David L. Shribman: Things are heating up in the Arctic

Donald Trump and his top lieutenants believe there is no such thing as climate change. Donald Trump and his top lieutenants are worried sick about how the melting of the Arctic polar ice cap is opening a new Northwest Passage, which is a developing national-security threat.

One of the more perplexing riddles of the age: How can there be an emerging sea route through the Arctic that poses a defense threat to the United States if there is no Arctic melting that creates a fresh sea route?

Washington isn't taking on that question, which we might call the Great Contradiction. But it does explain another mystery, stoked by the American adventure in Venezuela: Trump's obsession with obtaining Greenland, now controlled by Denmark.

The stakes of wrestling with the climate change/national-security contradiction are high.

There's the forbidden act of questioning the president's view on anything, especially his conviction that global warming is a "hoax." There's the cost of ignoring the threat, coming not only from Russia, which sits as little as 2.4 miles from the U.S. across the Bering Strait, but also from China, which sits far from the Arctic and cannot ― here comes another riddle ― plausibly describe itself as an Arctic country the way Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian countries do.

Instead, China considers itself a "near-Arctic" power, raising yet another riddle. How close do two entities have to be to be "near"? China's apparent answer: about 930 miles.

It considers the Arctic part of its Silk Road, a metaphor more than a highway; the real Silk Road was a trade route between China and the West.

One unavoidable conclusion, along with the threat that Chinese naval vessels, including nuclear submarines, pose to the United States and Canada, is that Beijing views the Arctic as part of efforts to create trade relations with, and maybe military advantage over, Europe.

Here's the contradiction writ large: Though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in May ordered the end of Pentagon "references to climate change and related subjects," he also expressed support for "assessing weather-related impacts on operations, mitigating weather-related risks [or] conducting environmental assessments."

It's minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit in Iqaluit, the capital of Canada's Nunavut territory, as this is being written. So there's not much of a Northwest Passage ― the phrase comes from the six-century-old fascination with a sea lane from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a preoccupation that bedazzled European explorers in the colonial period ― to worry about, and there won't be for several months.

But military officials in both Canada and the United States are worrying now, especially because China was able to send a "research submarine" beneath the Arctic Ocean this summer.

Now another riddle: What exactly were the Chinese researching?

Very likely not how foxes and ravens feast on the carrion remains from polar bears' feeding habits. Could they be examining whether global warming provides them access to a potential staging area for an attack on North America, especially given the sparse population in the area? (Nunavut has a population density of less than one-tenth of a person per square mile. Wyoming, the least dense of the continental American states, is 600 times denser than that.)

"Chinese research on the topography of the ocean floor cannot only be for the good of science," Vincent Rigby, former Canadian national security adviser, said in an interview. "There's a military purpose to this research because it is occurring on a possible operational theater."

The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine puts the defense of the Western Hemisphere above all military and diplomatic priorities. Speaking at the United Nations in September, Trump called climate change "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world," saying, "All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail."

Physics and chemistry know no equations remotely like this:

(Melting ice + increasing big-power activity in the region) / climate-change denial = increased national security threat.

At the same time, Russia's expansionist impulses (see Ukraine, invasion of) only add to the need for the military buildup that the United States and Canada are undertaking ― even as the two countries spar over tariffs and as Canada, with its new burst of nationalism, is less and less amenable to American influence and commerce. There may be no Kentucky bourbon sold in Canadian liquor outlets, but there's no lack of interest in cooperation with the United States on Arctic defense.

"Defending North America remains our top priority," Canadian defense minister David McGuinty said at a September Pentagon session with Hegseth. "That starts in the Arctic ― our shared front line. Canada is locked in to protect the North, its people, its environment and its strategic advantage. It's where our sovereignty, our national security and our partnership with the U.S. comes together strongest. So, from [North American Aerospace Defense Command] modernization to Arctic surveillance and infrastructure, we're taking major and fast, bold, decisive action to shore up our collective defense."

The two countries monitor Arctic movements, particularly the oceanographic survey ships and submarines that China has deployed, but their own national security isn't the only concern. Another: the potential of China using the Arctic for swift passage of naval battleships or submarines from Asia to Europe.

Urgency over the Arctic has come and gone many times. "Such interest is usually ephemeral, and marked by clashes of interest between Indigenous peoples, non-Indigenous settlers, external commercial interests and governments," according to an October report by the Arctic Institute's Center for Circumpolar Security Studies.

It's one of the many regional hazards. "It takes so long to get things done up there given the nature of the terrain, the climate and the lack of infrastructure," Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the Canadian Defence Staff from 2021 to 2024, said in an interview. "Then you couple it with the continued evolving politics situation and climate change. We need to get going. We need to be aware what's happening, from space, on the seabed, on the maritime surface and on land. Getting sensors in place to see what is happening in our territory and the approaches to our territory is part of this."

So, the Trump team insists, is an American Greenland.

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.