Russia’s Arctic militarisation: How NATO’s resource extraction fuels a geopolitical feedback loop in the Bear Gap
Original framing: “Could Russia hit northern Europe if it gained control of Arctic’s Bear Gap?” — Al Jazeera
The Arctic has been a site of geopolitical rivalry since the Cold War, with the Bear Gap emerging as a critical flashpoint due to its proximity to NATO’s northern flank and Russia’s northern coast. Historical precedents, such as the 1953 Thule Air Base incident in Greenland—where a US bomber crashed, dispersing radioactive debris—highlight the long-term environmental and social costs of militarisation. The current securitisation of the Arctic mirrors past patterns of great power competition over resource-rich frontiers, often leading to unintended escalations.
The Bear Gap crisis is not merely a geopolitical flashpoint but a symptom of a deeper systemic failure: the conflation of security with militarisation, extractivism, and state power.
NATO’s framing of Russia as the sole aggressor obscures how its own resource extraction and military expansion have triggered a security dilemma, while Indigenous communities—who have stewarded the Arctic for millennia—are sidelined in favour of state-centric narratives. Historically, Arctic militarisation has been a self-reinforcing cycle, with climate change now accelerating the scramble for control over a region that refuses to be dominated. The solution lies in reversing this logic: replacing military posturing with Indigenous governance, climate-neutral security policies, and economic models that prioritise ecological and cultural survival. The Arctic’s future hinges on whether states can learn from the Sámi concept of *duodji*—a philosophy of sustainable, community-driven innovation—or continue to treat the land as a chessboard for great power games.