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Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power

January 11, 2026 8:48 AM | Anonymous

Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic
by Kenneth R. Rosen
January 6, 2026
Publisher: Simon & Schuster


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 apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily 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.

In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. He finds himself on the trail of Navy SEALs training for arctic warfare, embarks on Coast Guard patrols monitoring Russian incursions, participates in close-quarter-combat training aboard foreign icebreakers in the Arctic sea ice, and visits remote research stations where international cooperation is giving way to espionage and the search for long-frozen biological weapons.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and three years of reporting from the frontlines of climate change and great power competition, Rosen blends incisive analysis with the vivid immediacy of a travelogue. His deeply researched and personal accounts capture the diverse landscapes, people, and conflicted interests that define this complex northern region. The result is both an elegy for a vanishing landscape and an urgent warning about how the race for Arctic dominance could spark the next global conflict.


Indigo Amazon 

See also:

Polar War as reviewed by Kirkus Reviews - September 27, 2025

Polar War as reviewed by The Times Bookshop - January 2026

Growing Military Presence in The Arctic
Image Credit: Daily Mail
As Published in Defence Research and Studies - April 2023


About the book: 
Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic
by Kenneth R. Rosen
Simon & Schuster - 320 pages $20.99 (Kindle)
Publication Date: January 6, 2026


About the Author: Kenneth R. Rosen


Kenneth R. Rosenis the author of three books including, most recently, Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic (Simon & Schuster, 2026). He travels the world to write in-depth stories about the impact of major geopolitical issues and conflict on individual lives. He was a 2025 Ira A. Lipman Fellow at Columbia University.

In 2024, he was a MacDowell fellow, a finalist for a Scripps Howard Award in opinion writing, and a de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant recipient.

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 Editors’ Choice, one of Newsweek’s most highly anticipated titles of 2021, and was optioned separately as a feature film and a docuseries. 

Troubled helped launch independent inquiries, by the Government Accountability Office and the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, into abuses at congregate care facilities for at-risk youth. His first book, Bulletproof Vest (Bloomsbury, 2020), was named one of the most fascinating books WIRED read that year.

He has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and VQR, among others. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, Russian, Ukrainian and Japanese.

As a foreign correspondent and magazine writer, he has reported from more than two dozen countries across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

He worked at The New York Times for seven years and was a senior editor and correspondent at Newsweek. He now divides his time between Northern Italy and Western Massachusetts with his wife and their three children.

Biography Credit:  kennethrrosen.com

À propos du livre :
Guerre polaire : sous-marins, espions et lutte pour le pouvoir dans un Arctique en pleine fonte
par Kenneth R. Rosen
Simon & Schuster - 320 pages 20,99 $ (Kindle)
Date de publication : 6 janvier 2026



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