Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’

Greenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an impassible warren of ice and snow has become a geopolitical opportunity.

On today’s Angry Planet, we host journalist Kenneth R. Rosen who just published the book Polar War. He’s spent the past few years among the ice and snow, embedding with troops, yearning for snus, and smoking cigarettes with morticians in the long dark.

Rosen knows what makes the Arctic so important and can see the truths that undergird the obsession with Greenland.

• Getting bombastic and angry about Greenland
• “We already have Greenland”
• How is Turkey “near Arctic?”
• The Greenland obsession as proof of climate change
• What makes a good Arctic force
• Accession to NATO
• Servicing subs in the Arctic
• Trying to embed on a nuclear submarine
• Mispronouncing place names
• The most powerful navy in the world doesn’t have an icebreaker
• Spies in the polar regions
• “It should have been an article.”
• Smoking under a tree in the dark
• Snus vs Zyn
• The death drive of the penguin

Buy Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic

US Army Poorly Prepared for Arctic Operations: Finnish Troops Forced Them to Surrender During Exercises in Norway

Can we just appreciate the fact State secrets were just leaked on this sub?

Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe

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