The United States formally took the reins of the governing body for the Arctic region on Friday at a meeting above the Arctic Circle, in Iqaluit, Canada.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attending the Arctic Council ministerial meeting, says the U.S. will use the two-year chairmanship of the Council to focus on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases such as black carbon and methane, which are enhancing the melting of land and sea ice in the Far North, and addressing the consequences of global warming on the lands, wildlife and inhabitants of the vast region.

Swiftly moving geopolitics may get in the way of these U.S. goals, however, considering that the U.S. is taking over at a time of historically high tensions between the Western Arctic nations, such as the U.S. and Canada, and Russia.

Furthermore, while the U.S. talks a good game about its priorities in the Arctic, and has elevated the region to higher levels of decision-making in Washington than was previously the case — Kerry’s presence in Iqualuit speaks to this — the country is not yet spending the money that would be needed to actually carry out its policy goals.

The U.S. is not aggressively building up its Coast Guard fleet and Navy assets to patrol its Arctic waters, for example.

At the end of the day, in fact, Russia is far better positioned to exert its influence in the Arctic than the U.S. is, considering the U.S. has but one working icebreaker, compared to the Russians’ 37. Even China will soon surpass the U.S. in terms of its icebreaker capabilities, which opens up opportunities for Arctic exploration during most of the year, rather than just the summer melt season.

Black carbon and methane

The Arctic is one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet, with warming air and sea temperatures and melting ice rapidly transforming places from Fairbanks, Alaska to Svalbard, Norway from a forbidden, frozen landscape to a seasonally accessible area.

Arctic sea ice has declined precipitously in recent years, with September sea ice extent falling 13% per decade since 1979. Projections show the Arctic Ocean is likely to become seasonally sea-ice free sometime between the next few years and 2050. Sea ice extent in March was the lowest on record for the month.

What’s particularly worrisome is that the consequences of Arctic climate change are not remaining in the Arctic. There is evidence that rapid Arctic warming is affecting the midlatitude jet stream, causing extreme weather events as far south as the Mid-Atlantic U.S.

Much of this research is considered to be emerging science, and is still controversial in the weather and climate communities.

The major priority for the U.S. chairmanship will be to address the impacts of climate change, and try to slow the pace and severity of the phenomenon. Studies have shown that emissions of methane and black carbon, or soot, which warm the climate on relatively short timescales compared to carbon dioxide, which stays in the atmosphere for centuries.

During a brief speech at the Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Iqaluit, Kerry called black carbon and soot "two of the most potent greenhouse gases" out there.

According to the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, Arctic Council member states and observers on the Council, such as China, India, Japan and South Korea, produce at least 60% of global black carbon emissions and 42% of manmade methane emissions.

"If we want to know where the problem begins, all we have to do is look in the mirror," Kerry told the Arctic Council on Friday.

Because these pollutants have short atmospheric lifetimes, on the order of several weeks for black carbon and one to two decades for methane, they could reduce short-term warming and potentially slow the melting of sea and land ice while countries work to implement carbon dioxide emissions reductions.

Are we moving toward a new, less cooperative Arctic era?

The opening up of the Arctic is likely to lead to a significant increase in marine shipping, tourism as well as resource extraction industries. How Arctic and non-Arctic states manage these activities in such an ecologically sensitive region is a major question facing the Arctic Council.

There have long been two competing storylines about the Arctic’s political future. One holds that as sea and land ice melts, competition for the spoils of global warming — such as stores of oil and natural gas — will propel the eight Arctic states into a new type of cold war. Most Arctic policymakers and the history of the Arctic Council argues against this view.

The other paradigm, which has proven correct so far, is that all the Arctic states have an interest in sharing responsibility for the vast and inhospitable expanse of the Arctic, from the U.S. to Iceland and Russia. In fact, Arctic countries have come together under the auspices of the Arctic Council — a forum that dates to 1996 for discussing and pursuing science research and policy solutions in the Far North.

A major question facing the Council, which cannot institute binding rules or regulations, is whether the East versus West tensions that have so dominated G-20, G-8 and other international meetings of late will creep into the Arctic Council’s work.

Historically, the Council has been a rare breed of international institution in that it has gotten things done with very little leakage of outside political concerns into the group's workings. It’s a nonbinding forum for cooperation and sharing of responsibilities, and has made progress in setting guidelines on Arctic marine shipping, pollution reductions, protection of Native Peoples throughout the Arctic, and other steps.

Think of it as a more "kumbaya" version of the U.N. Security Council.

But that may be about to change, experts told Mashable.

“The deteriorating overall relations between the U.S. and Russia is already having an impact on Arctic relations,” says Malte Humpert, executive director of the Arctic Institute, in an interview. He cites the collapse of the Arctic oil development deal between Roseneft and Exxon, which was a casualty of the post-Ukraine sanctions, as an example of this.

For example, in a sign that tensions are in fact creeping into the Arctic policy arena, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozon sparked a diplomatic row when he traveled to Svalbard, Norway, earlier this month, despite the fact that he is banned from traveling to the West under sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Crimea.

Rogozin chairs Russia’s commission on the Arctic, and he tweeted from a Russian station in the Arctic to declare the region to be a “Russian mecca.” Arctic development and defense has been a central part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s development strategy. A defense strategy the Russian government released last year, for example, set a new military goal for the country: the protection of national interests in the Arctic.

An uptick in Russian air and sea patrols near Nordic countries recently spurred Iceland, Norway and other nations to expand defense ties.

With such rhetoric coming from Russia it’s unclear how long the cooperative atmosphere within the Arctic Council can continue. In a possible sign of deteriorating relations, Russia declined to send its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to Iqualuit for the ministerial meeting, instead sending a lower-level official.

Huge gap between U.S. goals and resources

“Right now cooperation in the Arctic Council is still very, very good,” Humpert says. However, "You’re kinda wondering how will this rhetoric have an impact on cooperation long-term …

how long can the Arctic Council be shielded or shield itself?” Humpert says. “It will be very interesting to see how the U.S. manages this over the next two years.”

Humpert and other Arctic analysts who spoke with Mashable say that what is missing on the part of the U.S. so far, and what hurts the country’s credibility on Arctic affairs, is the lack of resources being devoted to the rapidly changing Arctic.

There are currently no plans to build new icebreakers, despite the Coast Guard and Alaska Senate delegation’s advocacy for such vessels. Instead, what has happened is that the Obama administration has issued a series of documents to align various government agencies’ Arctic policies. This helps with internal coordination, but will do nothing to solve a crisis involving, say, an oil spill off the north coast of Alaska, unless there are ships in the area with trained crews skilled in cleaning up oil in an inhospitable environment.

“It comes down to a lack of priorities” in Washington, Humpert says. The Bush and Obama administrations have tried to get the Senate to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, which governs the settlement process for nations that wish to make offshore claims of lands beyond their 200-mile continental shelf exclusive economic zones.

By not signing the treaty, the U.S. risks losing out on any Arctic land grabs, but a few conservative senators are holding the agreement up, wary of empowering a U.N. bureaucracy.

"That gap between the rhetoric and the stated interest on paper and what’s happening on the ground is probably largest for the U.S. for an Arctic state,” Humpert says.

Andrew Holland, a senior fellow for energy and climate at the American Security Project, says the Arctic Council is at “a turning point,” as U.S. relations with Russia threaten to imperil decades of cooperation on Arctic scientific and species management challenges, among other things.

He too says the U.S. is not prioritizing the Arctic in the way that other countries have been.

“There really is no place other than the Arctic where the U.S. Navy faces a peer competitor that has better training, better equipment in the region than the Arctic,” he said, referring to the Russian Navy.

The Russians, and even the Canadians, have undertaken major military exercises in the Arctic and are opening up new bases, while the U.S. is not.

“It’s a signifier of our priority level and their priority level. The Russians prioritize the Arctic, other countries prioritize the Arctic,” Holland says. “Maybe that’s appropriate that we don’t prioritize the Arctic as much as a country like Russia, for which it really is their backyard and is truly, truly important to their future development,” he says.

“I can’t quite figure out what the Russians are up to, because … no one is threatening to invade northern Siberia … it’s kind of crazy for them to be spending this much time and money,” Holland said.

Holland says an axiom in foreign policy holds that “eventually an imbalance of power will lead to an imbalance of outcomes.” This suggests that at some point, Russia will get what it wants in terms of Arctic policies. These could run counter to U.S. interests.

This isn't necessarily new, either. Russia has historically been the biggest player in the Arctic simply due to the enormity of its Arctic territory.

Joel Plouffe, a visiting scholar at the Center for Canadian-American Studies, Western Washington University, told Mashable that climate change is opening up Russia’s huge northern border.

“A new and dramatically enormous border is appearing in northern Russia which means a greater Russian presence in its Arctic lands and waters. Unlike the North American Arctic, Alaska’s Beaufort sea and Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, Russia’s Arctic is rapidly transforming because of the disappearing sea ice in its Northern Sea route," Plouffe said in an email.

“I like to say that Russia is not preparing for war in the Arctic but rather preparing for the world to come to its Arctic."