The drama over how far U.S. President Donald Trump would go to acquire Greenland seems to have come and gone. But it’s still worth discussing a longer-term issue: What is the ideal Arctic policy for the United States, and how serious is the challenge posed by China and Russia?

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with a leading Arctic expert, Heather Conley, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and led the German Marshall Fund for nearly three years. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

The drama over how far U.S. President Donald Trump would go to acquire Greenland seems to have come and gone. But it’s still worth discussing a longer-term issue: What is the ideal Arctic policy for the United States, and how serious is the challenge posed by China and Russia?

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with a leading Arctic expert, Heather Conley, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and led the German Marshall Fund for nearly three years. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: So, why does Greenland matter so much?

Heather Conley: Location, location, location. It is strategically positioned in the North Atlantic and is a gateway to the Arctic. As the Cold War began, that strategic location became very critical to detect Soviet missiles, now Russian missiles. It’s also a key location to detect Russian submarines, playing a critical role in the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap to detect those submarines before they got too close to the eastern coast.

RA: And, of course, the melting Arctic ice makes Greenland’s location even more salient. How much of a threat do Russia and China actually pose to Greenland?

HC: Russia has begun to shift its military posture in the Russian Arctic, building new military installations in their far archipelago Franz Josef Land, modernizing their nuclear submarines, strike capabilities, and their new hypersonic missiles. So, Russia is attempting to recreate that Soviet-like threat, with both missile and nuclear submarine capabilities. We’re also seeing a real uptick in hybrid activities, though not in Greenland per se. They’ve been concentrated in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago on the Svalbard region. We’re seeing dual-use capabilities on their shadow tankers.

China’s role is different and needs to be watched very, very closely. We’re seeing China’s presence in the Arctic right now in science and commercial matters. But similar to the Russians, there’s a lot of dual-use work. China is using manned submersibles as the research vessels in the Arctic. They are doing a lot of scientific research on the seabed floor, which could be used in future seabed mining, acoustic use potentially for a future submarine fleet that could come that far, and potentially disrupting communication. It’s a longer-term play.

And right now, Russia and China are working together in very new and different ways. But that activity is not in the North Atlantic Arctic. It’s actually in the North Pacific Arctic near Alaska.

RA: Talk about the 1951 pact between the United States and Denmark. What has that agreement actually enabled the U.S. military to do, and how much of that capacity has been utilized so far?

HC: The history here is super important. In 1946, the Truman administration did make a very quiet offer to purchase Greenland, because of the vital role that Greenland played during the Second World War. So again, there’s always a kernel of truth in saying past presidents had expressed interest. The Greenlandic and Danish governments said politely, quietly, “No, thank you.” And then, three years later, in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded. So you had........

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