Russia's Arctic corridor development and its growing role in Eurasian geopolitics
Glenn Diesen interviews Henry Tillman, founder of Asia Investment Research, on the rapid development of Russia's Northern Sea Route and its broader geoeconomic implications.
Summary
Henry Tillman, who brings three decades of Arctic experience and was a co-author of the foundational 2018 "Polar Silk Road" paper, joins Glenn Diesen to argue that Western sanctions have paradoxically accelerated the Eurasian integration they were designed to prevent. He argues that these sanctions drove Russia to build deep shipping, port, and logistics partnerships with India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and China. He presents data showing Russian LNG from Yamal is four times cheaper to extract than Western alternatives and that the Northern Sea Route cuts shipping time from Russia to London to just 18 days versus 35 days via Hormuz and 50 days around South Africa — making it structurally competitive regardless of politics. Tillman also highlights that Arctic ice has receded by 50% since the 1970s and is warming four times faster than the global average, extending the route's usability and accelerating its commercialisation.
He also traces a 350-year historical arc around the Spanish silver road — running from the Americas through Spain, Morocco, and west Africa — to illustrate how current Chinese port investments in Hungary, Spain, and Morocco fit into trade patterns that long predate modern geopolitics. He dismisses the argument that Russia or China pose a military threat to Greenland via the Northern Sea Route as geographically incoherent, noting that Russia has represented 65% of the Arctic's population and over 50% of its land mass for decades, before closing with the observation that China is now building a river the size of the Yangtze from Tibetan glacial melt to green the western desert — a development he says receives no coverage in Western media.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and Henry Tillman's background in the Arctic
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined today by Henry Tillman, the founder of Asia Investment Research and the CEO of Ayana Research. Thank you for coming back yet again on the program. I've been looking forward to speaking with you about the Northern Sea Route. I watched your presentation on this. The Northern Sea Route is, of course, the Arctic corridor developed by Russia, and as it's increasingly referred to in China, the Polar Silk Road. As the world is becoming consumed by chaos and war, the development of the Arctic corridor hasn't really stopped — it continues to develop. Let me start with an introductory question on this topic. What is your background here? How did you develop an interest and expertise in this Arctic corridor? And what is the wider geostrategic relevance of this Arctic maritime corridor — why should we care, and what does it mean for politics? Sorry, very big question.
Henry Tillman: I was going to say there are at least three components to that question. Let us start with the basics. My children's grandfather was a senior politician in Canada and started taking me to the Arctic in the mid-1990s. So I've been photographing the Arctic, icebergs, and such across the Pacific for the last 30 years — from Canada across to Russia. From the period of 2007 to 2013, I photographed a number of dying icebergs across the west coast of Africa, because Monaco's aid foundation had been looking at this. So I started tracking them over the years, and over that period of time I turned those photographs into a small film. I put that together as a loop with Callas singing "Casta Diva." I happen to know Callas's chairman, so I decided this year, because of Greenland, to open that film here at the Brighton French festival. I also added a few slides picking up what you're talking about — the NSR, and of course the effects of the NSR on energy prices and Chevron. That's the bridge.
Because I knew so much about the Arctic from spending so much time in Greenland, when it came to 2018 I became one of the three co-authors of the Polar Silk Road piece that people still refer to every day. That was the Chinese government, a researcher from Iceland, and myself, and I brought the commercial angle to it. That got me kicked off into this whole area. When Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the chairman of the Arctic Circle and former president of Iceland, heard about it, he said, "Wait a minute, you need to talk about this in a bigger forum because this has huge geopolitical ramifications." So from 2019 to 2023, I presented every year at the Arctic Circle in Reykjavik every October — starting in 2019 with a discussion of icebreakers, through to 2021, which got into the economics of this. I used publicly available Russian numbers to show how much cheaper it is to get energy out of the ground and how competitive Russia was at the time, plus how much faster the shipping time is. Only 18 days from Yamal to London versus 35 days via Hormuz and 50 days south of Africa. So it's not only cheaper to get out of the ground by multiples — it's also less expensive to ship. That was 2021, and in 2023, as you and I have discussed before, I presented on thorium. So I had five years of presenting on the NSR.
What's happened from that is — that's my background, how I got into it. I still live with it every day. I was part of the old discussions on Kirkenes, why it didn't get in, why it did get in, all things to do with that. But the second part of your question is: what are the components of this? The first component is, of course, receding ice. The Arctic ice has receded by 50% since the 1970s. That's incredible. It's warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. There's a natural movement away from the shoreline, higher and higher, as it shrinks — more and more ability to commercialise this without destroying the ice.
What has happened because of that? First of all, you have countries that have actually specialised in commercialising this. Russia leads with icebreakers. Russia has over 40 icebreakers, including eight nuclear icebreakers. China has icebreakers but is still building a nuclear icebreaker and a major nuclear cargo ship. Russia and China combined have more icebreakers than NATO combined. That's a powerful force. This is not surprising because Russia has historically represented 65% of the population of all the Arctic, and over 50% of the land mass of the Arctic. So Russia has always been in charge of the Arctic, basically — historically, in terms of population and land mass. It's therefore a bit specious to argue that Russia is now invading the Arctic, because they've been there for decades. The Chinese icebreakers have been more research icebreakers and haven't been in heavy shipping as Russia has been, although last year China decided to build an icebreaker — not a research icebreaker, actually a tourist icebreaker. It could be a cargo ship and also high-end tourism to get into the Arctic, because depending on what timetable you believe, that ice could shrink substantially in the next ten years, with some people saying it's gone by 2050.
Already the flows are picking up because the route is now usable four and a half months of the year. Last year, 2025, it closes in mid-November. We've seen 103 passages versus 85 passages a couple of years before that, but bigger than that, it's double the tonnage — 38 million tons last year versus 18 million tons in 2018. So there's more and more use of it. That is mostly Russian LNG, which won't surprise you. So you have receding ice, increased technology and icebreakers, and therefore increased traffic.
The pivot east and new Eurasian partnerships
Glenn Diesen: Yes. And then you throw in the last part of your question — what's happening in the world today.
Henry Tillman: Yes. It won't surprise you that, especially in the last few months, Russia has been working very hard at linking itself to many other countries — going east versus west. The west has all dried up. We talked about this before: because of the high cost of energy, European countries that were using lower-cost LNG have moved away from using that in the west. BASF this year is opening its major ten-billion-dollar plant in China using Russian LNG. We've looked at German green hydrogen companies moving in part with China, in China. So you're seeing the west being unable to use that low-cost energy, while it's being used in China. That good news travels quickly.
You've seen a number of countries in the last few months alone partner with Russia in rapidly developing the NSR, but also something bigger — a trans-Arctic corridor. You would know this from the debates happening between St. Petersburg and links to Tehran, and then links all the way to India, and of course sea routes from India across into the Arctic, across the top of the world. You have the International North–South Transportation Corridor, which is a major play for India. So in essence, with an Indian play, it's a full loop as I just described.
India can then power itself with lower-cost Russian LNG. By the way, when I presented this in 2021, four months before the war started, Russia was just number two behind Qatar in LNG production. People forget that. In 2004, Putin took a bet that he'd be able to do this in Siberia, and by 2020–21 he was number two behind Qatar in LNG production. That's a pretty great story. It's been slowed obviously for all the reasons we know, but people realise how far it's come and it continues to build.
So India is one of the first of these, from last year and earlier this year. The rail route is St. Petersburg down to Tehran, across to India, around the top. The port I talked about before — I was involved with Kirkenes, as you know, from Norway — that didn't get passed, and so China said fine, and Russia came to grips with it: we're not going to get that. So they've decided to put two and a half billion into Archangel, which is a major port, a very special and historic port for Russia. That's the closest one to Norway. So they've gone that direction. You've had China with a ports upgrade, Russia with India on ports and logistics upgrades, a loop of more low-cost power to India — and that's Russia and India, which we've been talking about.
Also in the last two months, Russia signed big shipping and marine deals and NSR deals with Vietnam in May, and also recently with Indonesia. And just a few days ago, a deal was signed with Saudi Arabia on ports and the NSR. So if you look at how this is all moving east — the west has all been shut off because of sanctions, therefore higher energy prices. Russia's pivot to Asia. And I've also seen the same thing true with Asia: the pivot to Russia. As you know, I write Asian investor research. The last two features we've done — one is with Thailand and one is with Malaysia — both show a leaning towards Russia. But the point is this is all developing very quickly, and as you rightfully point out, part of this acceleration is due to what's happening in the Gulf. People want more secure lines and want to diversify their resources.
I'll close with one more piece of this. It's not just what we discussed last August about how Russia was coming together with nuclear power. In essence, Russia, India, and China are collaborating on nuclear power — who builds what, who's connected to whom. The same thing is happening here with shipping. The same thing is happening with logistics. The same thing is happening with ports. It's a coming together, supported by infrastructure, logistics, and low-cost power. So I hope that addresses your points.
The geoeconomic logic of the Arctic corridor and Western self-exclusion
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. I initially took a very big interest in the Arctic during a book I was writing in 2015. I called it Russia's Geoeconomic Strategy for Greater Eurasia. It was essentially about what happened after the Western-backed regime change in Ukraine, because this put an end to Russia's previous Greater Europe initiative, which had kind of continued since Gorbachev's idea of a common European home. As all of Europe, Russia's economy was being reoriented from the west to the east. I thought the Arctic was quite fascinating because all the other Arctic states are Western powers — now all of them are NATO powers — and Russia had always prioritised cooperation with the west in order to gradually integrate into this Greater Europe. But since 2014 they began to shift, replacing Greater Europe with Greater Eurasia. Now you see all its main partners being countries in the east.
As you said, they hold most of the Arctic territory. They can cooperate with whomever they want. But the fact that the Chinese and the Indians are all becoming de facto Arctic powers is quite a fascinating development. Also, a core of US strategy at least since World War II — you can go back to Alfred Mahan as well — has been much like the British: if you control the seas, that's essentially a key source of power. But this maritime corridor is outside US control, and it's also faster and cheaper. This is why I thought it was a great mistake for the West to essentially divorce itself from Russia or make an enemy out of Russia, because the Arctic appears to be growing in relevance.
As you said, Trump seems to have woken up to this, and every now and then he makes a speech about how unfair it is that Russia has more icebreakers. But how do you see this in the wider context of China? For people who follow geography, the Arctic waters between Western Europe — that is, Norway and Russia — are called the Barents Sea. The reason it's called the Barents Sea is because in the 16th century, after the ancient Silk Road had collapsed, the Western maritime powers reconnected the world. This kind of started the 500 years of Western dominance. One of those routes was trying to connect with China through the Arctic. The Dutchman Willem Barents tried to connect through the Arctic. He got stuck in Novaya Zemlya and died. That's why it's called the Barents Sea. But now, a few centuries later, that connectivity is being established — however, not under European or Western control, but as a Russian or Eurasian project. So how do you see this fitting into the wider Eurasian development?
Henry Tillman: Multi-level question. Maybe I'll address two small pieces first. This goes back to 2018, where in the original piece you're referring to, I would argue that it's the sanctions placed on Russia which accelerated this. It's the US's harsh use of sanctions that originally accelerated the launch of the Polar Silk Road. Russia needed Chinese capital. They still need Chinese capital. As I said, China is rebuilding Archangel. And of course, as we talked about before with Rosneft, many Russian companies are using public markets or renminbi bonds to finance this. It started in 2018, and it started in 2014, which led to the launch of this.
With respect to US icebreakers — they have fewer than half the icebreakers Russia has. One of those is 70 years old and uses repaired parts. I personally went after the US on this point in 2019, publicly, in front of 2,000 people in Reykjavik. President Trump signed an agreement with Finland in October last year. I sent a note to Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who runs the Arctic Circle, and said, "Ólafur, we finally got him to move," and he wrote back and said, "No, Henry, you got him to move." They signed with Finland. Now, those are standard icebreakers, not nuclear icebreakers. They're also talking to Korea, but as you rightfully point out, all that stuff that goes with today's world — Korea, US manufacturing issues — that's also kind of stuck to the geopolitical macro piece of this.
You'll recognise that the countries we're talking about here are all BRICS. And so it doesn't surprise you that this is all part of something much bigger — a multipolar world, which you and I have been talking about for years. It's a spreading of wealth and a reduction of costs, building supply chains for all these different countries that are not dependent on places where there's risk. And of course that goes with currencies as well, which you've already talked about.
So it's a massive shift. But again, I think it's all related to sanctions. I don't think this is just about energy. We talk about nuclear energy, but it's all about ports, logistics, think about this for a second: the India–Russia loop has nothing to do with the West. Zero. I've done a series of pieces — I just did a piece for another government that finished in March. If you look at Hungary, the Hungary investments from China in the last two years have been leading years. But you'd have to look at it differently, because the first Chinese investments in Hungary were in 2005 — it's a 30-year play. China said we're going to do this over 30 years, and they've done it. By 2035, that's a very integrated logistics hub. The same thing is happening now with Spain and with Morocco. So in essence, if you build fully integrated hubs in Hungary, Spain, and Morocco, you don't really need to go to Europe anymore, do you? At all. That's why Europe, if you want to play, you want to go the other direction. There's no attack on this — it's just that you minimise sanctions. If you want to keep pounding people with sanctions, they're going to look for options. That's my argument. I'm not a geopolitician. I'm a data guy and a scientist. But that just seems logical to me.
Glenn Diesen: No, but that's a key rule of sanctions though. If they are severe and expand over time, then countries will simply learn to live with them. And I think that's what you're seeing. Learning to live with sanctions means decoupling. So this is the irony — the sanctions were supposed to isolate the Russians, but what we see is they're isolating Europe. Because as you said, if people or countries are now figuring out, "Well, we don't really need Europe at all," and once we begin to decouple from Europe as a physical corridor — why use their insurance? Why follow their energy markets? Why use their currencies? Why their banks? Why link up with their industries and technologies? And suddenly — I mean, this was the lesson of the ancient Silk Road: wherever the trade was going, that's where the great civilisations were emerging. And once it broke down, places like Central Asia became less relevant, became economic backwaters, while the countries that reconnected the world — the Western Europeans and later the Americans — that's where power was concentrated.
So this is why, for me, the fact that the sanctions are always introduced with cheers and beating of drums in a patriotic mood is quite extraordinary, because I don't think they understand what they're doing. They are isolating themselves. They're undermining their own position in the world. It's essentially fuelling this shift in where the main economic power will be in the future. It's very strange, and especially at this point in time for the Arctic, because for so many years the Arctic was essentially considered to be a frozen desert. It didn't have that much value. During the Cold War it was largely exempted from great power rivalry and was a place for positive cooperation, trust-building, and research. But now the ice is receding, we're seeing massive energy resources, the opening of transportation corridors, a lot of geoeconomic power shifting — and the first thing we do in the West is cut ourselves off. As I watched you saying in your speech, when the Germans cut themselves off from Russian gas, that gas was redirected to China. The politicians can't control the geoeconomic shift. The German companies follow the Russian gas — they pack up and leave Germany and go to China. The idea that they can control all these forces is absurd. And I think that's one of the reasons you see countries like Germany going into decline.
The long arc of trade history and the 350-year Spanish silver road
Henry Tillman: May I raise one more point?
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, please.
Henry Tillman: Because you're a historian. I love history as well. The same client said, "Would you look at what's happening with Spain?" And they said, "Look at what's happened in the last two years in Spain." So I decided I wanted to do more than that. I went back as far as the silver road — what you know with Spain goes back to the 16th century. For 350 years it went from Shaman through to the Yucatán Peninsula and then to Spain. So suddenly people say, "Look at the last two years," because that's the government's short period of time. I said, "No, no — this goes back 350 years." Since they can't run it through the Yucatán Peninsula anymore, they're running it through Peru. It goes to Spain and goes south to Morocco and across the west of Africa, which has some fantastic fifth-generation ports — 5G AI ports in Senegal. Amazing. So there's no Europe in this, but it goes back 350 years. As you just said, people look at two years, not 350 years.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. Well, I was going to say I didn't want to suggest that the Arctic corridor will somehow take over all the trade in the world or replace the Suez Canal. But I think that's the whole point of this new Silk Road — the Silk Road was never one road. It was a diversified system of many roads. And I think the Arctic can absorb some of this, be one of many corridors. As you mentioned, it's also complemented by, for example, the International North–South Transportation Corridor from Russia through Iran to India, as well as the multitude of projects pushed by the Chinese under the Belt and Road Initiative. But what are the limitations on Northern Sea Route cargo volumes? We've seen it grow since 2018, but what are the main drivers and limitations in terms of how big this can get? And I'll add that I do know it's complemented by the energy trade, which is what you and I usually speak about when you're on this program.
Ice melt, nuclear power, and the future scale of the Northern Sea Route
Henry Tillman: I think the ice will go much faster. I mean, I didn't talk about the third pole — the North Pole, the South Pole, and the third pole. The third pole is melting even faster. This ice melt is changing the world, and people don't see it. I've seen forecasts saying there's no ice by 2050 on the North Pole. I think it's interesting that China's building a nuclear icebreaker for tourism — high-end tourism to go to the North Pole. So I see this change. I see that ice continuing to go rapidly. Unfortunately, I wish I felt differently, because I'm the guy that photographs dying icebergs. But I see that continuing.
I also wish that thorium power, which is coming, could mitigate this. We've been told that Linglong One — it's not thorium, but it will be commercial this year. And since there are five countries that have been testing 10 to 30 megawatt Chinese SMRs, it's only a matter of time before those first countries get their SMRs. So it's coming quickly. But how fast it can mitigate what's happening in the north — I don't know. I can't answer that question.
Glenn Diesen: Well, Russia is expanding Arctic cooperation now. Initially it was focused a lot on China, but I guess a key feature of this whole Greater Eurasia initiative for Russia is that it should diversify — don't put all your eggs in only the Chinese basket, because their economic power is not the same. So they want to have many roads, many corridors. They're also now expanding cooperation with countries like India, Indonesia — which I think is a very underestimated maritime power that will be huge in the future — Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Vietnam, and others. What are the strategic objectives you think Moscow is pursuing with these partnerships? Because in geoeconomics we usually see the economic interest going hand in hand with the political or wider strategic interest.
Henry Tillman: Spot on. It's linked. If you look at many of these — as you know, Russia leads the world in floating nuclear power. They've been doing floating nuclear since 2019 in effect. And there are many countries — Russia leads the world in floating nuclear, and many Asian countries are in discussions with Russia about safe nuclear power. Vietnam, Thailand, throughout Asia, and also linked to military, as you rightly suggest. So the linkages are much greater than just shipping and ports and logistics. You build everything off that base — a logistical base, a power base. You've got to power your country.
If you look at Asian countries, whether it's Russian power, Chinese power, Indian power, or Russian thorium down the road — that's going to drive these countries. As you just said with German major companies, major countries have got to figure out how to power themselves. The penny hasn't dropped yet. My head of data centres in the US is over in the UK this week. We're seeing company after company, and the obvious answer is there's huge growth in many of these countries in data centres and semiconductors, and people have come to grips with the fact that you don't have power to run these things. So you've got to run your country, and that's what's driving this. The cheap energy infrastructure to get it there — that's going to drive it. And then you build many other relationships on top of that energy: geopolitics, defence, et cetera. Energy is the base, in my view.
Prospects for Western re-engagement with the Arctic
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. I very much agree with that. But do you see any possibilities of bringing in essentially a Western component into this? The US appears to be a little bit pragmatic. It seems to hope that if it shuffles or outsources the Ukraine war to the Europeans, it can improve bilateral relations with the Russians. But it would be good to see a region like the Arctic being something for positive security instead of only this zero-sum rivalry. For the Europeans, they've just escalated now, announcing they will further start targeting Russian shipping. So they look like they will be essentially excluded from all Arctic work and Arctic cooperation. But do you see any possibilities of the US or hopefully also the Europeans having any interest or any push towards using the Arctic to improve relations again?
Henry Tillman: I do, in fact. I watched an interview from a US think tank at St. Petersburg last weekend. The US still has a hundred billion dollars invested in Russia today — that's not a small number. And for the first time at St. Petersburg this time last weekend, there were a number of US companies that turned up. So I see a rapprochement somewhere down the road, commercially. There's so much talent in Russia in energy and nuclear and across all kinds of technologies, which attracts investment. So I see the US getting much closer. As you talked about before, if you have these orbits — there's a Permaculture orbit and there's a Western orbit, a Eurasian Permaculture orbit, not a Russian one, it's Eurasian — I'd see those orbits collaborating, not competing. I could be too optimistic there, but down the road I see cooperation. I do see the US being a bigger part of Russia going forward. And I think Germany over time will be more so, and Italy more so. I can't speak country by country, but in the interim you have Western companies watching their countries — whether it's Hungary or Spain — saying, "Wait a minute, there's more growth somewhere else than here, and more palatable conditions."
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. I tend to be of the opinion that all the economic interests will shape political interests. The failure to adjust politics to economic interest usually comes with a punishment. I think you will see this in Europe — when the German government attempts to explain to its population why it's beneficial to buy Russian energy from India with a heavy markup, it's very difficult to sell that point. So I think once these countries do not actually address their basic national interest and direct policies accordingly, you see economic decline, deindustrialisation, and that will result in some social upheaval. You have the public growing more dissatisfied with their governments. If you want any example of this, look at the approval ratings of Merz, Macron, and Starmer. At some point, opposition emerges in that vacuum — opposition that actually addresses the interest, that is, perhaps we should buy Russian energy which is many times cheaper than the alternative we're buying now. Let us rebuild our economies, be relevant, have the world take us seriously again, and we could have prosperity and security. But I think we're not there yet.
Henry Tillman: I'd say, slightly tongue in cheek — if you're looking at a two-year period where you're running the country, you just keep the frog in the pot. Just turn up the heat slightly, but don't let the frog jump out of the pot. That's what's happening. Prices go up, prices go up. Look at how that's being finessed in the stock markets today. We know if you look at the numbers underneath, they're quite scary when it comes to fertiliser, when it comes to helium, whatever — that's not being discussed anywhere, and the Western press isn't going to cover it.
Glenn Diesen: Well, I was going to say — now that the Europeans are trying to block fertilisers and Russian energy, again targeting Russian shipping in Europe, and we also see the Middle East shutting down over the war against Iran, and again the consequences for the Gulf States could be disastrous — how do you see this fuelling the Northern Sea Route? Do you think it benefits to a large extent, or is there also some disconnect, because massive disruptions are usually not only good for rival corridors?
Henry Tillman: I just look at the facts. If you see the Vietnam, Indonesia, and Saudi deals with Russia happening in May and June — what does that tell you about what's happening with that source of energy and stability in the last three months? Russia has been very keen to build these partnerships of ports and logistics with these three countries. These are three major countries — Vietnam is 100-plus million people, Indonesia is around 300 million people, and of course there's Saudi Arabia. These are massive — it's half a billion people in the last two months partnering with Russia, saying, "Be one of our options." I see that continuing.
I hope Iran gets settled. I don't have a great deal of expectation over the near term, but who knows — I hope so. And as long as there are worries, you have to diversify. We track all this investment data — we find investment data from all over the world. People are balancing. They're not linking themselves to one country. Pakistan's done a great job, Malaysia's done a great job, Thailand's done a great job of balancing investment. It's the same with energy, even more so with energy, I would say, because it's more near-term. And that's what we've seen right now. Some of these Asian countries have relied on Qatari LNG — that's very difficult for the next few years. You've got to find options.
Projections for Arctic trade by 2030–2035
Glenn Diesen: Well, let me ask a last question. If the current trends continue — and you're a data guy, you look at the numbers — how different do you think the Arctic trade patterns would look by 2030, 2035 compared to what they are today? How do you see the direction going?
Henry Tillman: All we know is that Russia, the US, Korea, Japan, and China are all building icebreakers to get more of this, to be more part of this. I think it's fair to say there are loads of different routes being built. This will be an increasing route, definitely, because it's so much cheaper. The numbers from 2021 — I don't have updated numbers now — but when I presented this in 2021, Russian LNG at Yamal was four times less expensive to extract, and half the shipping time. So you do the math. It will always be significantly less expensive because it's only 18 days from Russia to the UK. That's it.
And oh, by the way — the whole false argument about needing to get Greenland because it's being attacked by Russia and China. First of all, to get from the east coast of England, where I live, to the west coast of Greenland, you've got to go out the east coast, across Scotland, across Ireland, across Iceland to get to the other side of Greenland. So I really don't see Russia or the NSR being a major player in, if you will, Russia or China attacking Greenland. That was the false argument I wanted to raise here in a small village south of England.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. I'll agree — I think no one really took that too seriously. Well, it was a bit sad to see the German chancellor repeat this: that America has a real interest in Greenland to protect it from a Chinese or Russian invasion. It's quite absurd.
Henry Tillman: The Russians control the Arctic. 65% of the population in the Arctic has been Russian for decades. So what's new? What are they going to take that they haven't done already?
Glenn Diesen: Well, I think for the Americans, the first time they wanted to express an interest in buying Greenland was the same time as they were acquiring Alaska. So I think it's a good outpost to control the Pacific as well as the Atlantic. I see it as an American attempt to prepare for a multipolar world — to defend the Western hemisphere, or control it at least. But of course that's not a nice sales pitch, so looking to defend it is more likely how they will approach this matter, at least in the media.
When I saw the European leaders celebrate how they were cutting themselves off completely from Russian energy — energy that you're saying is four times cheaper — I found it to be so extraordinary. I was taught that energy security meant the supply of cheap, reliable energy, and to have cheap reliable energy you usually want to diversify your suppliers. By all means, don't get excessively dependent on Russian supplies, because then if that's not reliable, they can be used politically, the prices can be hiked. But you want many suppliers. To cut yourself off and then make yourself excessively dependent on, for example, an American supplier only — then there's no energy security. It's not reliable, it's not cheap. It's extraordinary to me. But I guess my source of optimism is you can only do this for so long before you're forced to accept reality. And I think that's where we're reaching now in Europe — you see political opposition to this madness emerge. We're at the stage now where they're just trying to criminalise or marginalise the opposition, as we've seen from France to Germany. But at some point that just angers people, and you can only ignore reality for so long. Hopefully, speaking as a European, I would like to see the Arctic become an area of actual cooperation between all the major powers, as opposed to having this zero-sum dimension to it.
The third pole: Tibetan glacial melt and China's new river project
Henry Tillman: Maybe one more thing to put on the table. The third pole — these countries at 5,000 to 6,000 metres — that ice melt is very rapid. That's going to have a near-term effect on the Central Asian C5 and C6 countries. But more importantly, that ice melt out of Tibet — the Chinese are building a river in western China, which will be the size of the Yangtze, from that glacial melt, to actually make that desert go green. They're building a river the size of the Yangtze out of the ice flow out of Tibet, out of the mountains, and that will actually turn that whole area green. Therefore, the need to get food from elsewhere in the world will change. So all these things are happening with this ice melt, and there's no Western press covering it, for all the reasons you just said.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. Well, that's a media problem I've noticed. The media is very narrative-driven. If it doesn't present a good story about winning, it essentially just disappears. At least there was a story on the topic of maritime routes and energy when the Nord Stream was destroyed. Everyone remembers the massive interest by the media, as long as it could be portrayed as Russia attacking its own pipeline. Once it became evident it was either the United States or Ukraine or both, there was no good narrative anymore. So they just threw out a story about a fishing boat and let it go, with no interest anymore. I think that could be the same curse — ignoring what's happening in the Arctic.
Henry Tillman: Anyway, thanks for having me on. I just want to show how rapidly this is changing. I've given you statistics between 2018 and 2025, but the last three or four months — with India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia — this is all rapid movement. These are major countries. All together they represent two billion people.
Glenn Diesen: Since May — that's pretty quick change.
Henry Tillman: Yeah.
Glenn Diesen: And I would also advise people to link this video up to the discussion we had about thorium, because I found that to be quite fascinating and very important for people to know. So thank you very much for taking the time, and I hope you come back again soon.
Henry Tillman: Good to see you as ever. Thanks so much. Bye now.