China has established the first scheduled transit through the northern sea route, but questions remain over the environmental and political risks
When Marco Rubio suggested that the world should look to new shipping lanes to bypass the logjammed strait of Hormuz, it’s unlikely he had the Arctic’s northern sea route in mind.
And yet in recent months the promise of this 5,500km channel – cleaved through frozen seas by nuclear-powered icebreakers and illuminated by a sun that never dips below the Arctic horizon – has grown.