Arctic Rivalry: Trade Routes, Resources, and Nuclear Risk (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Well, I've just finished filming an explainer here in our studio about the Arctic, about why that and Greenland is so vital to its neighbours, the United States, Canada, Norway, Russia. The race for Arctic control has run through the Cold War and now the melting ice of the climate crisis. Most importantly, because of melting sea ice, expanding more accessible trade routes for ships, for natural resources, rare earth minerals, and importantly too, for defence, where so many of Russia's nuclear submarines are based. These dots, they're bases. They've expanded and developed some facilities, this likely a nuclear missile storage facility. They've added MiG-31s, runways, often overshadowing NATO. But Russia's development has, it seems, been challenged by its invasion of Ukraine. What's important is the Kola Peninsula here, where Russia keeps its second-strike nuclear submarines. They need to get through the so-called Bear Gap and the Giuk Gap in order to move on towards the United States. And so an unlikely nuclear war would also be fought over Arctic skies, with most missile paths over this area. And so it's likely where most missile defences would be best placed as well.