From Gibraltar to the Arctic
By: Maria Elena Ahner
For much of the past three years, the world’s strategic attention has been fixed on the Red Sea crisis, instability around the Strait of Hormuz, recurring disruptions at the Suez Canal, and Eastern European calamities. Ukraine has even understandably dominated maritime policy. In the process, the Arctic has quietly slipped down the political agenda.
That is a strategic mistake. Whatever its importance to Europe, what is going on in the Arctic today is expected to fundamentally reshape how Asia reconfigures its global supply chains, energy security and geopolitical influence as a northern passage opens, creating a new global ceiling. China, with its massive trade regime, will inevitably be the biggest beneficiary. But every country in Asia is expected to be affected positively, if not environmentally.
The Arctic is often portrayed as a region whose significance belongs to some distant future, to be addressed once geopolitical or climate tensions subside. Yet history suggests precisely the opposite. The most consequential governance decisions are rarely made when new realities fully emerge; they are made years beforehand. By the time commercial opportunities become obvious, institutional choices have already been taken—or neglected.
Nearly two decades ago, Anis H. Bajrektarević, chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, argued that the melting Arctic should not be understood merely as an environmental phenomenon. Rather, it represented the emergence of a new geopolitical and geo-economic space in which climate, commerce, sovereignty and security would increasingly converge. At the time, this appeared a forward-looking proposition. Today it reads less as a prediction than as a description of reality.
Can Europe govern the Arctic?
Aside from Asia, the question confronting the EU and the rest of Europe is therefore no longer whether the Arctic will matter. It already does. The real question is whether Europe is preparing the governance architecture required to manage its long-term implications.
Until recently, the Northern Sea Route—often referred to as the North Passage—was increasingly discussed as a viable complement to the traditional maritime routes linking Europe and Asia. Retreating sea ice, advances in navigation technology, and the prospect of significantly shorter transit times encouraged governments and shipping companies alike to explore its commercial potential. While few believed Arctic shipping would replace the Suez Canal, many recognized that it could eventually become an important element in a more diversified and resilient global trading system.
Then geopolitics intervened: The war in Ukraine fundamentally transformed Europe’s relationship with the Arctic. Trade wars, military tensions and the collapse of political trust have severely constrained practical cooperation across the High North (Arctic/Litoral 5). Since much of the Northern Sea Route to Asia remains under Russian jurisdiction, European commercial engagement (even with Canada’s Hudson Bay) has become increasingly uncertain. As a consequence, strategic debate has largely shifted elsewhere.
This change in political circumstances, however, should not be mistaken for a reduction in the Arctic’s strategic importance.
No pausing climate change
Climate change has not paused because diplomacy has stalled. Arctic ice continues to retreat. Technological innovation continues to reshape maritime navigation. The global race for critical minerals continues to intensify – so does the calamity all over West Asia. Scientific research continues to reveal the region’s growing environmental and economic importance. Whether relations between Europe and Russia improve next year or in the next decade, these structural transformations will continue.
The Arctic therefore represents one of the rare geopolitical theatres where long-term trends are advancing independently of short-term politics. Canadians and Americans are understanding it well. That distinction matters because infrastructure can be built relatively quickly; institutions cannot.
Europe has devoted considerable attention to strengthening supply chains, modernizing ports, improving digital logistics and enhancing maritime resilience. These are essential investments. Yet physical infrastructure alone cannot govern an increasingly complex maritime domain.
The Arctic presents questions that extend well beyond navigation. They concern environmental protection, search and rescue capabilities, digital maritime services, subsea infrastructure, energy security, scientific cooperation, resource management, indigenous communities and the legal frameworks governing international waters. Above all, they concern the ability of states to cooperate under conditions of growing strategic competition.
These are governance challenges long before they become commercial ones. History repeatedly demonstrates that institutional responses tend to lag behind technological and geopolitical transformation. New shipping routes emerge faster than regulatory systems. Commercial interests expand more rapidly than mechanisms for international cooperation. Competition develops long before governance adapts. The Arctic is unlikely to prove an exception.
Waiting for political conditions to improve before preparing governance frameworks would therefore reverse the proper sequence of strategic planning. Institutions should not be improvised once new patterns of trade emerge. They should be designed while options remain open. For Europe, this requires abandoning an increasingly outdated habit of treating the Arctic as an isolated frontier rather than as an integral component of its wider maritime strategy.
Future changes will influence long-term
Developments in the High North are no longer detached from the EU/Europe’s broader strategic environment. Disruptions affecting southern maritime corridors inevitably reinforce interest in northern alternati