As the ice melts, a perilous Russian threat is emerging in the Arctic

Ask Britain's foreign secretary which part of the world poses his biggest foreign policy challenge, and the chances are he will say either Russia or China. He probably will not say the Arctic. Yet the implications of what is happening in the Arctic will change patterns of international trade, drive food insecurity, deepen global poverty, increase refugee crises, reorient military alliances, and turbocharge military expenditures and the risk of war. The eight Arctic states - Canada, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the US and Russia - have long collaborated on scientific research through the Arctic Council, a non-military body. Until…