Balton: the Arctic has entered a new and uncertain phase

“We’ve entered a new phase,” David Balton said. “Whether it’s normal or not, I don’t know—and how long it will persist, I also don’t know.”

For the veteran U.S. diplomat, the Arctic’s new reality is defined by two shocks: Russia’s isolation after invading Ukraine and a U.S. foreign policy that has turned inward under President Trump. The result, he said, is a region still functioning but frayed; its cooperative habits tested by war, politics and neglect.

Balton is not a casual observer of these shifts. He served as the U.S. Ambassador for Oceans and Fisheries and spent more than three decades shaping U.S. ocean and polar policy at the State Department, serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries, chairing Arctic Council negotiations, and leading the talks that produced the 2018 Central Arctic Ocean fisheries agreement. Now a senior fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute and affiliated with Harvard’s Belfer Center, he remains one of the most experienced voices in Arctic governance and international ocean law.

Trump’s turn away from multilateralism

He spoke to Arctic Today in Reykjavík during the Arctic Circle Assembly, where he described the region’s geopolitical tension as serious and yet reversible. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and continued belligerence, he said, has cut Moscow off from most Arctic cooperation. However, Balton’s sharpest criticism was reserved for Washington’s approach under President Trump. He argued that the administration’s style of foreign policy runs counter to the spirit of Arctic diplomacy, which depends on trust and continuity built over years of meetings, field exercises and shared science.

“We’re in a new place we’ve not been before,” he said. “To succeed in Arctic diplomacy, one needs to be committed to multilateralism and long-term relationships. The [Trump] administration’s approach to Greenland and Canada seems focused on bilateral issues and transactional diplomacy—neither of which go down very well in this area.”

The Trump administration has abandoned climate diplomacy, with Trump pulling the U.S. out of international treaties such as the Paris accords and has unsettled key allies with talk of acquiring Greenland and frustration toward Canada. Balton said climate denialism and tariffs are damaging ties with close allies and widening divides that complicate even routine cooperation. He argues that Trump needs to change course and focus on rebuilding trust and collaboration in the Arctic.

“If I were to advise the administration, then I would return to the climate table,” he said. “Stop asserting a desire to acquire Greenland, stop saying that Canada should become the 51st state, start behaving like a better neighbor and a better ally.”

Despite the upheaval that has replaced the so-called Arctic exceptionalism once thought to insulate the region from wider geopolitical tensions, Balton rejected certain experts’ arguments that institutions such as the Arctic Council have become redundant. He said the Council still matters because it quietly sustains technical cooperation that countries rely on when politics turn rough and because all eight member states continue to see value in preserving it.

“The Arctic Council is actually still functioning, just not at the level it was before,” he said. “We may be going through a phase now that may look different in five years. The Council may enter a new and better phase at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

He said the current lull should not be mistaken for permanent decline and that the Council could regain momentum as conditions change.

China’s Arctic footprint overstated

Balton said that the disruption in Arctic diplomacy has also left non-Arctic powers searching for their footing. With the Arctic Council meeting only at the working-group level and mostly online, observer states such as China have found themselves with fewer opportunities to influence the agenda or contribute to research and projects.

“The observers, including China, are frustrated,” he said. “They have much less ability to make contributions to the Council’s work and to participate in the conversations that matter. But that’s a symptom of the times we’re in, not a permanent condition.”

Even outside the Council, he noted, Chinese involvement in the Arctic has declined rather than expanded, despite what is often claimed and believed.

“The levels of investment, particularly from China, have been going down significantly,” he said. “A number of major projects have stalled or been canceled across the circumpolar north, even in Russia. The idea that China is somehow sweeping in and taking over the Arctic economy just isn’t borne out by the facts.”

Balton argued that the best safeguard against outside influence is not isolation but a functioning Arctic Council that can manage cooperation on its own terms.

“If the Arctic states want to set the tone and maintain leadership, they have to do it through a stronger, steadier Council,” he said. “There’s no other table where that kind of coordination happens.”

Turning to the economic front, Balton challenged persistent claims that Arctic shipping is on the brink of a boom. He said the headlines about a northern sea route rivaling the Suez Canal are years ahead of reality.

“I’ve been reading those stories for more than a decade,” he said. “Yes, shipping has increased, but only marginally and from a very low base. The Arctic is still an expensive, technically challenging and risky place to operate.”

He said the infrastructure gaps remain vast with thin search and rescue coverage once you leave sub-Arctic corridors. The region has few deepwater ports that can handle larger hulls, limited ice-capable tugs and salvage capacity, scarce pilots and vessel traffic services at choke points like the Bering Strait, outdated hydrographic charts in many areas, patchy AIS and satellite communications at higher latitudes, sparse weather and sea-ice observing networks, and oil-spill equipment that is spread out and hard to move quickly in winter conditions.

“We don’t have the search and rescue coverage, we don’t have oil spill response capacity, we don’t have reliable communications in the highest latitudes,” he said. “And we still don’t fully understand what large-scale shipping would do to fragile northern ecosystems. We’re not ready for it.”

Risky Russian business

Balton also warned about Russia’s expanding “shadow fleet”—older tankers and cargo ships that help Moscow skirt sanctions by operating under opaque ownership structures. He said that while the ships sail under different flags, their routes make the problem impossible for the United States to ignore.

“That shipping almost entirely passes through the Bering Strait,” he said. “If there were a major oil spill or disaster, it would almost certainly affect people in Alaska and the broader United States.”

But for now, the West’s leverage over Russian operations in Arctic waters remains thin because the usual diplomatic levers have withered. High-level cooperation with Moscow has mostly stopped, the Arctic Council is limited to quiet technical work, and there is little political space for bilateral fixes on safety, transparency, or standards. Fewer meetings, fewer working groups, and less trust mean fewer ways to shape behavior at sea.

“There isn’t much we can do about it,” Balton said. “That fleet exists in large part because of the sanctions we’ve already imposed. It’s a byproduct of our own policy choices.”

Still, he said, diplomacy in the Arctic has weathered long freezes before. He believes practical cooperation could resume if the war in Ukraine ends on reasonable terms.

“The best-case scenario is that the war ends reasonably soon and we can start rebuilding collaboration on issues that benefit everyone,” he said. “Things like vessel traffic management, oil spill preparedness and search and rescue—those are areas where we used to work together, even in the Cold War.”

Such cooperation, he added, would depend on the United States returning to serious climate engagement.

“We would need an administration willing to work on climate issues in the Arctic and elsewhere,” he said. “Without that, we’ll always be playing catch-up.”

For Balton, the future of Arctic diplomacy comes down to trust, endurance and focus, a return to the habits that once made the region a rare example of stability and cooperation.

“You can’t rebuild everything overnight,” he said. “But the Council is still there. The habit of cooperation is still there. The question is whether we choose to use it.”