A gripping blend of travelogue and frontline reporting that reveals how climate change, military ambition, and economic opportunity are transforming the Arctic into the epicenter of a new cold war, where a struggle for dominance between the planet’s great powers heralds the next global conflict.
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. ➔
Kenneth R. Rosen travels the world to write in-depth stories about the impact of major geopolitical issues and conflict on individual lives. He is a 2025 Ira A. Lipman Fellow at Columbia University.
Rosen received the 2022 Kurt Schork Freelance Award for his reporting from Ukraine, Syria, and Malta, which the judges called “courageous multifaceted investigative work.”
He is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award in international reporting and, among other honors, he received the 2018 Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents for his reporting from Iraq and was a finalist in 2019 for his reporting from within Syria.
He is the author of Troubled: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs (Little A, 2021), which The New York Times Book Review called “a searing exposé” and a “public service.” Troubled was a Times Editor’s Choice, one of Newsweek’s most highly anticipated titles of 2021, and was optioned separately as a feature film and a docuseries. ➔