KODIAK, Alaska—At Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, the USCGC Stratton, a 418-foot national security cutter, was hemmed into port by a thin layer of ice that had formed overnight in the January cold. Named for the U.S. Coast Guard’s first female officer, Dorothy Stratton, the ship was not designed for ice; its home port is in Alameda, California. After serving missions in the Indo-Pacific, it was brought to Alaska because it was available.
Soon the sun would rise, and the ice would surely melt, the junior officers surmised from the weather decks. The commanding officer nevertheless approved the use of a local tugboat to weave in front of the cutter, breaking up the wafer-like shards of ice as the Stratton steamed away from shore and embarked toward the Bering Sea.
In the last decade, as melting ice created opportunities for fishing and extraction, the Arctic has transformed from a zone of cooperation to one of geopolitical upheaval, where Russia, China, India, and Turkey, among others, are expanding their footprints to match their global ambitions. But the United States is now playing catch-up in a region where it once held significant sway.
One of the Coast Guard’s unofficial mottos is “We do more with less.” True to form, the United States faces a serious shortage of icebreaker ships, which are critical for performing polar missions, leaving national security cutters and other vessels like the Stratton that are not ice-capable with an outsized role in the country’s scramble to compete in the high north. For the 16 days I spent aboard the Stratton this year, it was the sole Coast Guard ship operating in the Bering Sea, conducting fishery inspections aboard trawlers, training with search and rescue helicopter crews, and monitoring the Russian maritime border.
Although the Stratton’s crew was up to this task, their equipment was not. A brief tour aboard the cutter shed light on the Coast Guard’s operational limitations and resource constraints. Unless Washington significantly shifts its approach, the Stratton will remain a microcosm of the United States’ journey in the Arctic: a once dominant force that can no longer effectively assert its interests in a region undergoing rapid transformation.
During the Cold War, the United States invested in Alaska as a crucial fixture of the country’s future. Of these investments, one of the most significant was the construction of the Dalton Highway in 1974, which paved the way for the controversial Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the U.S. entry as a major player in the global oil trade. Recognizing Alaska’s potential as a linchpin of national defense, leaders also invested heavily in the region’s security. In 1957, the United States began operating a northern network of early warning defense systems called the Distant Early Warning Line, and in 1958, it founded what became known as the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, such exigencies seemed excessive. The north once again became a domain for partnership among Arctic countries, a period that many call “Arctic exceptionalism”—or, as the Norwegians put it, “high north, low tension.”
But after the turn of the millennium, under President Vladimir Putin, Russia took a more assertive stance in the Arctic, modernizing Cold War-era military installations and increasing its testing of hypersonic munitions. In a telling display in 2007, Russian divers planted their national flag on the North Pole’s seabed. Russia wasn’t alone in its heightened interest, and soon even countries without Arctic territory wanted in on the action. China expanded its icebreaker fleet and sought to fund its Polar Silk Road infrastructure projects across Scandinavia and Greenland (though those efforts were blocked by Western intervention). Even India recently drafted its first Arctic strategy, while Turkey ratified a treaty giving its citizens commercial and recreational access to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
Over the past decade, the United States lagged behind, focusing instead on the challenges posed to its interests in the Middle East, the South China Sea, and Ukraine. Its Arctic early warning system became outdated. Infrastructure off the coast of Alaska that climatologists use to predict typhoons remained uninstalled, seen as a luxury that the state and federal governments could not afford. In 2020, an engine fire in the sole Coast Guard Arctic icebreaker nearly scuttled a plan to retrieve scientific instruments and data from vessels moored in the Arctic Ocean. Two years later, a Defense Department inspector general report revealed substantial issues with the structural integrity of runways and barracks of U.S. bases across the Arctic and sub-Arctic.
Until recently, U.S. policymakers had little interest in reinstating lost Arctic competence. Only in the last three years—once Washington noticed the advances being made by China and Russia—have lawmakers and military leaders begun to formulate a cohesive Arctic strategy, and it shows.
On patrol with the Stratton, the effects of this delay were apparent. The warm-weather crew struggled to adapt to the climate, having recently returned from warmer Indo-Pacific climates. The resilient group deiced its patrol boats and the helicopter pad tie-downs with a concoction conceived through trial and error. “Happy lights,” which are supposed to boost serotonin levels, were placed around the interior of the ship to help the crew overcome the shorter days. But the crew often turned the lights off; with only a few hours of natural daylight and few portholes on the ship through which to view it anyway, the lights did not do much.
The Coast Guard is the United States’ most neglected national defense asset. It is woefully under-resourced, especially in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, where systemic issues are hindering U.S. hopes of being a major power.
First and foremost is its limited icebreaker fleet. The United States has only two working icebreakers. Of these two, only one, the USCGC Healy, is primarily deployed to the Arctic; the other, the USCGC Polar Star, is deployed to Antarctica. By comparison, Russia, which has a significant Arctic Ocean shoreline, has more than 50 icebreakers, while China has two capable of Arctic missions and at least one more that will be completed by next year.
Coast Guard and defense officials have repeatedly testified before Congress that the service requires at least six polar icebreakers, three of which would be as ice-capable as the Healy, which has been in service for 27 years. The program has suffered nearly a decade of delays because of project mismanagement and a lack of funds. As one former diplomat told me, “A strategy without budget is hallucination.” The first boat under the Polar Security Cutter program was supposed to be delivered by this year. The new estimated arrival date, officials told me, will more likely be 2030.
“Once we have the detailed design, it will be several years—three plus—to begin, to get completion on that ship,” Adm. Linda Fagan, the commandant of the Coast Guard, told Congress last April. “I would give you a date if I had one.”
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has long warned that the U.S. government and military, including the Coast Guard, have made serious miscalculations in their Arctic efforts. For one, the Coast Guard’s acquisition process for new boats is hampered by continual changes to design and a failure to contract competent shipbuilders. Moreover, the GAO found in a 2023 report that discontinuity among Arctic leadership in the State Department and a failure by the Coast Guard to improve its capability gaps “hinder implementation of U.S. Arctic priorities outlined in the 2022 strategy.”
Far more than national security is at stake. The Arctic is a zone of great economic importance for the United States. The Bering Sea alone provides the United States with 60 percent of its fisheries, not to mention substantial oil and natural gas revenue. An Arctic presence is also important for achieving U.S. climate goals. Helping to reduce or eliminate emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon in the Arctic protects carbon-storing habitats such as the tundra, forests, and coastal marshes.
Capt. Brian Krautler, the Stratton’s commanding officer, knows these problems well. Having previously served on Arctic vessels, he was perhaps the ideal officer to lead the Stratton on this unfamiliar mission. After a boarding team was recalled due to heavy seas and an overiced vessel, Krautler lamented the constraints under which he was working. “We are an Arctic nation that doesn’t know how to be an Arctic nation,” he said.
The Stratton reached its first port call in Unalaska, a sleepy fishing town home to the port of Dutch Harbor. Signs around Unalaska declare, “Welcome to the #1 Commercial Fishing Port in the United States.” The port is largely forgotten by Washington and federal entities in the region, but there is evidence all around of its onetime importance to U.S. national security: Concrete pillboxes from World War II line the roads, and trenches mark the hillocks around the harbor.
As Washington pivoted away from the Arctic, Alaska and its Native communities have become more marginalized. Vincent Tutiakoff, the mayor of Unalaska, is particularly frustrated by the shift. Even though Washington made promises to grant greater access to federal resources to support Indigenous communities, it has evaded responsibility for environmental cleanup initiatives and failed to adequately address climate change.
Federal and state governments have virtually abandoned all development opportunities in Unalaska, and initiatives from fish processing plants to a geothermal energy project have been hindered by the U.S. Energy Department’s sluggish response to its Arctic Energy Office’s open call for funding opportunities. “I don’t know what they’re doing,” Tutiakoff said of state and federal agencies.
Making matters worse, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving ahead to make the northern Alaska city of Nome the site of the nation’s next deep-water port rather than build infrastructure near Unalaska, the gateway to the American Arctic and the port of call for the few patrol ships tasked with its security. It seems that the decision was based on the accessibility needs of cruise ships; Unalaska is not necessarily a vacation destination.
By failing to invest in places like Unalaska, the United States is hobbling its own chances for growth. The region could be home to major advances in the green energy transition or cloud computing storage, but without investment this potential will be lost.
In the last year, the United States has tried to claw back some of what it has lost to atrophy. It has inched closer to confirming the appointment of Mike Sfraga as the first U.S. ambassador-at-large to the Arctic. In March, the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy participated in NATO exercises in the Arctic region of Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The U.S. Defense Department hosted an Arctic dialogue in January ahead of the anticipated release of a revised Arctic strategy, and the State Department signed a flurry of defense cooperation agreements with Nordic allies late last year.
Nevertheless, it has a long way to go. Tethered to the docks at Dutch Harbor, the weather-worn Stratton reflected the gap between the United States’ Arctic capabilities and its ambitions. Its paint was chipped by wind and waves, and a generator needed a replacement part from California. Much of the crew had never been to Alaska before. On the day the ship pulled into port, the crew milled about, gawking at a bald eagle that alighted on the bow and taking advantage of their few days in port before setting out again into hazardous conditions.
“I know we’re supposed to do more with less,” a steward aboard the Stratton told me, “but it’s hard.”
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