The Arctic became topical this winter because of President Trump’s claims on Greenland and the threats he made towards eight European NATO allies after they rallied in support of the Kingdom of Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory. The basis for Trump’s claims included both the threat of fictitious Russian and Chinese ships and the perceived under-exploitation of the island – the effective absence of mining activity – alongside the putative needs of a Golden Dome defence missile system, which would be space-based anyway.

For a couple of weeks, world attention focused on a frozen place with over twelve million seals and 57,000 people, the majority of them Greenlandic Inuit. The idea of the USA purchasing Greenland in the manner of Louisiana and Alaska is not new. In 1946, Harry S Truman offered $100 million in gold bullion for this icy island three times the size of Texas – but Trump’s threats of using ‘the most lethal military in the world’ to conquer it were rightly regarded as outrageous. The scheme was seeded in Trump’s mind by the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, a maniac’s maniac, and Ron Lauder, the dilettante heir to the cosmetics fortune, whose interests reportedly extend to a luxury mineral water venture in Baffin Bay.

The wider circumpolar region is rich in oil, gas, metals and minerals, while thawing ice has increased the navigability of both the Northern Sea Route across the roof of Russia and the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific above Canada and Alaska. With icebreakers, of which Russia has many,