Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration, and the Battle of Power at the Top of the World, Mulvaney - B-

          This book is a hybrid, examining both the current competition over Arctic shipping lanes, the consequences of a shrinking ice pack, and the brutal history of Arctic exploration. Much of Europe’s exploration of the Americas was driven by a desire to find a route to Asia. From the late fifteenth century through the nineteenth, the English searched for a Northwest Passage and unceremoniously failed, losing hundreds of lives in the process. Today, sailing from Amsterdam to Yokohama via the Northwest Passage would be 4,500 miles shorter than the route through the Panama Canal; the same is true of the Northeast Passage compared with the Suez Canal. That said, we are still at a point where these routes are open only a few months each year. Arctic sea ice retreats more with each passing year and is now roughly half of what it was fifty years ago.

         The first person to successfully sail the Northwest Passage was Roald Amundsen, and others followed in the early decades of the twentieth century. Throughout the first half of the century, both Canada and Denmark began asserting control over their northern regions, and Canada proclaimed sovereignty over every island stretching north to the Pole. At the dawn of the Cold War, the United States and Canada jointly constructed a line of radar listening stations in the far north. Canada has sought to impose controls over what it considers its territorial waters, while the United States argues that the Passage should be treated as international waters.

          The Northeast Passage extends for 3,000 miles across the top of Russia, from Siberia to Murmansk, which is ice-free year-round and is known as the headquarters of the Northeast Passage. The first person to travel the full length of the passage was a Finn who sailed west to east in 1878. Russia began focusing on expanding the Northern Sea Route in the final decades of the old regime. Much later, Gorbachev invited the world to sail the route. Putin’s Russia has sought both to expand use of the NSR and to control and manage it, charging fees for icebreaker escorts.

         Many are intrigued by a possible route much farther north than the coasts of Canada and Russia, one that “would traverse the very top of the world.” A route over the Pole long seemed hopeless, until sea ice began to melt faster than anyone anticipated. In all likelihood, however, it will not become consistently reliable until the end of the century. The decades that must pass before this becomes a reality lie beyond our collective ability to foresee.