The Centre for Statecraft & National Security is excited to host Kenneth R. Rosen for a talk on his new book, Polar War: Submarines, Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic.
Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth—where buildings crumble as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas—the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world’s military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region. We’ve entered a new cold war—and every day it grows hotter.
In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews and three years of reporting from the front lines of climate change and great-power competition, Rosen blends incisive analysis with the vivid immediacy of a travelogue. His deeply researched and personal accounts capture the diverse landscapes, people, and conflicted interests that define this complex northern region. The result is both an elegy for a vanishing landscape and an urgent warning about how the race for Arctic dominance could spark the next global conflict.
About the Speaker:
Kenneth R. Rosen is the recipient of a Kurt Schork Award, a Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents, and was a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for his work in Syria and Iraq. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and WIRED. He divides his time between Western Massachusetts and Northern Italy with his wife and their three children.
To register to attend this online event, please click here.
