The next war will be fought here. America and Europe will be enemies

In the Arctic, Washington and Brussels are competing for control of Greenland, trade routes, and resources – even as they remain NATO allies This September, the Arctic quietly widened the rift between presumed transatlantic allies. Brussels’ attempts to mitigate growing US influence in the region have so far been unsystematic but intense. The Arctic Summit held in Finnish Lapland and the subsequent EU-Canada talks, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed granting Ottawa associate member status, should be viewed in the context of the new agreement between the US and Greenland. The EU is using its usual competitive methods in the polar race, plunging into a de facto confrontation with the US. An alternative to this could have been attempts to find its own legitimate place among the major players; however, the window of opportunity for such initiatives has closed, which leaves the space no alternatives other than the prospects of a hybrid war in which Brussels and Washington are rivals. The EU’s familiar patterns beyond the Arctic Circle Twelve EU countries and the bloc’s leadership attended the Arctic Summit in Lapland this month, where they agreed upon a radical securitization of polar policy, officially recognizing the region as a “geopolitical hotspot.” To understand the specifics of the bloc’s Arctic ambitions, it’s important to note that the union’s members lack any significant infrastructure of their own on the polar map. In the wake of Brexit, the EU no longer has its own sovereign Arctic borders directly connected to the Arctic Ocean. Norway and Iceland remain outside the union, Greenland remains an autonomous Danish overseas territory, and Finland and Sweden are geographically cut off from the ocean. Moreover, the EU as a single bloc completely lacks its own Arctic icebreaker fleet – the few national vessels of the Scandinavian countries are incapable of ensuring true strategic dominance.

Read more The West calls it Russia’s Starlink. That misses the point Lacking either geographical rights or military hardware, Brussels has reduced its Arctic strategy solely to environmental concerns, climate monitoring, and the protection of indigenous peoples. In 2008, the EU formally designated the Arctic as a zone of its strategic interests, and in 2016 and 2021, key EU Arctic strategies were adopted. This approach began to change in 2022–2025, when, against the backdrop of a rapidly shifting geopolitical situation in the world, US claims to Greenland triggered the performative landing of European troops on the island. The Arctic Summit in Rovaniemi this month, which was informal in nature, confirmed the shift in the focus of the EU’s interests. The final agreement formalized the shift from an environmental agenda to a “hard power” strategy: the parties pledged to sharply increase investment in military mobility, satellite surveillance, and cross-border infrastructure in the north, as well as coordinate the blocking of Russia’s “shadow fleet” under the pretext of environmental protection. These decisions, reinforced by the leaders’ demonstrative visit to the Finnish Lapland Air Wing military airbase, formed the basis of the new EU Arctic Strategy, which Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas promised to present in October 2026. After the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen went on to invite Canada to become an associate member of the EU in the context of trade and tariff disagreements between Ottawa and Washington. The mere suggestion of such an alliance has maximized the politicization of the Arctic agenda, making the outcome highly unpredictable. It’s worth noting that Brussels’ aspirations for leadership are always specific. It’s enough to recall Francois Duchene’s concepts of “civic” p