Donald Trump’s Arctic strategy has been 500 years in the making.
When Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic in 1492, he intended to find a direct path from Europe to Asia.
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He didn’t, of course — but the first transatlantic explorer to sail under an English flag, John Cabot, tried again a few years later and became the first modern explorer to reach what is now Canada.
The commercial potential of the Northwest Passage was obvious from the start, but even once explorers at last figured out how to thread their way through the Arctic’s ice and islands, there was no possibility of developing the route: the sea ice was just too dense.
Until now, that is: warmer temperatures and 21st-century technology put a
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