Lawfare Daily: Conversations from Aspen, Part 1: Shashank Joshi on European Security and Iris Ferguson on the Arctic

[Intro]

Shashank Joshi: But in the very long run, you know, let's say 2040s, if you do have a seriously more capable Europe, I think it's inevitable that it will give European leaders a certain competence to defy Americans and defy American presidents in ways they haven't in the past, or at least only some of them have, thinking of the French over Iraq.

Scott Anderson: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and today I'm sharing some of the conversations I had with leading policy experts and practitioners on the margin of this year's Aspen Security Forum, which took place last week. The first conversation you'll hear is with Shashank Joshi, the defense editor for The Economist.

We discussed the new dynamics surrounding European security and the path towards an implications of Europe, less dependent on the United States for its defense.

Iris Ferguson: Could there be a deal on the, on the Arctic to help build economic prosperity between the United States and Russia and have the Arctic be a place of cooperation? That, that, that's one angle. Then there's the other side is to say like, we don't need to give any favors to Russia because they're, they, they don't deserve to be partnered with at all.

Scott Anderson: You'll then hear me talk with Iris Ferguson, who was until recently, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resilience and is now at the Center for Strategic International Studies.

We talked about the strategic significance of the Arctic and how it plays into the modern dynamics of major power competition. This is only part one of two, so be sure to tune in later this week for more conversations from Aspen. Here's my conversation with Shashank Joshi, defense editor for The Economist.

[Main Podcast]

So Shashank, let me start with this you moderate a phenomenally interesting panel to kick us off for this weekend with a number of European officials talking about Ukraine, what comes after Ukraine. Ukraine is a seminal moment. It's proven to be a turning point for how Europeans think about security and their collective security.

It's no longer Western security, it's not, NATO's still a big part of it. It's not necessarily the drivers to the idea that we need to have a European security model. What surprised you from that panel? What did you take away from it? What did it tell you about the trajectory of European thinking on defense, collective defense and where we think it might be headed in this moment where the Trump administration's commitment to European security while still there, is nonetheless in doubt because of his past statements and rhetoric about Europeans alliances, et cetera?

Shashank Joshi: Well, hi Scott. Thanks so much for having me back on. Great to be back on in these beautiful alpine surroundings.

Look, let's take a step back. I was at the Munich Security Conference in February and that was a, a strangely traumatic moment for Europe because you had Pete Hegseth in Brussels telling European allies, look, you’re on your own, you need to lead on conventional defense. Then you had JD Vance giving his incredibly pugnacious speech at the Munich Security Conference, telling Europeans that they were feckless, effete repressive societies that needed to get over themselves causing conniptions within, among European, Europe security elite. And then you had Donald Trump the same day opening talks with Russia over Ukraine, which we sort of knew was coming but shocked everyone.

So the mood was, was mutinous, panicked, traumatic, which no, where is America going? Could America just walk out of Europe? Could, could he walk out of NATO as he came close to doing in his first term? Could he withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops from Europe? Could he abandon Ukraine at a stroke and sell Ukraine out to the Putin?

Fast forward several months, we're, we're talking here now in, in, in July. The mood is totally different in Europe. It's much, much more assured, much more calm. The NATO Summit of the Hague, which I attended, was seen as a very positive event, Donald Trump attended. He didn't cause great ructions. He praised NATO as he, as he left, allies agreed a new defense spending target of 5% of GDP on defense. 3.5% on defense, plus 1.5% on infrastructure and defense related spending.

So there is this collective sense of things changing. There is much less acute concern about America's posture in Europe and its abandonment of the continent. There's a recognition that we now maybe have a number of years to have an orderly transition in European security rather than a chaotic disorderly transition, which would be much harder to manage and a sense that we're stepping up to make that transition serious.

However, I think there was a trust deficit and whilst Ukraine policy for Europe, from a European perspective, is moving in a, a good direction where Donald Trump saying that he will keep selling weapons to Ukraine through Europe, that he will stay involved. The intelligence to Ukraine is still flowing we should say, there are still some U.S. weapons flowing that are contracted under the Biden administration that I understand are still flowing. So that's also the good, but nobody quite understands whether that will remain the case, whether after Donald Trump's 50-day deadline, he will change his mind again.

And finally within Europe, as we saw on this panel where I, I had con, contrasting views from the former Icelandic Foreign Minister Thórdís Gylfadóttir and from Wolfgang Schmidt, who is the former head of the German chancellery, you know, very close to Olaf Scholz, this view that on Ukraine, Ukrainians must win.

They, we must help them win. We're still too weak. The more a German view, which was, let's be realistic, we need to think about a settlement. I think those two strands of thought still coexist and they are yet to be reconciled in Europe, if that makes sense.

Scott Anderson: So we've got this new plan where the Europeans have bought in to be funding American arm sales to Ukraine. I'm dramatically simplifying the overall ratio, essentially European money, American arms.

There's a strong logic to that because Americans have sort of unique capabilities, they've got already provided a bunch of equipment to the Ukrainians. So you have the classic supply tail problem that you have with any sort of arm sale arrangement. But that still means a lot of spending, I'm assuming that falls in the 5% cap for a lot of the countries are contributing to that year whatever the fund is that's gonna go to Ukraine, is still being channeled through the United States. It's not building an indigenous defense industry or capability. Something we've heard talk about the need for time and time again.

What are the barriers to that indigenous capability? What are the drivers for it in relation to Ukraine? Is it a Ukraine problem? Is there, and absent Ukraine is there gonna be a motivation to develop that capability within Europe? Are we seeing real steps in that direction?

Shashank Joshi: First of all, I think it's important to understand that whilst Europeans will buy some American weapons, that that is still a minority of overall European spending, I would guess.

The French, I think has said they will not be buying American weapons. This is quite un, quite understandable from a French perspective, very, you know, proud of their indigenous defense industry and would like to prioritize it. The Brits are spending about 3 billion a year on support to Ukraine. That is embedded within our defense budget. We, we count it as defense spending, right or wrongly. And I would imagine, you know, a lot of that is on British weapons. A lot of that is on you know, paying for, for a drawdown of capabilities we have in our stockpiles and then replacing it.

But I think, you know, it is true that there is an ongoing debate as to should Europe be buying whatever it takes to get weapons into the hands of its own armed forces, which is an acute problem given that the British Army has given away all its artillery to Ukraine? Should it be buying European weapons at whatever it takes to get it into the hands of the Ukrainians, and in some cases stuff we can't make like Patriot anti-ballistic missile interceptors?

Because it's so urgent you buy it from wherever it is, whether that's South Korea, the United States Turkey, or do you say this is a historic opportunity to put more money into a European defense industrial base and prioritize that? And that's what the French would like to see. That's what the European Commission would like to see to say, let's build shell capacity here, so we're not buying it from the outside.

The problem is twofold. One of them is if you need it now, there is stuff you just cannot buy in Europe. There's a capacity constraint, it's not a money constraint. You could throw billions of dollars at the problem. You are not going to buy lots of highly effective anti-ballistic missile interceptors from European company.

It isn't gonna happen. So you have to buy it from outside. If you want it now, if you want lots of tanks right now, you know, Rheinmetall, and, and, and others are not gonna be able to give you the whole stock that you need. You'll have to look to the outside world, which is why Poland is buying so many South Korean tanks. They need it now, not because they love South Korea.

The second problem, Scott, as you probably know very well, is that, you know, we're not a single market. We're a, we're a in when it comes to defense we're effectively a, a coalition of what, 30 plus countries, if you, depending on how you count the United Kingdom, Turkey, non-EU powers who are developing their own tanks, their own air defense systems, their own guns.

And there are some common projects, you know, we're building in the U.K., a six generation combat aircraft with the Italians and the Japanese. The French are building one with the Germans and the Spanish. There's a future main battle tank being collaborated with the French and the Germans. So many, many examples of collaborate, collaboration, stitching together defense industry. And that European Union is trying to encourage that by saying, you know, you need to do more of this in-house production, incontinent production, but ultimately we have a fragmented industry.

And it's easy to say from the outside, hey, why don't you guys just agree on building one type of submarine or one type of frigate until you go to the countries and the French say, sounds good, we'll build most of it right? And you can build the propeller at the back and others will say, the Spanish will say no, you do the propeller at the back, we'll do the rest of it.

So these defense industrial disagreements are very natural in a fragmented continent of 30 powers, many of whom have big mature defense industries of their own. Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, in the case of Saab and air power and very good jets. So again and again, you run into these fragmentation problems.

Scott Anderson: So arms is one part of the equation for a stronger indigenous European defense capability. But another part of it is and funding, which we see is maybe the most progress being made, at least.

So point in clarity commitments. The third point we have haven't heard a lot of talk about is cultural. It's the idea of military service, levels of military service, voluntary participation size of the military. It's unique in Europe in that you have a lot of different cultural perspective.

You have the Baltics, Scandinavian states where there is a strong program for mandatory public service, military service in most cases, although I know there are outs in various capacities particularly you look at Finland, you know, more recent NATO member strong, strong tradition in that regard.

For most of Europe, that's become a pretty alien idea. Military conscription participation rates historically low, although I know they've kind of ticked up in the last few years as I understand it. Are we seeing progress in that direction about moving towards finding new ways to develop a stronger military personnel capability, either as a standing military or as a reserve capacity? Which I, is obviously something that is really central to the American defense sort of capabilities that I'm not sure is as prevalent a concept in a lot of European, I don't believe it is although I'm not sure.

Shashank Joshi: I think you are absolutely right to identify the East/West split and there are countries outside of Eastern Europe that are renewing that old debate on, look, we're looking at Ukraine we know that our reg, regular army, regular armies can get chewed up in the field in a year of conflict. Something has to replace them. So we need to think about this.

Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, has tried to initiate a conversation on this. He struggled, I think in the U.K. Patrick Sanders, the one of the former Army chiefs, talked about, he didn't use the word conscription, but the press portrayed his words as implying conscription. And it caused a huge public ruckus that spooked Downing Street and the political leadership and they panicked. So it's hard to have a mature conversation on this without panicking societies that don't feel as though they are imminently at war, unless of course you are a frontline state where you feel the war is very close.

So there's that problem, and I think we're a very long way from solving it, very long way from solving it. The British Army, you know, we, in the latest defense review published a month ago. There is an aspiration to grow the army for the first time in years, but from 73,000 to 76,000. Tiny amount, but we're not even able to meet current targets.

So there's a recruitment problem here as well. How do you fix this? Is it more money? Is it a culture of service? We do not have the answer to this, but one thing I wanna say is I think, I like the way you frame this as it's the culture because it's not just a culture of service, military service, it's the whole culture of the military as a whole of, military power and the utility of military force.

And I want to give some credit where its due in other places, like the Germans are deploying a full brigade of forces, an armored brigade to Lithuania. Now to people who are not familiar with European history, that's a big deal. The German army is in the Baltics. There is some history there, right? You just have to look at the-

Scott Anderson: Awkward history. Yeah.

Shashank Joshi: Anyone, even with the passing familiarity of World War II, look, there's the map and there's the history of East Europe, know that that's the sensitive thing. Some, some, you know, dark things happen.

 So now to see them welcome with open arms enthusiastically and the Germans willing to do this, a country that you know, the first major, I think postwar operation was a Luftwaffe flying missions over Kosovo in ’99 in the air side, for example. This is not easy for the culture of Germany. It's not easy for the culture of others to welcome this. That's a huge change. I think we really have to identify that.

Now some places you talk to Baltic ministers and they'll, they'll openly say, yeah, the aim is to kill Russian. We want to kill Russians. You wouldn't get, you know, a British defense minister saying it in quite those terms, the culture's different. But I think we have to grow comfortable with the idea that war could happen to us. It could happen here, it’s not something that just happens far away.

And the other way this is manifest is much, much more thinking on domestic resilience. What happens if we get hit by missiles and cyber attacks like Ukraine? Do we have bunkers? Do we have redundancy? Do we have redundancy of communication in cabling? Do we know how to communicate to our public on staying calm? Those conversations are happening to a far greater extent, more than even just 18 months, two years ago. And I count that as part of the cultural shift that you are alluding to.

Scott Anderson: So we've seen this question of the European defense capability really rise to the fore since the first Trump administration and doubled down, amplified massively since Russia reservation of Ukraine, when for the first time in a generation war on Europe's threshold is major war, it was really a reality that people had to confront.

In both cases, this the driver for it was an idea that the American commitment was waning because of the Trump administration's kind of eccentric views towards alliances and towards Europe, because of the political constraints on, even under the Biden administration, continuing support for Ukraine at the levels, and then genuine disagreement to some extent about the types of support you give to Ukraine.

As you noted at the beginning of our conversation, there's a little bit of pressure has been alleviated there. There's a sense that even under the second Trump administration, the United States is not gonna run away from its security commitments in Europe. U.S. troops are still stationed there, there's no signs of major shifts in that regard yet, although we have three and a half more years, so that could change still.

Talk withdrawing from NATO, that sort of thing has really waned. We've got this big 5% target that checks a lot of boxes for Trump administration. Frankly, my sense is that European diplomats and NATO diplomats understand how to work the Trump administration more than they used to, and they do still have a couple quiet allies on high levels of the inside of the Trump administration helping to kind of echo their message and get it to the president and get it through to him.

Does that alleviate that pressure? Particularly if the Americans really remain committed to supporting Ukraine as the Trump administration, at least this week seems to be inclined to do, is that gonna undermine the quest for European defense capability? Are those the drivers for that indigenous capability that you need that sort of pressure to get through all the fractious national politics that Europe inherently has without the external pressure can you, can you bridge this?

Shashank Joshi: I think it's a, it's a really useful point because you started our conversation by saying Ukraine was an inflection point for Europe. And it was, but it cannot be avoided, we can't avoid pointing out that Ukraine's been going for three years.

The European zeitenwende, the kind of collective turning point is not really occurring in 2022, or 2023, or 2024, it’s the reelection of Donald Trump. Some might argue that that shames us, that it takes, it takes a U.S. president to trigger that rather than the Russian invasion of the continent. So that's, that's interesting, isn't it?

And, and, and you are right. If Trump is less scary, to put it simply, and we are less scared, maybe we take fewer dramatic steps. I think hopefully that's not the case because. We all understood we were kind of paralyzed by the magnitude of the task. We all know how important America's European security, not just in terms of raw and true numbers, but critical enabling capabilities, right?

We all know them by now. Air to air refueling, intelligence, geospatial, you know, geospatial capabilities, airlift, sealift, air power, suppression of air defenses. It's the whole thing that we can't do ourselves. Air defense is another one. We need about 10 years to build all that up.

So, on the one hand, you can get complacent and think, yeah, Trump's okay, he'll stick around, it'll go back to normal after he's left. We don’t have to worry about this. But I think the mood today is we have bought ourselves a bit of time, we must use this window to generate momentum. I think the spending commitments at NATO are real. 3.5% percent of defense, GDP on defense is a big uplift from the current levels, a huge uplift. You know, just to give you a picture of this, by the end of the decade on current trajectory, Germany will be spending twice as much on defense as Britain.

I can't tell you how remarkable that is from the perspective of the last 30 years in Europe. And by the way, all of that will go on conventional capabilities, whereas we spend, in the U.K., 20% of that on nuclear capabilities. So this is a real shift. So, so to directly answer the question, I don't know where the momentum will be lost as we have a more pliable administration, but I think that something has really changed in Europe this time.

Scott Anderson: So one last question for you. Looking further ahead, and this is a little bit of a hypothetical, but I think it's an interesting kind of thought exercise. Let's assume Europe gets closer to having a indigenous defense capability that meets its security needs against Russia, against other threats. You know, maybe it's not a rival for the United States, you know, massive military capabilities, but does enough that they don't no longer feel beholden to the American kind of security umbrella.

What does that do politically for Europe and Europe's foreign policy? You know, there was an idea really in the post-war era of Europe having an independent foreign policy. The idea of the West wasn't the natural concept it seems to so many now being a joint, U.S. European, broad vision of the world that in fact the United States was on one flank, you had the Soviet Union at the time the other flank, and Europe had kind of a different vision probably leaning a little bit toward the Americans than the, than Soviet Union, but an independent vision of foreign policy.

That has not really been a reality for most of the 20th century. Europeans don't agree with Americans obviously on lots, there's lots of points of disagreement. But they nonetheless have gone, you know, lockstep with each other on the big questions. And that has sometimes been painful for a number of Europeans 'cause that's entailed a lot of compromises or a lot of working with Americans, even though Americans do things they don't like, like invading Iraq.

And sometimes they pull some your allies along with them as well. Is a more indigenous defense capability, a vehicle for a truly independent European foreign policy, or are there other factors that are gonna lead to a continuation of U.S. European close coordination around the sort of issues? I mean, is that with a major power competition or something else?

I mean, what does a truly independent Europe on the defense side mean for your political and diplomatic?

Shashank Joshi: If we agree with the premise that we have a long period of transition which there is still considerable European dependency on America. I think that would be quite a constraining factor here. So I don't think that this gives Europe the license to say We can break with you on everything because we are self-sufficient now until we get to the 2030s and we really feel like we're in a new world.

I also feel like even in that situation of greater European self-sufficiency, it isn't gonna be a clean break. We're still gonna have a lot of European, American involvement in Europe. And I think these are going to be joint theaters. If there's a war in Asia, there are genuine concerns that Russia may take advantage in Europe and there will need to be a sort of joint approach to these kinds of questions in a conflict scenario as well.

So that gives me pause, but I don't think we can isolate that conversation to defense because what we have seen is not just in America, that is pulling back on its role is the primary guarantor of European security we're seeing in America more broadly, that is redefining its place in the world and is a, is basically not only abandoning that aspiration to a rules-based order, but views it as actively hostile to American interests on any number of things.

From the role of the United Nations, the role of the ICC on trade particularly and on trade, you see Europe very concerned. Basically a war with America over that issue, regardless of its dependency on defense. So I suspect that despite those defense dependencies, you will see a little bit more of this.

And the way it will manifest in the most interesting way is China policy. You know, do we see Europeans collectively say, should we be hedging more by reaching out to the Chinese, particularly to hedge mitigate our trading dependency on America? Or actually, is China just as much of a trading threat to us on these issues?

But on core issues like the Iranian nuclear program or Gaza on the Middle East, I think you are already seeing the Europeans break with the U.S. a little bit. But in the very long run, you know, let's say 2040s, if you do have a seriously more capable Europe, I think it's inevitable that it will give European leaders a certain confidence to defy Americans and defy American presidents in ways they haven't in the past, or at least only some of them have, thinking of the French over Iraq.

And I wonder if sometimes if the Americans have fully thought through what that looks like. Because you have the Biden administration that viewed allies as basically critical to its ability to compete with China, to have that scale. And the Trump administration views allies as this irritants, you know, nuisance free riding, you know, parasites.

And I don't know if they're prepared for that world where Europeans may break with them more sharply and aggressively, but maybe that simply won't be a problem within the lifespan of this administration. Eight years. Sorry, excuse me. Four years. I hope, three, three and a half years.

Scott Anderson: We'll, we'll see.

Shashank Joshi: I, I, I hope give, given the future of your constitutional system over which period, there will still be considerable dependencies. So I think these questions, as you say, for the very long run.

Scott Anderson: Perfect. Well, I think that's a great note to end on. Shashank, thanks for joining us here today on the Lawfare Podcast.

Shashank Joshi: Thank you so much for having me back on.

Scott Anderson: Now let's go to my conversation with Iris Ferguson, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resilience.

So Iris, you are now the Center for Strategic International Studies, but you were until recently, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Arctic and Global Resilience. I believe I have the sequence of those, right. That's an interesting thing to have a deputy assistant secretary of defense for, I think.

Talk to us about why you have somebody committed to the Arctic and its relationship to global resilience. Why those two concepts are joined in this one position in the agency responsible for our military strategy.

Iris Ferguson: Yeah, really great question. So the position came about, I think, through a couple of different drivers.

One was a growing recognition within the department about the increasing strategic importance of the Arctic, and the fact that if you didn't have an office dedicated to it. Specifically to integrate across the various components of the Department of the Defense that deal with the Arctic, all the different commands, the different services, and also the allies and partners that you would not necessarily have a cohesive strategy or be able to execute on a cohesive strategy.

The second is a, a huge congressional demand from specifically the Alaska delegation. And they actually wrote into one of the NDAAs a several years ago. The requirement to create some kind of office a DASD-like for the Arctic. And when the Biden administration created this office on Arctic issues, they also wanted to fold in global resilience as a whole.

So I think you can make the argument DASD offices are, are unique. There's also only so many of them

Scott Anderson: Right.

Iris Ferguson: And so if you're going to create one, you want them to do as much as they possibly can. And so you often have as much mission thrown into office as possible.

Scott Anderson: Open, open to somebody who held one of those positions, obviously

Iris Ferguson: In, indeed. And the global resilience part of the portfolio was really about trying to identify risk globally for our combatant commands from an environmental perspective thinking about different climate risk and drivers and instability that could be created.

But also about leveraging energy technology that was coming into market and how you could do so with your allies and partners with an eye towards interoperability, but also ensuring that the United States had in the Department of Defense had a strategic advantage in trying to leverage technology in a, in a rapid and, and fast way. We also were looking very closely at critical minerals and defense diplomacy as part of that side of the office as well.

Scott Anderson: So those seem like on the surface, three pretty distinct concepts. You know, energy, resilience, climate, I'm sure it fits in there to some extent, critical minerals and the Arctic. They are intricately interwoven.

Talk to us about how they're interwoven and why that makes the Arctic such a ripe space for major power competition, as has really proven to be of the last two to three years in particular.

Iris Ferguson: The, the Arctic is one of those places where it kind of has all of the things. That's what makes it exciting place to, to spend time intellectually, but also be a practitioner of. You've got homeland defense issues, you have national security issues, you've got missile defense, you've got allies and partners, and you also have environmental issues and you also have large numbers of resources at stake.

So that, you know, getting to your question, I think this interconnectivity of where they all overlap and what is U.S. interest and trying to secure those, that's the premise, right of, of some of these offices. And certainly of U.S. interests for the Arctic, it's part of our homeland. It's where we see a, a location that's can be vulnerable to our adversaries, who can hold our homeland at risk by having missiles that can come over the pole and attack us. It's why we have a lot of our missile defense architecture in the Arctic.

It's also a place to project power from, it's why we have an immense amount of our fighter capability in and around Alaska. But it's also a place where we wanna make sure that we have a strategic stronghold that we don't allow our competitors to, you know break the vulnerabilities that may exist there. And so ensuring that we are showing that we have the right defenses in place, ensuring that we have the right protections in place to protect our territory is really critical component.

And so this, this is why we wanna make sure that as we're posturing or we're putting forward resourcing decisions or various policy positions that we're thinking about, not only the military part of that, but also the broader like economic security and diplomatic security that the call us.

Scott Anderson: So the Arctic's a, a more dynamic environment than a lot of people might realize because we have climate change that's opening new waterways, opening new land that's accessing access the critical minerals among other resources, new maritime routes that can open up whole new corners of the world that aren't in the Arctic but otherwise previously didn't have routes to.

And importantly, the Arctic is one of those domains where two of the three big, major powers plus Europe major power in its own way although, you know, a little, not necessarily the same unitary concept, all have a seat right around the Arctic. So, talk to us about what we've been seeing in the major power competition domain in the Arctic in the last few years that's really changed as we've seen this dynamic environment.

We know the Trump administration has talked a lot about Greenland, which, you know, despite some criticisms of the way it's approached it did successfully identify in the first term, Greenland being a major strategic interest, and then the Biden administration doubled down on, to some extent, a lot of ways, reflecting this broader Arctic interest.

But we're hearing a lot about, in the context of Greenland and other Arctic issues, competition with Russia. So talk to us about what Russia's doing and why that's a source of concern for the United States and Europe to some.

Iris Ferguson: I think these changes that you're seeing in the Arctic are part of kind of a, a broader global, like look at some of our competitors and what they're up to, but you kind of see it like perhaps most acutely in the Arctic region.

Russia, you know, has a, a significant amount of territory in the Arctic region. So 25% of their GDP comes from the Arctic. They have real economic security issues, but also national security concerns that they have for the region. They have continued to invest heavily in the Arctic region, including looking at refurbishing of their military bases and a lot of their potentially offensive assets despite the attrition in Ukraine.

So you have you, I think there was an expectation that, well, maybe with the war in Ukraine, they wouldn't be able to invest as much, but we haven't necessarily seen that. It might have slowed, but there's still a heavy, heavy emphasis on building up the Northern Sea Route in particular.

And that's where China has come in pretty aggressively in terms of financing. A lot of the activity and a lot of the extraction of natural resources that have come out of the Northern Sea Route area. And including some recent deals that were announced with Russia and China on, like doubling down on, on trying to develop the Northern Sea Route.

China is a, an interesting character for the Arctic region. They've tried to insert themselves into larger governance mechanisms and trying to really exert their view of the world and that it, it being a global commons versus a place of national sovereignty, which obviously is the Arctic states, Arctic states really wanna kind of keep that closer to their chest. They say like, we should only be the ones that are deciding what's going on in the Arctic. We don't want others to be dictating what is happening in the region.

But China has tried to make the case that this is part of the global commons and therefore we should have a seat at trying to dictate what's going on in the region. We've seen them, like I said, have pretty heavy economic partnership with Russia. We've also seen them to try to have access to many of the Arctic states through various port infrastructure or mining infra-, mining possibilities in Greenland.

A lot of that has been turned down. There's actually a really good report out of Harvard on the last month that that really shined a light on where there has been Chinese investment in the Arctic and it's actually not been that much outside of Russia.

And that's largely due to the Arctic allies pushing back and having an eyes wide open approach or a little bit more of a cautionary approach as to the motivations from, for China and what they would want to be accessing there. And, you know maybe the potential for like a long-term, you know, foothold in the region versus it just being like a simple transaction.

Where there's been increased security challenges is the cooperation that we've seen between Russia and China. And that was something that has been a bit of eye-opening, especially for the Pentagon. We released the DOD Arctic strategy the first one in a number of years last summer in 2024, and just one week after that strategy was released, we saw the first ever combined bomber campaign between Russia and China off the coast of Alaska.

Prior to that, we've seen joint naval patrols. There's also a Coast Guard memorandum understanding. That kind of military cooperation has been very startling to the Department. And also I think it's one of the few areas in the world where you've seen that kind of partnership in, in and around the Arctic in particular, but globally, you have not seen that kind of partnership between the two of them.

So there's been a little bit of a, a, I thinking, I think, happening within the Department about how you respond to that effectively. And, you know, that's why we put out a DOD Arctic strategy to try to get after it.

Scott Anderson: So that's a wonderful picture you've painted about Russian Chinese coordination around a, a fairly consolidated strategic vision for the Arctic. For a long time, I think it's fair to say the Biden administration really emphasized working, coordinating with other Arctic allies. Europe, and I neglected to mention Canada of course made very important Arctic power as well, traditional allies of the United States, close allies of the United States.

But we have seen some friction with that in the new administration. Greenland being a point of friction, obviously friction around trade issues, other issues with Canada. How does the Trump administration's vision of advancing U.S.  interest in the Arctic differ from the Biden administrations in good ways and bad?

Are they less reliant on allies? Is it just a different type of relationship with allies and what are they doing instead of working through allies to advance U.S. interests?

Iris Ferguson: Yeah, I think this is, it's a bit of a, like murky picture. So far it, it, it feels like from someone who's like kinda on the outside looking in at some of the, the rhetoric that we've seen.

I think, you know, on one hand you see a real emphasis on homeland defense and on protecting American interests and on actual investments. And so in that, in that sense, like I want to give credit to the Trump administration for really like moving quickly to some extent and putting some real money behind homeland defense beyond just rhetoric.

And that's including through potentially Golden Dome that will always have to be priority trade-offs within the department to kind of see some of that come to fruition. They've put investments into icebreakers, which has long been a challenge to get across the, the budgetary line. They're looking at added infrastructure within Alaska and in the Arctic in particular. Those are, I think, welcome additions to ensuring that the United States is actually looking after its homeland and Arctic priorities on the same.

Another turn, I, I think some of the rhetoric towards our allies and partners has not been incredibly helpful. I mean, anyone that just looks at the Arctic region recognizes that it's incredibly expensive. It's very hard to operate and you really cannot–

Scott Anderson: I hear it's a little cold there.

Iris Ferguson: It’s a little cold. Yeah. It's, and it's just, it's, it's really tricky from a material perspective. It also from a survivability perspective, and then the, the, the build times and their, the costs. There's like four times what is normal.

And so you need to rely on your allies and partners not only for potential capability acquisition and trying to have interoperability with one another, but they have a lot of experience operating in the region that you can leverage. There also is they, they can hold down the fort in other parts of the Arctic that you might not be able to get to, and you can kind of rely on them.

When there's rhetoric that tries to erodes at that trust that I, I, that's not helpful, right? And so I, you know, I think that they, there needs to be a hard look in what is, of like, what we're achieving by some of the rhetoric and making sure that we're, that I think we're still maintaining the partnership that's really requisite to ensure U.S. arctic security 'cause it's heavily reliant on our allies and partners.

Scott Anderson: So we have a clear sense the Arctic is a priority. I think ev, everybody seems to recognize that kind of across the political spectrum. Trump administration certainly does, has for a while now, since Trump 1.0 is a real emphasis there. We know we have China and Russia prioritizing it, and any place where you see these countries entering into a new territory.

A question that comes to my mind, maybe 'cause I'm an international lawyer by training so it comes to it, is the question of governance. How do you channel competition conflict, competing claims in a way that can avoid having to resort to force arms among other priorities, hopefully achieving some of your social justice and other objectives as well.

So talk about the governance structure in the Arctic. What do we have that works? What do we have that doesn't work? And how did the Biden administration, is the Trump administration engaging in?

Iris Ferguson: Yeah, and the governance of the Arctic is, is, is a little bit tricky and it's evolved over time. And the preeminent governance structure for the region is the Arctic Council, and that's primarily led out of the State Department. And it's primarily around, you know safety and science and environmental safety.

And it's really critical for information sharing and for working on a myriad of projects. Also building trust with our all the Arctic partners. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it really caused a, a pause to the efficacy of the Arctic Council.

They were not allowed to basically participate in Arctic council meetings. And I, and there's been a, a, a heavy look at what the Russian participation could, should look like going forward. It's, it's hard because, you know, I think that there are a lot of Arctic followers and advocates that really want the Arctic to be exceptional. They want to have it be a place of peace and stability.

But the reality is, is that it's just part of the globe. We're always competing with other nation states, and so, you know, I think you, you want on one hand to keep the, the region stable and secure and leverage existing governance mechanisms where they can be, but also recognize the realism of what other countries are doing.

And so, you know, I think the Arctic Council will continue to play a role in building rapport and have scientific projects that go forward with one another. And unclear quite frankly what this administration's policy is towards Russia. It seems to evolve quite frequently based off of the level of trust between Putin and between Trump.

And so that's a bit of an unknown is, you know, where Russia will fall and where Arctic will fall in the broad equation of partnerships. I think you even saw in some of the Ukraine talks early on, could, could, could there be a deal on, on the Arctic to help build economic prosperity between the United States and Russia and have the Arctic be a place of cooperation. That, that, that's one angle.

And then there's another, the other side is to say like, we don't need to give any favors to Russia because they're, they, they don't deserve to be partnered with at all. So unclear where this administration falls with that. What has been challenging about the Arctic Council is that it doesn't include security and it very intentionally doesn't have security as part of the conversation. The military is not allowed in.

And so one of the things that we did when I in the DASD-ship position was to build a forum that could actually talk about Arctic security. And we built the Arctic Security Policy Roundtable, which was my counterparts from the other Arctic allies to, to be able to talk about the threat picture, be able to share intelligence, to be able to say, is this, are you seeing what we're seeing?

And I think that's increasingly important because the European Arctic is not the same as the North American Arctic. The European Arctic has more population, it's a little bit warmer. They also don't have the same types of activity as what happen is happening over in the North American Arctic.

I remember very vividly, several years ago, going to one of the Arctic forums and talking to some counterparts from Arctic nations talking about what we were seeing in Alaska, this cooperation with Russia and China, that China was actively doing a lot of research off the coast of Alaska. And I remember one of the, my counterparts from another nation saying, they’re, what do you mean? China's not active in the Arctic?

And I was thinking, wow, you are not seeing the world the same way that we are. We have a very different vantage of what the Arctic means. And so really that forum was meant to try to build a common picture and look at where we can start to work with one another.

And I think NATO is a great, you know, another, you know, game changing geopolitical change was the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO. And NATO really starting to grapple with what it means to protect the northern flank. And you heard here at Aspen Security Forum that Condoleezza Rice confessing herself that as secretary of state, she didn't spend as much time on the Arctic as she probably could have.

But that one of the silver linings of the invasion of Ukraine has been a really hard concerted effort in, in and amongst the European partners to take a look at what we need. And I think that NATO has a real possibility to start to think about exercises and planning and capability advocacy that kind of benefits not only the European nations, but also obviously Canada and the U.S. by getting after some of our collective security interests.

Scott Anderson: So I'm gonna do the thing that I know policymakers and think tankers hate the worst sort of question, which is I want you to look into the future and predict things, though feel free to plead the fifth on any part of this.

We have a certain trajectory around the Arctic. It's one towards enhanced competition, nothing hot yet. But you do hear about tensions, incidents, increasing incidents of kind of gray warfare particularly, I would say on behalf by the Russians, ex-, seeking to exercise influence, pushback, disabled certain activities.

Meanwhile, you've seen the United States and its allies use economic sanctions to severely delay, although not stop LNG development in the Arctic by Russia as part of kind of the broader effort to target energy infrastructure, I'm sure its military buildup has been slowed by sanctions to some degree as well. So there clearly is a strong element of direct competition happening.

Where does that lead us in 10 years? Is it that the Arctic ceases to be what it has been thus far for a lot of the 20th century, which is something like a global commons? Primarily, like you said, a focus of scientific research, but instead it becomes another territory where there are resources and maritime routes and these sorts of tensions? How complicated does that get? How sustainable does, does that get?

Where is our current trajectory leading and how big a problem is that, could that be? Or is there kind of a, a natural equilibrium to settle into among the Arctic states that they might be able to return to? Like I said, it's a question everyone hates, so yeah, feel free to flee the fifth on every part of it.

Iris Ferguson: No, no, no. I, no, I, but I, I appreciate it because it's, you know, you kind of have to grapple with those kind of questions as you think about like, what does po, what does right policy look like to get you to the, your end state that you want it to be, right?

I think that there's a couple of drivers that are like unstoppable, and one of those is climate change, right? I think we've tried as a globe to prevent it, but it's still happening. So there's a bit of climate realism happening about what is going to happen when inevitably ice starts to break faster. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world. There's still a lot of lack of clarity around some of the predictive modeling.

I don't know the, the cuts that recently have been announced as some of the scientific efforts by the Trump administration are not great for our security interests in the sense that we don't necessarily, won’t necessarily know or have as many sensors out in and around the region to be able to accurately predict changes.

That being said, the, some of the studies have shown that by 2050 it'll be ice free. And there's obviously, there's nuance to ice free. There's still ice. It's just a matter of it being more navigable year-round versus it just being in parts of the year. And the transpolar route is the one that goes across the pole, which was, is kind of, that's the game changing route that, that were to come to fruition. That is game changing for global trade routes, just in general. What does that infrastructure look like that surrounds that opportunity? I think that's, that's what, we'll, we'll see what happens in the next 10 years.

What's game changing, and this is somewhat partially due to the Trump administration and the rhetoric around allies and partners, is that there's a real emphasis from our partners in taking a hard look at what they need themselves domestically. So you see obviously the increase in spending from our European partners in NATO, but you also see that with Canada.

You see a dramatic declarations of like increasing defense spending and infrastructure spending by, you know, three, four times what it was predicted to be before. So I think a lot of that potential funding will go towards infrastructure and in capabilities in the Arctic region in particular. And so you'll be able to access the region with greater ease and with higher levels of safety than you have, especially in the North American Arctic before, if I were to look, you know, 10, 20 years down the line.

And I think for us to make sure that we're protecting our interests. We need to make sure that we have the right domain awareness assets, that we're seeing threats effectively, but that we're also investing in the right communications, architecture, and the right search and rescue styles of architecture, understanding how to detect potential environmental disasters, which inevitably with higher human footprint, there's a higher likelihood of that, that happening.

So my, my hope is that your, this region is able to develop peacefully and stably, where every actor is cognizant of what one another is doing, and so that there's a lack of misinterpretation that could lead to escalation. I will say that, that no one wants to go to war in the Arctic. It's would be terrible.

Scott Anderson: Very few places to go to war would not be terrible.

Iris Ferguson: Yeah.

Scott Anderson: But fair enough, but particularly terrible, perhaps in the Arctic. Well, a phenomenally interesting part of the world and a phenomenally interesting conversation about it. Thank you, Iris, for joining us.

Iris Ferguson: Yeah, thank you. Pleasure to be here.

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