This will make you puke it's so dumb.
The U.S. once had the mightiest fleet of icebreakers and polar research vessels the world has ever seen. Our clever ancestors in the 1950's knew that potential arctic resources of all varieties made it a practical requirement to have a navy and scientific exploration capability for the cold extremes of the planet. If nothing else then to counter the other superpowers in these regards.
Under the influence of globowarmthinkery and the pathetic academics who constructed it, nearly all the infrastructure to support arctic exploration has withered away until the U.S. depends on the generosity of other nations to get up there and look around - without their assistance, the Kwa would be no more capable of mounting cold weather expeditions than any region in Africa.
As of late, the swedes have admitted they can't crack this ice anymore. It's too thick, too expansive and it is a strain on their own resources. They may require these icebreakers just to keep some shipping lanes open and can no longer help out loser nations like Kwanzania which don't have the money to front expeditions of their own.
The nation that featured in ICE STATION ZEBRA with Rock Hudson is long dead. There is no Cold War superpower with a vast scientific and research capacity. That country has given way to a broken conglomerate of crotch-grabbers who can only hitch rides on boats that other people provide them out of pity. The people who own those boats have just decided they won't be providing any more free rides.
I think this is part of the shrinking horizons that accompany a new Dark Age. The borders expand and what was once close by and comprehensible becomes something far away and unknown. Keep this in mind the next time the papers print some cheesy poppycock about the arctic, remembering that there are fewer people stationed there than ever and even fewer people who find it accessible. It will someday become
terra obscura again, as it was in the past.