The Arctic is no longer on the periphery of global affairs. Climate change evokes images of a resource-rich region increasingly accessible to outside actors. Technological advancement is providing competitors and adversaries with new strategic delivery systems which mean that North America is “no longer a sanctuary.” Time and space, including ballistic trajectories, make the Arctic a likely thoroughfare for a kinetic attack on the United States or Canada. In an era of renewed strategic competition, the risk of unintended escalation or the spillover of global conflict into the region cannot be dismissed.
Emerging thought leaders can study the Arctic and North in the abstract in distant classrooms, but our experiences in the region convince us that nothing can replace being there. While we often equate northern challenges with extreme cold weather, the practical realities associated with remoteness, sparse infrastructure, and vast distances are best understood by seeing it with one’s own eyes and learning from the people who live and operate in the region.
In November 2024, we organized an Alaska/Yukon Field School on Strengthening Canada-US Arctic Defence and Security Cooperation and Policy, bringing twelve cadets from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) together with nine students from universities across Canada on an 1100-km trip from Anchorage to Whitehorse.1 Along the way, we visited the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), received a commander’s brief at Eielson Air Force Base, and interacted with Canadian Rangers in Whitehorse, before holding culminating activities at Yukon University. Students engaged with a diverse array of northern researchers and practitioners with whom they learned about the multifaceted nature of Arctic security, various forms of expertise that contribute to the national defence and security enterprise, and the importance of Whole of Society approaches guided by the spirit of “nothing about us, without us” – assuring that Northern citizens are continuously engaged in planning, preparedness, and decision making.
Students came to the activity aware that the Arctic has long been a conduit through which Russian strategic weapons could pass on their way to southern Canada and the lower forty-eight states. They also were aware that the threat of kinetic attack by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasing, and that both countries were fielding or testing advanced weapon systems which Canada and the United States cannot defeat with existing systems. They learned that the threat to the American Arctic had aspects that are distinct from the Canadian threat environment. The implications of these differences are often overlooked or downplayed by security commentators.
Students noted the significant military presence in Alaska compared to the Yukon. Elmendorf and Eielson Air Force Bases are huge, populated by fleets of advanced aircraft and supported by extensive critical military infrastructure. The commander’s brief unpacked for field school participants that this significant air power has two major roles. The first is to deter Russia and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and defend Alaska, if necessary, from a kinetic attack. The second role is to project force into the Pacific region in the event of war given the curvature of the earth and Alaska’s situatedness in the North Pacific - which explains recent suggestions that the Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) wants to reopen a base at Adak on the Aleutian Islands chain.2
At Eielson participants realized that Alaska is in the crosshairs of both the PRC and Russia in a way that Northern Canada is not. Alaska is the western flank of USNORTHCOM, charged primarily with defending the US homeland from attack. In the event of war with either Russia, the PRC, or both, USNORTHCOM can use Alaskan military power to intercept attacking bombers and missiles passing through its aerospace on their way deep into Canada and the US. Northern Canada shares this threat, and Canadian or NORAD military infrastructure like the North Warning System (NWS) is geared towards detecting and tracking threats passing through the Canadian Arctic destined for targets in the south. Geographical distinctions matter. Because Alaska also represents the northern flank of INDOPACOM, in the event of a conflict with the PRC, the US will project power from Alaska into the Pacific theatre. This creates an extremely strong incentive for the PRC to try and check that power projection capability. Technological advancement and increasing PRC military spending is giving it a greater range and depth of options to shoot the proverbial archer in Alaska before it can fire its arrows into the Pacific, as well as to thwart resupply of forward-deployed US forces in the state. This means Alaska must defend against these threats to it.
The Canadian Arctic has no power projection capabilities permanently stationed in it. Accordingly, in the event of war in the Pacific, there is much less incentive for the PRC to launch attacks directly against Canada’s northern territories. What are the implications for Canada’s defence posture?
The kinetic threat that the PRC poses to the Western North American Arctic is different for the US than for Canada. Alaska is a strategic hinge of USNORTHCOM and INDOPACOM, thus making it a geography in which the PRC would seek to disrupt US power projection capabilities into the Indo-Pacific region (the PRC’s own centre of gravity). This places distinct demands on Canada in terms of its contributions to NORAD modernization and how possible future cooperation on a “Golden Dome” missile defence system could work to detect, deter, and defend against threats through and to the North American Arctic. While the US must address probable PRC threats to and through its Western Arctic, Canada should focus on PRC threats through that subregion that would be intended to strike strategic targets further south in Canada or the continental United States.
While US strategic documents gesture towards these distinct dynamics, it was not until our group visited Alaska and spoke with practitioners that we gleaned this insight relative to Canada’s Western Arctic. Students left the Alaska/Yukon Field School with a new appreciation for how NATO’s “western flank” fits into continental and international defence.
The participants in the field school developed a greater appreciation of how overall levels of development and infrastructure investment shape the Arctic experience for both civilian and military transportation. The vast breadth of Alaska and Canada’s northern territories, sparse populations, and infrastructure underinvestment places limits on transportation routing options. The Yukon Territory maintains approximately 4,800 kilometres of all-season highways that connect every local community, apart from the most northerly community, Old Crow, which is served exclusively by air. Participants learned how climate change will continue to have compounding effects on transportation systems and related infrastructure and exacerbate the need to address existing infrastructure deficiencies. For example, warming and thawing of ice-rich permafrost (which we learned about in a remarkable guided tour of the Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility near Fairbanks, operated by the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory as part of its mission for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center) has led to ground settlement, slope instability, drainage issues, and road cracking.
The field school demonstrated the importance of providing experiential learning opportunities for emerging thought leaders to discern challenges and policy options in the shared Canada-US Arctic defence space. Having considered geography, cultures, and history in place, we hope that the participants will contemplate and strive to avoid past mistakes when the priorities of local populations and the particularities of place were overlooked or dismissed. Taken together, the opportunities, challenges, increased competition, and risks associated with a more accessible (and unpredictable) Arctic require a greater fidelity in anticipating and preparing to address different threats through, to, and in North American Arctic regions.
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Dr. Ryan Dean is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Canadian Maritime Security Network (CMSN) at the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University and a Network Coordinator with the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN) at Trent University.
Dr. P. Whitney Lackenbauer is Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Study of the Canadian North and Professor in the School for the Study of Canada at Trent University. He was Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel of 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories from 2014-2020 and was reappointed to this position from 2022-2025. He is also a Fellow with the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary History at the University of Toronto; the Arctic Institute of North America; the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary; and an adjunct professor with the Brian Mulroney Institute for Government at St. Francis Xavier University and the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience, School of Management, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Whitney specializes in Arctic security, sovereignty and governance issues, modern Canadian military and diplomatic history, and Indigenous-state relations. Whitney has (co-) written or (co-) edited more than sixty books and more than one hundred academic articles and chapters.
1 - Lackenbauer, P. Whitney. Strengthening Canada-US Arctic Defence and Security Cooperation and Policy through Youth Experiential Learning. NAADSN, 9 June 2025, https://www.naadsn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/24nov-Lackenbauer-MINDS-TEG-Report-Alaska-Yukon-Field-School.pdf.
2 - Thompson, John. “U.S. Military Top Brass Look to Reopen Strategic Base on the Aleutians.” Alaska’s News Source, 11 Apr. 2025, https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/04/11/us-military-top-brass-look-reopen-strategic-base-aleutians/.