[paganel]

Most probably Russia will claim sovereignty over all of the Svalbards after the next big war and redrawing of borders, Stalin was too circumspect in not scaring the Americans into WW3 the first time when they had the chance to do it.

All that because whoever controls the North Pole controls most of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s actually one of the very few “ways in” inside North America and control of the continental United States (there were a few US geopoliticians/geographers who first became aware of that in the early 1940s).

[neffy]

I for one welcome our new Polar Bear Overlords. (Hope the Russians don´t forget their rifles when they move in.)

[paganel]

I thought this forum still wanted to be on the serious side, so under that view look at the works of George T. Renner, in particular his World Map for the Air Age, published in 1942-1943. [1] [2]

As air-power started to be taken seriously with the advent of WW2 (some) geographers started realising that one of the shortest ways of getting from Europe to North America is via the North Pole, or close to it, anyway. Hence those maps I've linked to, which had the North Pole at their center, and that is because Renner thought that the control of the North Pole was similar to the control of the Northern Hemisphere. Related, a little bit later on ICMBs were meant to take the same route, give or take, hence why NORAD became a thing.

But, again, we can choose to take the "lol! lol! lol! The Russians and their shovels!" angle, which won't benefit anyone involved in this conversation, intellectually speaking.

Later edit: Additional resource, this study [3] titled: "The Hot Struggle Over the Cold Waters: The Strategic Position of the Arctic Region During and After the Cold War"

This paragraph there is a good start on how important were the views of people like Renner when it came to the Arctic, that is in the context of the US vs. the USSR/Russia (potential) confrontation:

> The first to focus his interests on the significance of the strategic position of the Arctic was George T. Renner, when in the 1940s, based on a map with the North Pole at the center, he estimated the opportunities and threats associated with this new perspective. However, the increase of the Arctic’simportance is inextricably linked with the development of technology which allowed greater exploration of the region. Shortly after the outbreak of the Cold War, in the rhetoric of the United States, the High North began to be identified as a “mighty” and “important” region.44 Hence, the geostrategic role of the Far North was fully revealed during of the Cold War, when it was possible to observe real military and political tensions on the polar waters and islands.

[1] https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-renner-world-...

[2] archive.org link that should work, but doesn't: https://archive.org/details/dr_rand-mcnally-world-map-for-th...

[3] https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

[chiph]

This is why when the USS Nautilus became the first submarine to transit the arctic entirely underwater, traveling from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the North Pole, it was such an important event in the Cold War. It gave credibility to the submarine fleet becoming part of the nuclear triad, the use of nuclear power for propulsion and life support, and long distance navigation without any external references (can't use a compass up there!)

https://ussnautilus.org/1014-2/