Why an Arctic arms race would be a mistake
An “icebreaker gap” between the U.S. and Russia exists — but it’s a terrible excuse to accelerate the militarization of this fragile region.
Most of America’s historic foreign policy blunders were driven by threat inflation. From fake attacks on ships in Havana Harbor or the Gulf of Tonkin, to falling dominos in Southeast Asia and WMD in Iraq — the response to these “dire threats” is often a costly quagmire. In the Cold War it was phony bomber and missile “gaps” that sparked a precarious and ultimately pointless nuclear confrontation. Today a new “icebreaker gap” could fuel an Arctic arms race.
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