At 66 degrees north, change is afoot: A six-part series on the Arctic region

For centuries, the Arctic and the North Pole have been associated with images of a distant, far-off land of icy wilderness, polar bears and limited human presence.

But now, the polar ice cap in the Arctic is melting. These age-old images are fading in the minds of policy makers as sea water emerges in this once inaccessible part of the globe. The Arctic five – Russia, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), Canada and the United States – want to tap the estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and create new shipping routes to fundamentally shift the dynamics of world trade away from the Middle East and Southeast Asia to northern Europe and North America.

“We see it as a strategic challenge and if we ignore that challenge it will become a crisis,” said Adm. David Titley, director of the Task Force on Climate Change with the office of the Oceanographer for the U.S. Navy.

In 2009, the United States declared a fundamental national security interest in the Arctic region, in its National Security Presidential Directive 66 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 25 and stated its preparedness to operate independently or with others to safeguard these interests.

The Arctic region will, for the next several decades, continue to hover somewhere between a symbol of cooperation among nations and the next most contentious territorial dispute. The unique and daunting challenges of an unfamiliar terrain may promote collaboration but competing ownership claims by countries on oil or natural gas deposits or newly ice-free trade routes could tip the scales towards conflict.