The work of Arctic conferences, as niche as they are, should be to reject rather than reproduce megalomaniacal discourses.
At the breakfast buffet at the Clarion Hotel on Oslo’s glimmering waterfront, where migrant laborers wash away bird poop before the crack of dawn, human development appears to have reached its pinnacle. The smoked salmon overflows, the omelette bar sizzles, and freshly sprouted watercress stand ready to be snipped, their antioxidants raring to extend your lifespan. In a country where receding hairlines seem relegated to the past, well-coiffed Norwegians exchange morning greetings over cups of black coffee and tiny berry smoothies.
Despite this sparkling scene, just a few blocks away at SALT – a wooden venue supposedly inspired by Viking banquet halls – pronouncements were being made at the Arctic Security Conference that we are “already at war in the Arctic.”
Organized for the second year in a row by the legendary Andreas Østhagen, research director for Arctic and ocean politics at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, the one-day conference featured a vibrant mix of big-name speakers like Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide and up-and-coming early career scholars from Nunavut, Iceland, and Norway. The sessions followed a conversational format, with a moderator asking four panelists for their thoughts on topics ranging from current challenges to the role of “outsiders” in the region.
During a coffee break, one person relatively new to the Arctic conference circuit asked a colleague and me if this conference, which aimed to foster debate, was anything different than its competitors. (Those would be annual conferences on the region like Arctic Circle in Reykjavik, Arctic Frontiers in Tromsø, and Arctic Encounter in Anchorage). Were the discussions any spicier, they asked?
Both of us initially responded that a lot of it is the same old, same old. People still offer truisms like, “What happens in the Arctic, stays in the Arctic” (which I even did myself on a recent podcast with Rorshokoba).
A worker powerwashes the Oslo Opera House before sunrise.
But further discussion made us realize that things had in fact changed. The closing remark made in the session on “Solutions” for Arctic problems – that we are already at war in the Arctic – hammered it home. Rubbing salt into the wounds that have been slashed into Arctic exceptionalism and regional cooperation, the speaker added, “Maybe next year, we’ll have a session on, ‘How are we already waging war without resorting to kinetic means?'”
That comment followed on an earlier intervention made during the same session, when one panelist wondered how we might exploit Russia’s vulnerability: namely, the concentration of a great deal of its nuclear arms on the Kola Peninsula. Though often framed as an existential threat to neighboring Norway, Finland, and Sweden, perhaps, they seemed to imply, the tables could be turned – though how, I don’t know. That speaker also underscored that the only country to be threatened in the past thirty years in the Arctic was Greenland, by the United States of America. This, they admitted, should shock us all more.
All of this made the picture of human health, happiness, and good hair at the breakfast buffet that morning seem worryingly illusory. When I contrast the discussions with the tenor of those that I first heard back in the late 2000s, when I first started dipping my toes into Arctic waters, the difference is even starker.
In 2013, at the first-ever Arctic Circle conference, the the top-billed speaker was Artur Chilingarov. The Russian, who participated in the infamous expedition to plant a Russian flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole in 2008, served as Putin’s explorer and special envoy to the Arctic before he passed away last year. Another featured speaker at the inaugural gathering was Yunpeng Li, president of state-owned China Ocean Shipping Company. Now, Russians are persona non grata at Arctic conferences (even as Trump rolls out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, while the British royal family does the same for America’s dear leader at Windsor Castle).
Today, the Chinese are few and far to be seen at Arctic conferences. Instead, they are organizing more events on the so-called Third Pole, or the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. One example is the Third Pole Climate Forum, which convened for the first time in June 2024 with the support of the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization.
All of this goes to show that Arctic conferences – and indeed the Arctic – are different, even though the same platitudes circulate. The world, and the north, have split.
Mike Sfraga, Interim Vice Chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Gunn-Britt Retter, Head of Arctic and Environmental Unit, Saami Council; Ine Eriksen Søreide, Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence in the Norwegian Parliament; Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, and conference organizer/moderator Andreas Østhagen (L-R).
Who is holding power accountable in the Arctic?
In a conference session on “locals,” the moderator asked if they still matter in Arctic security. One of the panelists who researches Sámi governance seemed taken aback that the question was even being posed. But its underlying motivation, however controversial, is evident. Despite the past decade’s growing emphasis on Indigenous rights, consultation, and the co-production of knowledge, as militarization ramps up, governments, militaries, and extractive interests are accumulating power. The question is whether anyone is keeping them in check.
In the session in which I participated on “attention,” moderator Arne O. Holm, editor-in-chief of High North News, asked specialists in communicating about the Arctict if journalists are still holding governments accountable. I answered that while I believe many journalists still enter the field trying to speak truth to power and expose social and environmental wrongdoings, two forces are undermining such daring.
The first, more structural obstacle to well-intentioned journalism is the profit motive. The need to make money drives stories that are more about attracting clicks than seeking justice. In a time when the attention span of readers (or more precisely, doomscrollers) is sometimes limited to mere seconds, journalists have less room in which to paint the full picture. Sensation rather than complexity is the name of the game. Two worthy counter trends to this byte-sized, shock-and-awe reporting, however, are podcasts and long-form journalism.
The second force countering robust investigations, at least in the United States, is the Trump administration’s crackdown on the freedoms of speech and the press. Two major television stations, ABC and CBS, have been sued for defamation. Both settled for millions of dollars. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits. The two newspapers say they will fight the cases, but the road ahead is uncertain, if not altogether dire. Earlier this week, ABC pulled The Jimmy Kimmel show from the air on account of his remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassin, while the rechristened “Department of War” has threatened to strip journalists of access to the Pentagon if they released unauthorized information.
In this day and age, the lower profile one has – whether as a university or as a journalist – the more one may be able to escape the wrath of the administration, at least for the time being. For this reason, institutional journalism may be more at risk of compromise than, say, freelancers or open source intelligence mavericks. Increasingly, these may be the people best placed to take the Trump administration to task.
Outside of the U.S., on the same “attention” panel, Thomas Nilsen, editor at The Barents Observer, asked the audience to donate to support journalism in Europe. His newspaper strives to hire exiled Russian journalists, as he stressed that they are some of the people best positioned to help shine a light on what is happening behind Russian borders. The newspaper is also waging battles of its own after being banned in Russia in 2019 and labeled an “undesirable organization” in 2025. The Barents Observer has fought both decisions in court.
For journalists across Europe, raising funds has taken on renewed urgency since the Trump administration moved to block $75 million in congressionally approved funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which were established in the 1950s to counter Soviet propaganda. (The European Union stepped up to fill the gap, but only with $6.5 million so far). Crackdowns on and cuts to journalism journalism originating in the U.S. are therefore undermining robust reporting in Europe, too – and, by extension, the Arctic.
“The best antidote to hybrid warfare is good governance”
While the word “war” didn’t come out in the open until the very end of the conference, sub-threshold acts like sabotage, espionage, propaganda, and assassinations – all forms of “hybrid warfare” – were very much on the agenda all day.
One panelist contended, “The best antidote to hybrid warfare is good governance.” In other words, tactics like disinformation and propaganda are best countered by an educated, critically minded citizenry.
The problem is that in the U.S., many of the factors crucial to good governance – a robust system of checks and balances, the rule of law, and a well-funded public education system accessible to all – are going out the window.
During my session, one question came in from the audience: “Wouldn’t it be a better thing if fewer Americans were uneducated about the Arctic?” they asked. I supposed the question was a bit tongue in cheek, with the implication being that if fewer Americans knew about Greenland, they might not be that interested in annexing it. Yet the underlying sentiment worried me. It reeks of the idea that, as summarized in Noam Chomsky’s Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, only the most properly schooled people – a small sliver of the population – should have the right to participate in politics. The rest – the “bewildered herd” – are hopelessly irrational. Rather than be better educated, they should instead be distracted. But the cementing of this dichotomy is partly how we have ended up in a situation where the administration can bandy about a takeover of Greenland as a distraction to the actual and ongoing theft of funds from American polar scientists, European journalists, and HIV/AIDS patients in Africa.
Another controversial question was posed during the same session on journalism: “Does the Arctic only exist at conferences?” One panelist agreed that, in a way, it does. It’s a niche interest. Even China, for all its supposed interfering in the Arctic, isn’t all that galvanized about the region compared to places like the South China Sea or Africa.
So, if Arctic conference-goers wonder – even if only facetiously – whether we should limit knowledge about a region which, for many people and governments, doesn’t matter a great deal in the grand scheme of things, one has to wonder if these gatherings risk creating a frosty echo chamber all their own.
“When presidents speak, you should listen to them”
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide addresses the conference.
Perhaps the other surprising thing at the Arctic Security Conference was the kowtowing to authority. One high-ranking American offered, “When presidents speak, you should listen to them. You ignore them at your peril.”
A Norwegian military official expressed, “I listen to what presidents say. So when Putin says he wants to reinvest in his defense in the north, to reestablish the same structure that they were used to in the Soviet era, I think he means it. He’s moving from brigades to divisions in a military language, which is a huge increase in a military capabilities. And of course Russia is learning from Ukraine. NATO is increasing defense spending. So we are in an arms race.”
It is almost as if what presidents say has become gospel.
When preparing for my session, one of the questions we were asked to consider was whether journalists shape geopolitics. After the conference, however, I feel more convinced that politics are driven by individual men – specifically, geriatric leaders, as Financial Times journalist Janan Ganesh recently observed. All of these “old men in a hurry” – Trump, Putin, Xi, and Modi – have a limited number of years left in which to secure their legacy (sprouts at the breakfast buffet notwithstanding), whether by annexing Greenland, waging war in Ukraine, or taking over Taiwan.
It is imperative we hear their schemes. But that does not mean we should sit back and let their plans run the world – least of all in the Arctic. Over the past thirty years, diplomats, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, scientists, and civil society have worked to establish a slightly more bottom-up system of governance based on consensus.
A great deal of region-building work remained even prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But we now risk retreating into a world in which a few men’s pronouncements run the show. This is a world in which journalists race to cover the latest fatuous utterances by Trump or whether Putin has a body double because, as Gro Holm, foreign correspondent from Norwegian national broadcaster NRK admitted, these stories get the most clicks. In Norway, people want to read more about Trump than they do about the north of their country. And in Iceland, as one conference panelist pointed out, the few sentences uttered by Trump about Greenland changed things more than the war in Ukraine did.
We have therefore ended up in a situation where as general knowledge of the Arctic declines and a few world leaders suck the air out of the room, their words matter more. This is a worrying state of affairs for a region that was already peripheral to global politics and the economy. The work of Arctic conferences, as niche as they are, should be to reject rather than reproduce megalomaniacal discourses.
