Is the Arctic on the menu? Arctic Frontiers opens with stark warnings for Europe
As Arctic Frontiers 2026 opened in Tromsø this week, speakers argued that the Arctic has entered uncharted territory, one where cooperation no longer sets the terms and Europe can no longer afford strategic ambiguity.
Under the theme Turn of the Tide, the conference opened with the argument that long-standing assumptions about how the Arctic is governed are no longer holding. What remains, speakers suggested, is a region that is increasingly contested, economically attractive and politically exposed, at a moment when Europe is still struggling to define its interests, capabilities and existential narrative.
A continent caught between great powers
Against that backdrop, the opening panel — If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu: How should Norway and the EU navigate the Arctic? — examined how Europe is increasingly squeezed between competing powers, with little room for strategic ambiguity. The title was an obvious nod to remarks by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he warned that long-standing assumptions underpinning the global order have ended.
Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Middlesex University, said in this changing world order, Europeans now find themselves “caught in the crosshairs” of rivalry between the United States, Russia and China.
“Part of our challenges as Europeans is we’re caught in the crosshairs between three great powers,” Dodds said. “Or they certainly think of themselves as great powers, whether they are or not, that’s another discussion.”
Dodds said the long-standing idea of Arctic exceptionalism — the belief that the region could remain insulated from global conflict — has definitively collapsed and that this shift demands a more sober assessment of the security environment now taking shape in the north.
“Whatever we once spoke about in terms of Arctic exceptionalism is over,” he said. “We really need to accept it is over. It is not coming back.”
In practical terms, Dodds argued, that means abandoning language that minimizes or obscures the scale of the confrontation Europe is now facing.
“When we talk about low-intensity conflict, hybrid warfare, I’d rather we didn’t,” he said. “I’d rather we recognize that we are in a confrontation. There is not going to be a reset with the Russian Federation.”
That confrontation, he added, cannot be understood as a purely bilateral challenge between Europe and Russia, but must be seen in a broader global context.
“Bear all this in mind, China has been aiding and abetting all of the above,” Dodds said. “Because without China, Russia would not be continuing to.”
The unresolved question of interest
Former German vice chancellor Robert Habeck, now a senior analyst at the Institute for International Affairs, said the Arctic debate exposes a deeper European dilemma: the absence of clearly defined political interests capable of guiding action in a more confrontational world.
“It’s very easy to find the interests of the others,” Habeck said, referring to Russia, China and the United States. “But it’s much harder to define the European interest in a realpolitik sense.”
Habeck said Europe continues to invoke multilateralism and the rules-based order without resolving the tension between climate ambition, energy security, economic competitiveness and defence.
“The question I’d like to put on the table is what is the European interest,” he said. “Not preserving the status quo as Arctic exceptionalism, but what is really the hardcore, definable interest for political action.”
He warned that institutional drift risks leaving Europe less capable rather than more united.
“I can’t see that the European leaders have made a decision who is doing what,” Habeck said. “Basically everyone is doing the same as before, but with more money.”
From confrontation to clarity
If Dodds described a geopolitical environment defined by confrontation and Habeck called for Europe to articulate its interests more clearly, Iselin Stensdal, a senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, focused on the gap between Europe’s values-driven self-image and the strategic choices now confronting it.
While stressing her commitment to democratic values, Stensdal warned that moral narratives can become a substitute for strategy if they are not matched by clear-eyed assessments of power and behaviour.
“Democracy is good and I want to live in a democracy,” she said. “However, it seems to me that we as Europeans, we live in this narrative that’s kind of clouding our mission.”
Stensdal cautioned against relying on fixed moral categories when navigating relations with major powers whose actions increasingly challenge European interests.
“We have these predetermined good or bad labels in countries like villain number one, Russia, villain number two, China,” she said. “The US used to be the good guy.”
In the Arctic, she argued, such simplifications risk obscuring the practical choices Europe must now make as competition intensifies.
“By not just looking at the actions for what they are,” Stensdal said, “I think we could see clearer and make better decisions for ourselves.”
Societies as targets
As competition in the Arctic intensifies, Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, a professor of international relations at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, warned that liberal democratic societies themselves are increasingly becoming targets in geopolitical competition.
She said the Arctic’s transformation has elevated the region from a zone of regional concern to a focal point of global security.
“We know the Arctic is now a focal point for not just Arctic security, but global security at the same time,” Hoogensen Gjørv said.
That shift, she argued, exposes open societies to sustained pressure through hybrid tactics designed to exploit democratic openness rather than confront states directly. In practice, she said, unscrupulous actors are increasingly using the strengths of liberal democracies — openness, tolerance and pluralism — as points of entry for influence and disruption.
“Because we’re relatively open, we’re also very much susceptible to hybrid threat activities,” she said, citing disinformation, sabotage and influence campaigns.
Those efforts, she warned, are already shaping political and social dynamics across Europe.
“We are susceptible to polarization,” Hoogensen Gjørv said. “We see that in a lot of countries, also in European countries.”
As a result, Hoogensen Gjørv argued, geopolitics can no longer be understood as something that happens only between governments.
“When we’re talking about geopolitics, in fact, we in society are actors in geopolitics,” she said. “And so we need to reorient how we think about who is doing what.”
End of Arctic exceptionalism, beginning of strategic reckoning
Taken together, the opening panel offered a bleak assessment: Arctic exceptionalism has come to an end. The region is no longer peripheral, but increasingly sought after by competing powers willing to test the limits of international law and multilateral restraint.
For Europe, speakers argued, the Arctic exposes an uncomfortable reality. The continent is still struggling to define its goals, military capabilities and strategic priorities as geopolitical competition sharpens.
“We just haven’t got time for a strategic defence investment fund,” Klaus Dodds said, warning that slow, technocratic responses risk leaving Europe reacting to events rather than shaping them.
Caught between an unpredictable United States, a confrontational Russia and a strategically patient China, Europe faces mounting pressure to move beyond declarations and values toward concrete decisions about power, presence and protection in the north.
As Arctic Frontiers 2026 gets underway, the opening session framed the debate ahead in stark terms. In a region where the ice is melting faster than political consensus can form, Europe must decide — quickly — what it stands for, what it is willing to defend and how it intends to do so. As with climate change, the clock is ticking, and the future of the Arctic is increasingly at stake.
