there, but we're not going to take it over. What I would love to see in 2028 and beyond when we have a new administration is America saying to all the allies that have skin in the game, not just the Arctic nations, but some of the Europeans that want to do more transit through the Arctic to avoid those choke points in the Middle East. What do what we do together? You know, how do we police this area? How do we provide a united front against Chinese and Russian growth of presence in that area? What are the rules of the road? I'd love to see America signing on to the International Convention of the Seas and really coming up with some rules around how to deal with shipping and mining, because, you know, climate and global warming is allowing us to have more presence in the Arctic. But ultimately, if we don't have some rules, it's going to be a winner take all game and we're going to see a lot of environmental degradation in the area. [00:12:48] Speaker 2: Well, you talk about two approaches. One is working with our allies and I assume it's mainly the NATO allies saying we're going to counter Russia and China in the Arctic region. The other is something we used to do up until about 20 years ago is have these grand international agreements where we figure out what are we going to do with the Arctic? What rules of the road are they going to be about shipping and the Arctic? Is there a possibility of having international diplomacy to figure out rules of the road for the Arctic? [00:13:19] Rana Furuha: I think there is. And in fact, until Russia's war in Ukraine, you had an Arctic Council of seven nations with, you know, territory in the area that was actually doing a pretty good job. At the time, there was a lot of joint climate science. There was some joint mapping. One of the things that I learned about the Arctic that's fascinating is only about 15% of it has been well mapped and you need it to be sonar mapped. You can't use satellite because you really need to understand what's on the bottom of the seabed to create safe passages and and do discovery of things like natural gas. You could imagine the Arctic Council functioning again, but you would probably need to have Russia on board in at least some peripheral way. And in order to do that, I think you would have to have a very strong alliance with the US, Canada and the other Arctic nations. You could even see countries like Japan, South Korea wanting to get a little more involved. Those are countries that do a lot of shipbuilding. The Koreans have started shipping in a transpolar route. So, you know, there could be other allies even beyond NATO that you could imagine coming into that kind of alliance. [00:14:24] Speaker 2: But when you talk about the allies we've had in protecting the Arctic, the big one, of course, is Canada. I mean, it's a great ally and it is right there. Are you worried that our current, shall I say, unsettled relationship with Canada could even drive them closer to China in terms of making rules of the road for the Arctic? [00:14:47] Rana Furuha: Yeah. Well, you know, unsettled is a is a tactful way to put it, Walter. You know, I think Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, has been spot on to say to Donald Trump, look, enough is enough. We're not going to just have trade relationships changing every five minutes. We are going to work with countries that forward our interests. And you saw him coming in as a leader in Canada and saying, you know what, if you're going to put if the US is going to put tariffs willy nilly on Canada, we're going to do more trade with China. So that's already happening. I don't imagine that the Canadians would want to do some kind of major alliance, territorial alliance in the Arctic with the Chinese and the Russians. I don't think that's necessarily in their best interest, but certainly a stronger alliance between the US and Canada is in everyone's interest. And I would expect that no matter who you saw in the White House in 2028, I think there's going to be some repair work to be done with Canada, not only for reasons to do with policing the Arctic and creating more presence there. And the Canadians, by the way, have a number of icebreakers and a bigger presence up there than the US does, but also because it's all about regionalization right now. You know, the pendulum of the political economy shifts back and forth about every 50 to 100 years and we are moving from hyper globalization to more regionalization. And I would expect Canada, US, Mexico ultimately to come more in alignment around trade and foreign policy. [00:16:15] Speaker 2: So, President Trump recently struck a deal with Russia and with President Putin in Russia to import Russian diesel and temporarily ease the sanctions. What do you make of that and how does that fit into your discussion? [00:16:32] Rana Furuha: You know, it's interesting. I have been doing some reporting in the rural Midwest recently in red states and people are upset. Farmers are upset. Most factory workers and folks that are, you know, involved in manufacturing industries are very upset about inflation, the price of diesel, the price of fertilizer. You know, just cutting a deal on the periphery with the Russians is not going to change the fact that the Strait of Hormuz and this really war of choice with Iran has completely upended the global energy markets. And that's not something that can be changed in days or weeks. You know, energy takes months sometimes to transit. And even if you saw, you know, a complete cessation to any kind of conflict in Iran, this is I think this would take a couple of years actually to to stabilize. At the same time, it's just as they would say in Britain and own goal, you know, I mean, it's you're you're allowing China more leverage because they are the biggest buyer of of oil in Iran. You know, it's impossible for the US, I think, to win this war. I would expect again in 2028 a new administration to take a different tact in the area. And I hope to recommit to clean energy because America being a petro state is is not the way to prepare for a cheaper future. Rana Faroojar, thank you so much for joining us. [00:18:01] Speaker ?: Rana Faroojar, thank you so much for joining us. [00:18:01] Speaker 2: Thank you, Walter. [00:18:02] Rana Furuha: Rana Faroojar, thank you so much for joining us. [00:18:03] Speaker ?: Thank you, Walter.