This gorgeous map from 1595 is the key to understanding Russia’s current Arctic strategy

To understand what Russia is up to in the Arctic, you will need to throw out your atlases and your Mercator projection maps of the world. You’ll need to delete Google Maps and Apple Maps from your smartphone. Instead, what you’ll need to do is pull out another Mercator map — the famous “Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio” of 1595 - considered by cartographers to be the first-ever dedicated map of the Arctic.

Once you get used to viewing the world from the admittedly disorienting perspective of the North Pole, you’ll notice that there are a few oddities here — the inscription that a band of female pygmies inhabit an outlying island of Norway, the vast whirlpool and rivers at the top of the world, or the black magnetic mountain at the North Pole.

However, you can immediately see at a glance how Russia views the Arctic. It’s a zone neatly divided into four competing spheres of interest. With the melting of the polar ice caps, you’ve suddenly making it possible to run boats through the Northern Sea Route year-round, discover new mineral and hydrocarbon resources in the frozen Arctic and, yes, set up armed fortifications nearby. There are rivers here, not icecaps, and competing spheres of interest. In short, the Arctic is not some frozen wasteland populated by polar bears, it’s a giant waterway full of strategic possibilities.

Russia has the potential to be an Arctic superpower

You can see at a glance at the map of 1595 that not only is Russia a hulking Eurasian landmass extending from Russia to Asia, but it’s also potentially a huge Arctic superpower. Check out the breadth and expanse — it’s almost like a Leviathan of the High North extending from Scandinavia to the Bering Strait. The only other countries that come close to Russia in size are Canada, Norway and Denmark (by virtue of its claim to Greenland). These four nations all dwarf the size of the U.S. Arctic landmass (i.e. Alaska).

And Russia has been by far the most aggressive nation in asserting its international rights. Once Russia figures out a way to circumvent sanctions and import the right drilling technology to exploit those resources, it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen next — the Russian oil & gas machine is going to march to the High North in search of new assets to exploit. Moreover, Russia is going to look for ways to steadily increase the size of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Arctic.

The new opportunities for militarization of the Arctic are endless

And that means Russia is going to look for a way to protect those assets. While the U.S. has been busy sending off tourist boats to gape at the melting ice caps and take pictures of the polar bears, Russia has been busy drafting up a major new expansion of its military assets in the Arctic. In March 2015, as part of its 2015 Index of Military Strength, the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation outlined the number of installations that Russia has planned or is planning in the Arctic.

Frankly, it’s stunning. There are armed fortifications extending along the entire Arctic frontier of Russia. There’s an expanding Russian naval presence based near Murmansk. And there are plans to protect and fortify the Northern Sea Route.

Source: Heritage Foundation, 2015 Index of Military Strength

If the U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Europe, it’s easy to see how Russia might respond — by making things very dicey for the U.S. by basing bomber fleets across its Arctic assets, as some analysts have suggested. You don’t need the implied threat of ICBMs streaming their way across the European continent — you just need a way to send some nuclear-armed bombers over the North Pole to put a scare into Canada and the U.S.

Melting ice caps are going to make things way more interesting

If there’s one thing that Russia doesn’t want to happen, it’s for its navy to be boxed in. You could argue that’s one key reason why Crimea so important — it gives Russia the ability to project power across Mediterranean, instead of being boxed in within the Black Sea. Now, look at what happens if Russian icebreakers and ships are able to patrol the Arctic. Suddenly, you’ve got a way to control some pretty important shipping routes at the top of the world.

Back in the 1600s, inspired by this Mercator map, the possibilities for commerce and exploration were so intriguing that they set off centuries of explorers to find both a Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage through the Arctic. According to one historical anecdote, the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible heard about European explorers making their way through Russia’s Arctic territory and ordered the men brought straightaway to Moscow for a private audience with the imperial court. That led to new thinking about ways Russia might also explore and colonize the Arctic.

**

It will be interesting to see what happens next with Russia’s plans for the Arctic, especially with a major new upgrade for Russia’s Arctic naval presence announced this summer. It’s clear that, despite international protestations to the contrary, we are witnessing the militarization of the Arctic. And that militarization of the Arctic is being made possible by a melting polar ice cap that’s making an esoteric map of the Arctic from more than 400 years ago suddenly relevant once again today.