On Friday afternoon in downtown Anchorage, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, arrived at the Arctic Encounter Summit at the Dena\u2019ina Convention Center, an annual gathering of policymakers, business leaders and international officials focused on Arctic strategy.<\/p>\n
\u00a0A day after welcoming news that two additional U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers would be homeported in the state \u2014 a development she has sought for decades \u2013 Murkowski struck a tempered tone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got what we wanted,\u201d she told an audience at a luncheon. \u201cBut not in the way that we wanted it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
From this ballroom, not far from where polar ice melt is outpacing earlier scientific expectations, Alaska\u2019s senior senator rattled off a litany of concerns \u2014 from repeated Russian incursions in the U.S. airspace to President Donald Trump\u2019s musing about leaving NATO. Murkowski also pointed to tensions over Greenland, which have strained relations between the U.S. and its Arctic allies, troubling a region long recognized as a \u201czone of peace.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since taking office, President Trump has pushed for the United States to take control of the semi-autonomous Inuit island under the Kingdom of Denmark, at times suggesting it could be acquired by force, despite repeated rejections from Greenlandic and Danish officials. Last week, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told NBC News that many Greenlanders \u201cdon\u2019t feel safe\u201d amid Trump\u2019s repeated rhetoric to claim the territory.<\/p>\n
As these tensions test alliances, new questions were raised at the conference about U.S. strategy in the Far North. Senator Murkowski, arguably the leading congressional voice for establishing U.S. Arctic power, has cast a steady light on the Greenland crisis alongside what she sees as the Trump Administration\u2019s imbalanced Arctic strategy. Despite the administration\u2019s historic investments that are closing the gap on U.S. Arctic engagement \u2014 mostly in the form of military and Coast Guard spending \u2014 Murkowski expressed concern. \u201cWe\u2019re all in on defense,\u201d she said, \u201cBut we haven\u2019t prioritized what we need to do with the diplomacy side of things, or the science and research side.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January, Murkowski led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Denmark with Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, followed by a visit to Greenland the next month. The effort to ease rising Arctic tensions would typically fall to the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Arctic Affairs. But for more than a year, the position has remained vacant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, changes within the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, including the recent appointment<\/a> of Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, reflect a broader shift in federal priorities as the agency pivots from its longtime focus on environmental science toward greater emphasis on military and commerce. This shift is one of many now testing the concept of \u201cArctic exceptionalism,\u201d the region\u2019s long-standing norm of peaceful cooperation, which some speakers at the Anchorage summit say may already be unraveling.<\/p>\n For 13 years, former Murkowski staffers have organized the Arctic Encounter Summit, branded as \u201cNorth America\u2019s premier Arctic policy and business convening.\u201d Drawing on a network of high-profile colleagues \u2014 Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, attended in 2022 \u2014 Murkowski has used the annual gathering to advance U.S. Arctic policy, share the stage with international leaders and offer updates from Congress. She has even taken attendees to Utqia\u0121vik, the nation\u2019s northernmost community and hub for Arctic research and strategy. More broadly, the summit reflects a policy legacy she has carried forward from Alaska\u2019s past \u2014 building on the work of previous Alaska Republican Senators like her father, former Sen. Frank Murkowski, and the late Sen. Ted Stevens. Both helped elevate U.S. Arctic interests through science, research and maritime policy.<\/p>\n This year, Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont who traveled to Denmark with Murkowski, joined an international group of Arctic parliamentarians. Together they huddled with the Alaska senator for an afternoon of panel discussions on the last day of the Arctic Encounter.<\/p>\n For months, Murkowski has worked mostly with congressional Democrats like Welch to push back on the president\u2019s Greenland bid in an effort to preserve stability in the Arctic. As a founding member and co-chair of the Senate Arctic Caucus formed in 2015, she has also noted that neither the White House nor the State Department has sought the group\u2019s input on the issue.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that is a disadvantage to them because we do have a level of connection through the Arctic Caucus,\u201d she said at the luncheon. \u201cI think we should be viewed as a valued asset.\u201d<\/p>\n Welch is a member of the Arctic Caucus and also the Senate Finance Committee. Recently, he pushed back on Trump administration tariffs, including those threatened against NATO allies that sent troops to Greenland in a symbolic show of support for its sovereignty, last January. After his trip to Denmark, he introduced a resolution<\/a> to block the tariffs targeting the eight Arctic nations. The effort, while not formally passed, helped prompt the administration to back down.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s so disturbing to me is that even many of our NATO allies are internalizing that they can\u2019t count on the United States, and that\u2019s upsetting to me, because we have been so benefited by that level of cooperation,\u201d said Sen. Welch at the conference. \u201cWhat Russia is doing now in Ukraine is just so violent and vicious and terrible that we can\u2019t afford to be having any friction that is self-made amongst allies who have a shared interest in standing up for the independence of a sovereign nation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n