Russia and China’s cooperation in the Arctic is a rising nuclear threat – POLITICO

Liselotte Odgaard is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. Her work focuses on U.S.-China-Europe relations, including NATO-China relations; Chinese foreign, security, and defense policy; Indo-Pacific security; and the geopolitics of the Arctic region.

As the Russia-China axis further aligns itself against the U.S. and its NATO allies, the power struggle has expanded to a new, previously ice-locked frontier: the Arctic.

When American fighters intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers in the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over Alaska in July, the unprecedented move underscored this increasingly assertive and expansive partnership. And while Beijing and Moscow have been working to establish a strategic foothold in the region for more than a decade, Washington and Brussels are just now waking up to the threat.