Trump’s Arctic plan has been 500 years in the making — and it will save the free world |
Donald Trump’s Arctic strategy has been 500 years in the making.
When Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic in 1492, he intended to find a direct connection between Europe and Asia.
He didn’t, of course — but the first transatlantic explorer to sail under an English flag, John Cabot, tried again a few years later and became the first modern explorer to reach what is now Canada.
The commercial potential of the Northwest Passage was obvious from the start, but even once explorers at last figured out how to thread their way through the Arctic waters, there was no possibility of developing the route: The sea ice was just too dense.
Until now, that is.
Warmer Arctic temperatures and 21st-century technology put a trade route the world has sought for centuries within reach — but whose?
Canada claims the passage as its own internal territorial waters.
The United States, like most of the world, has never accepted that assertion.
The future of what may one day be the planet’s most important shipping lane is being decided today.
China is already literally testing the waters — in 2017 the Chinese used a research vessel to confirm that cargo ships can now make it through the passage.
Talk of a “Polar Silk Road” and the prospect of reducing shipping........