Canada and Denmark have a big stake in this issue, they are EXTREMELY interested, so is Iceland and Norway and the UK, even Japan and China, but they don't have the resources of their NATO ally, and they are not crippled by self-serving ideological Neanderthals who can't bring themselves to admit how many ways they were wrong on this issue.

We always competed with the Soviets in the Arctic, even when we both thought it would remain an inaccessible frozen wasteland.
Now that its mineral and biological resources are up for grabs and our technological superiority in missile submarines is less dominant, we seem to be losing interest. After centuries of looking for the Northwest Passage, now that we have one, the USA has suddenly wimped out.

While you're pondering that, consider that the polar sea is now also a strategic commercial asset, a trade route that will connect Europe and Asia and whoever controls it with bases, ports, yards, and other aids to navigation and maritime infrastructure will be the primary beneficiary of that trade, not to mention in a position to interdict it if required. We should be working with the Canadians and the Danes to develop the Canadian Archipelago and the Denmark and Fram straits the same way the Russians are developing the Siberian Littoral.

This is just the tip of the iceberg (forgive me for that!) as far as the Russians are concerned. They are already putting together a consortium of nations (under their protection and leadership) to help "manage" commerce and navigation in this area. I suspect they'll model it on our control of the Panama Canal, and Britain's control of Suez. Free passage, and access to all the support and logistic facilities en route, but don't even think of pissing off the boss.

So while you have your crayons out, look at a terrestrial globe from a point over the North pole. An ice-free Arctic will be the center of the world, the crossroads of all trade. All the world's land masses circle it. It will do for Russia in the 21st century what the Panama Canal did for America in the 20th. It will be the gateway to Empire.

As always, TB, you argue every issue as if protecting Conservatives from embarrassment were all that really mattered.