With the second Trump administration pulling back from multiple international treaties related to the environment and announcing plans to increase fossil fuel production, the U.S. is embarking on a shift in framing away from the Biden administration, which, like the overwhelming majority of scientists, identified climate change as an “existential threat.” President Donald Trump seems poised to recognize climate change only as a minor problem to be managed or an opportunity to exploit.
However, if Trump does decide to embrace a warming world, it will not be Washington that benefits the most, but America’s adversaries. Today, the U.S. is underprepared to defend the homeland in the Arctic or benefit competitively from increased economic development in the region. In contrast, Russia has significant military and infrastructure across the region. A shift in administration posture on climate change risk also means surrendering international influence and standing on the topic, especially in the Indo-Pacific.
With the second Trump administration pulling back from multiple international treaties related to the environment and announcing plans to increase fossil fuel production, the U.S. is embarking on a shift in framing away from the Biden administration, which, like the overwhelming majority of scientists, identified climate change as an “existential threat.” President Donald Trump seems poised to recognize climate change only as a minor problem to be managed or an opportunity to exploit.
However, if Trump does decide to embrace a warming world, it will not be Washington that benefits the most, but America’s adversaries. Today, the U.S. is underprepared to defend the homeland in the Arctic or benefit competitively from increased economic development in the region. In contrast, Russia has significant military and infrastructure across the region. A shift in administration posture on climate change risk also means surrendering international influence and standing on the topic, especially in the Indo-Pacific.
In early March, David Legates, who briefly served as a deputy assistant secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the first Trump administration and is a former University of Delaware professor, stated, “I’m pretty certain that what we’re going to conclude from what we know now is that carbon dioxide is not an evil gas,” instead calling carbon dioxide “a gas beneficial to life on Earth” and making the argument that warm temperatures are better than colder ones.
Legates’s claims echo a 2020 document released by the Russian government that announced a plan to take advantage of climate change and called for adapting Russia’s economy and population to the changes brought on by climate change while aiming to exploit opportunities provided by warmer temperatures. Events in the Arctic are already running in Russia’s favor.
Across the Arctic, melting sea ice is making areas including the Bering Strait and Barents Sea more navigable. Warming temperatures are also making resource extraction in the region easier, and the Arctic is home to significant hydrocarbon resources. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic as a whole may be home to 160 billion barrels of oil and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas, though there are logistical and environmental challenges to extracting these resources.
Trump clearly sees drilling for oil in the North American Arctic as a potential windfall for the United States. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is expected to hold between 5.7 billion and 16 billion barrels of oil, and Trump announced the Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential executive order to open the refuge to drilling for oil and gas.
As the United States seeks to expand its oil and gas production in the region, Russia has already built a significant head start. Moscow’s liquefied natural gas and oil extraction projects are well underway, and the state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, has been granted near-total control of the Northern Sea Route, which is crucial to exporting Russia’s Arctic hydrocarbons. Crucial to this success has been a partnership with China, which has invested significantly in Russia’s Arctic energy projects.
Beyond hydrocarbons, the Kremlin also sees a warming Arctic as crucial to expanding its production of key food products, as it recognizes that more land will become economically viable to farm. As Russia’s agricultural output increases, so too will its role in the global food supply chain. Between 2022 and 2024, Russian farmers grew an unmatched amount of grain, exporting it cheaply worldwide.
Russia’s dominance in this sector came after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in which it blocked Kyiv’s ability to export grain and sold Ukrainian grain as its own, allowing it to sell more grain than it produced domestically in a constrained market. While Ukraine has been able to resume exporting grain, Russia will continue to seize the advantage of a climate change-induced longer growing season and the creation of more arable land to strengthen its own food security and further wield grain exports as a tool of geopolitical influence worldwide.
And while the U.S. still works to develop Arctic military bases and icebreakers, Russia has cemented itself as a military power in the region. A 2022 Reuters article noted that Moscow was at least 10 years ahead of the United States in the region in terms of military capabilities, and as of 2024, Russia maintains 12 military bases in the Arctic and 16 deep-water ports. The U.S., meanwhile, has just one military installation north of the Arctic Circle, in Greenland, and one deep-water port still under construction in Nome, Alaska.
Embracing climate change as an opportunity to further develop Alaska’s energy resources will provide some financial benefit to the U.S., but it is Russia that has laid the groundwork across economic and military domains to best take advantage of a warming region.
Outside of the Arctic, a change in framing on how the U.S. approaches climate change could cost Washington as it contests for influence with China. Pacific island countries see climate change as an existential threat, with rising sea levels threatening to submerge many islands, warming seas and other extreme weather events diminishing fishing stocks, and the second-order effects threatening a loss of revenue from tourism and increased emigration.
As the United States seeks to bolster its presence in the region to counter Beijing’s military and diplomatic efforts, it cannot ignore the demand for developing solutions and responses to the climate crisis. The Trump administration should already know this, as during Trump’s first term, several Pacific island nations turned to China over the United States for broad security and economic deals, stating that the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement was in part a determining factor.
For example, in 2019, officials from the Solomon Islands cited climate change as one factor in downgrading its ties with Taiwan and renormalizing relations with China. Three years later, the Solomon Islands signed a wide-ranging security agreement with China, igniting fears that Beijing may aim to send troops to the country and open a permanent military base across the archipelago northeast of Australia.
To be certain, not all countries are opposed to the Trump administration’s approach to climate. Speaking at the Powering Africa summit, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that it would be “nonsense” to tell African nations to stop the development of coal, arguing that fossil fuels were essential to allowing African countries to escape energy poverty.
This sentiment has been echoed by leaders across the continent, including South African Minister Gwede Mantashe, who oversees the mineral resources and energy portfolio, has claimed that coal will be used to address South Africa’s energy shortage. For Trump, there may be an opportunity to partner with countries looking to expand their fossil fuel production as a means to strengthen broader bilateral ties.
Treating climate change as an opportunity rather than a risk threatens to put Washington in a position of weakness. In the Arctic, expanding energy production will bring benefits, but the U.S. is not prepared to compete with Russia. Investments like the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort Pact alongside Canada and Finland and continued efforts to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command are good first steps at countering Russia and other adversaries in the region and should be pursued regardless of future natural resource extraction in the Arctic. But they are also endangered by Trump’s attacks on Canada, which is already reconsidering broader defense procurement deals with the United States.
In the Indo-Pacific, the Solomon Islands is an example of what could happen when the U.S. abdicates international leadership on the issue. The first Trump administration pledged to keep working with countries to keep meeting their environmental goals outside of the Paris Agreement. However, with Trump once again withdrawing from the accord, it’s not clear that this will remain a U.S. goal—or that countries will trust Washington to keep any of its promises.
Approaching climate change as an opportunity is an option, but a risky one at best. Doing so threatens to expose the U.S. as underprepared in the Arctic and limit Washington’s ability to gain influence and favor worldwide. If the Trump administration decides to pursue this approach, it should be clear-eyed about the risks and recognize that the benefits will likely be minimal, if any.
The post Trump’s Climate Change U-turn Is a Russian Victory appeared first on Foreign Policy.
