Caught between the United States and Russia, Canada must prove it can defend its Arctic territories

Canada’s Arctic is vast, treacherous and largely uninhabitable, covering nearly 4 million square kilometers but with a tiny population, about the size of Blackburn, England, or Syracuse, New York.

“You could take a map of the European continent and put it in the Canadian Arctic and still have room to spare,” Pierre Leblanc, former commander of the Canadian Forces Northern Region, told the BBC. “And that environment was extremely dangerous.”

Guarding this vast swath of land is an array of aging early warning radars, eight staffed military bases and about 100 full-time Coast Guard personnel, covering 162,000 kilometers of coastline, or about 60 per cent of Canada’s total coastline.

The Arctic is a region of fierce geopolitical competition, bordered on both sides by Russia and the United States, and is increasingly attractive to China, which has declared itself a “near-Arctic state” and significantly expanded its fleet of naval vessels and icebreakers.

Sitting in the middle is Canada, whose population represents a fraction of the larger Arctic players.

Arctic security nearly four years later Being in the headlines Donald Trump’s plans for Greenland, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have once again brought the issue of defense of Canada’s Far North to the forefront of public consciousness. Greenland is a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark and has been described by the White House as vital to protecting the United States from potential enemies overseas.

Canada’s Arctic has not been ignored by the Trump administration, which has reportedly become increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of U.S. adversaries and signed an executive order in April emphasizing the U.S.’s “commitment to ensuring freedom of navigation and U.S. dominance in Arctic waterways.”

The Canadian government has sought to reassure the United States and NATO allies that it is doing its part to protect the region.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada was working to achieve “our shared goals of security and prosperity in the Arctic” through “unprecedented” investments in radar systems, submarines, aircraft and “ground forces” in the region.

Colonel LeBlanc, who has worked in the Canadian Arctic for a total of nine years, said the investments mark a “major shift” for Arctic security, noting that increases in Canadian defense spending – from 2 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent by 2035 – mean “real action” on additional over-the-horizon radars and Arctic-specific aircraft.

He added that much of this attention is driven by the Trump administration’s renewed focus on the Arctic and Greenland.

“(This) will certainly help the Canadian government move in the right direction,” LeBlanc added.

Still, challenges remain, including limited port facilities and difficulties supplying remote bases, sometimes thousands of miles apart in the cold and empty air.

While Canada and other U.S. NATO allies oppose the Trump administration’s “takeover” of Greenland to protect the Arctic, several experts interviewed by the BBC agreed with the government’s broad assessment that the region desperately needs additional defenses.

Troy Bouffard, director of the Fairbanks, Alaska-based Arctic Security and Resilience Center, said that while U.S. and Canadian cooperation on the ground in the Arctic “remains the envy of the world,” much of the existing defense infrastructure is geared toward dealing with Cold War-era threats, not existing threats.

In particular, he warned that hypersonic missiles travel at least five times the speed of sound, making them harder to detect and intercept than traditional ballistic missiles, which follow predictable arcs over the Arctic.

The threat is no longer theoretical.

Russia has used hypersonic missiles in its fighting in Ukraine, including an attack in January that used for the first time the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile, which carries multiple warheads and travels at about 10 times the speed of sound.

“This technology changes everything for us. We have to relook at the entire North American defense system and reimplement it,” he said. “What exists now is simply incapable of defending against hypersonic cruise missiles. It’s like 0 percent.”

He added that traditional ground-based radar systems “cannot compete with these emerging technologies.” Space-based satellites must also contend with coverage gaps at high latitudes, prompting renewed attention and investment in over-the-horizon radar.

Notably, beyond-line-of-sight technology, along with space-based sensors, forms a key part of the Trump administration’s strategy. There are plans to build a Golden Dome missile defense system in North America.

It’s unclear what role Canada will play in the Golden Dome project, and Trump said in Davos that Canada should be “thankful for that.”

On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Canada opposed building a golden dome in Greenland, “even though the golden dome would protect Canada. Instead, they voted to do business with China, who will ‘eat them’ within the first year!”

The BBC has contacted Carney’s office for comment.

Those talks were strained by the often adversarial relationship between the U.S. and Canada, with Trump announcing in May that Canada could pay $61 billion to join the program or become the 51st U.S. state and join for free.

Trump’s comments prompted Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Ray, to liken it to “protection money.”

Despite the tensions, Michael Byers, an Arctic security expert at the University of British Columbia, said U.S. concerns about Arctic security and its threat of tariffs have prompted the Canadian government to refocus on the Arctic.

“Whether the U.S. concerns are legitimate or not, there’s a feeling in Ottawa that we have to satisfy (them),” he said. “No one takes the 51st state issue seriously, but what we do take seriously is the economic pressure that the United States can exert.”

“The Canadian government is very aware of this possibility,” he added.

However, high tensions between Ottawa and Washington have yet to translate into tensions in the Arctic, where people express confidence in the current cooperation between the United States and Canada.

“This is a matter for politicians,” Bouffard said. “It’s complicated, but practitioners will still work together until they’re not allowed to. Everyone has to go beyond the rhetoric.”