Aboard an icebreaker, a writer got a closer look at the Arctic's 'Sea Change'

As polar ice melts in the Arctic, shipping lanes are opening up, making the region a new zone of superpower competition. Writer Rana Foroohar got an up-close look aboard the USS Healy, a Coast Guard icebreaker. She says that traversing the North Pole by ship — once a "largely conceptual" route — is now becoming a "real possibility" for two or three weeks a year. "If you are taking one of these Arctic routes, you can save as much as 40% of the time it would take you to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and depending on the...