Routledge Handbook of Arctic Security

Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Marc Lanteigne, Horatio Sam-Aggrey, Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Marc Lanteigne, Horatio Sam-Aggrey, Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Marc Lanteigne, Horatio Sam-Aggrey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351968232
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Routledge Handbook of Arctic Security offers a comprehensive examination of security in the region, encompassing both state-based and militarized notions of security, as well as broader security perspectives reflecting debates about changes in climate, environment, economies, and societies.

Since the turn of the century, the Arctic has increasingly been in the global spotlight, resulting in the often invoked idea of "Arctic exceptionalism" being questioned. At the same time, the unconventional political power which the Arctic's Indigenous peoples hold calls into question conventional ideas about geopolitics and security. This handbook examines security in this region, revealing contestations and complementarities between narrower, state-based and/or militarized notions of security and broader security perspectives reflecting concerns and debates about changes in climate, environment, economies, and societies.

The volume is split into five thematic parts:

• Theorizing Arctic Security

• The Arctic Powers

• Security in the Arctic through Governance

• Non-Arctic States, Regional and International Organizations

• People, States, and Security.

This book will be of great interest to students of Arctic politics, global governance, geography, security studies, and International Relations.

1

Understanding Arctic security

What has changed? What hasn’t?

Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Marc Lanteigne, and Horatio Sam-Aggrey

Introduction

Security is a concept about power, as well as a powerful concept. Invoking the concept is a political act. It makes a claim to power. The debate around what the concept means is itself a practice in power. It is a concept that has been, and continues to be, invoked to draw attention to “something” that is or should be valued above all other things.

(Hoogensen Gjørv et al. 2014, 1)

This handbook is the result of research in a wide array of disciplines relating to politics and international relations. It presents diverse perceptions of Arctic security, with various scholars coming from different vantage points and traditions to understand the idea of security in the northernmost regions of the world. As a handbook, the volume does two things. First, based on a range of empirical data and case material, it provides a snapshot of various security perceptions about the Arctic in the second decade of the twenty first century. These snapshots allow scholars to reflect upon the degree to which security perceptions have changed or remained the same over time, as well as get a better understanding of which issues dominate the high-politics arena, which is often equated with security matters, and why. Cases and empirical data are always a moving target, however, so what appear to be the most important security considerations today may not have the same priority tomorrow. Therefore, the handbook also provides insights into different security analysis tools and practices, which can help scholars reflect upon how our understanding of security – what we do to protect that which we value most, and who decides – changes over time. The Arctic is a vast, dynamic, and diverse region that has come under increasing attention as it becomes ever more important to the rest of the world. This handbook provides many insights into why that is.

Although the Arctic occupies about one-sixth of the globe and is home to approximately four million people, depending where one chooses to draw the region’s borders (Wheeler 2010, 4–11), the Arctic Ocean and the lands encircling it have only very recently been subject to a serious, comprehensive debate about security, either in policy or in research circles. Strategic matters, including military issues, have never been wholly absent from the Arctic, given that the region was a buffer zone between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For many reasons, however, there has been a widely held perception that many of the security concerns that occupy most of the world are not widely found in the Far North.

First, the climate and geography of the Arctic have been seen as too hostile for large-scale state-centric security activity, except in rare cases, and as not suitable as a milieu for military conflict (although exceptions can be noted, including the Aleutian campaign during the Pacific Theater of World War II and the 1939 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union) (Garfield 1995; Naske and Slotnick 2014; Trotter 1991). The advent of longer-range missiles during the Cold War raised the profile of the Arctic as an arena for superpower rivalry, but it was seen primarily as a space where missiles could traverse a shorter distance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The widely held perception of the Arctic as a land of few (accessible) resources and impassable corridors added to a widely held view that the region was largely excluded from mundane state-based security interests.

Second, since the end of the Cold War there has been a concerted effort among the eight states that have Arctic borders, namely Canada, Denmark, (via the Faroe Islands and Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States, to create a space often described as “high north, low tension” (Stavridis 2013), a region where security concerns have been set aside in favor of issues related to building mutual cooperation, human development, addressing environmental change, and scientific diplomacy. Indeed, the most prominent regional organization in the circumpolar north, the Arctic Council, with the eight Arctic states listed above as members, specifically decided to eschew debates on military security matters in the regime’s founding document, the 1996 Ottawa Declaration (Arctic Council 2019). It has been widely assumed that the specific physical conditions of the Arctic make zero-sum thinking within the region unviable, and thus the Arctic should be considered an area of exceptionalism in international security studies because of the strong regional preference for cooperation over competition. Should the Arctic be viewed as a region of asecurity (Wæver 1998), where security is simply not present in studies of it?

It is argued in this book that the concept of the Arctic as separate from the world’s security discourses was never matched by reality, and the idea of Arctic exceptionalism itself has also begun to be challenged on many fronts and for a variety of reasons, many of which can be traced back to the single most prominent change in the region: the effects of global climate change. The melting of the polar ice cap and the Greenland ice sheet, as well as glaciers and sea ice in the region, are all having profound effects on not only the region’s environment but also its economy, development, and politics (Jouzel et al. 2008). The traditional customs, histories, and vocations of the citizens of the Far North, especially Indigenous peoples, have already started to be greatly affected by the changed climate conditions all over the Arctic. In many cases governments, businesses, and the Arctic populations themselves are still struggling to understand and adjust to these new circumstances.

It has been a long-standing tradition in Arctic discourse, including within the Arctic Council, to check one’s politics at the door, so to speak. This concept implies that non-Arctic disputes, including those in the security realm, should not spill over into the Arctic. That practice was rarely challenged during much of the early post-Cold War period, not least due to the atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall (Græger 1996). However, worsening relations between Russia and the West have placed strains on Arctic states’ abilities to compartmentalize their northern and southern policies, especially after the 2014 Crimea/Donbas crises in Ukraine drove a deeper wedge between Moscow and many other Arctic governments. Much current discourse about Arctic security focuses on Russian interest in rearming its Arctic lands in anticipation of increased sea traffic through the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and its engaging in renewed air and sea incursions into the Nordic Arctic region (Astrasheuskaya and Foy 2019). In response, US President Donald Trump, after spending much of the beginning of his tenure ignoring the Arctic, has now begun to weigh the possibility of a greater American military presence in the Far North (Kesling 2019; Lemothe 2019). In the meantime, the Arctic and Russian military actions in that region have started playing a greater role in NATO planning. This is illustrated by the organization’s Trident Juncture military exercises, involving more than 50,000 personnel, which took place in Norway and the Atlantic-Arctic region in October–November 2018 (Norwegian Armed Forces 2018). Thus, it seems that hard security is making a comeback to levels not seen since the Cold War.

With the melting of Arctic ice, resources that were once unreachable and shipping lanes considered impractical are now being eyed not only by the Arctic Eight but also many international actors. The Arctic Council includes observer states, such as France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, and Switzerland, which have developed Arctic policies based on histories of regional interest in the region and current economic priorities that include engagement in the Arctic. Even states not normally associated with the Arctic, like India and Singapore, have joined the Arctic Council’s observer cohort and are carving out their own policies in the region. The largest of the non-Arctic observer states, China, has taken the lead in proposing new forms of scientific and economic cooperation, calling for an Ice Silk Road and a greater role for non-Arctic states in regional affairs (Hongjian 2018; Lanteigne 2019a; PRC State Council Information Office 2018). This development has caused some consternation among some Arctic actors, especially the United States, which has begun to look at a possibly closer Sino–Russian partnership in the Arctic as a direct challenge to its own status in the region.

As both Arctic and non-Arctic states look at the developing economic opportunities in the region, ranging from oil and gas development in Siberia, to potential mines in Greenland, to new shipping lanes drastically cutting transit times between Asia and Europe, debate about a resource scramble or a de facto Arctic gold rush, appeared in earnest a decade ago, along with the possibility of disagreements or even conflicts over the emerging riches of the Far North (Emmerson 2010; Kuersten 2015). This despite the fact that many of these so-called new resources rest well within the land and sea boundaries of Arctic states. This has led to further questions about the rights and responsibilities of Arctic and non-Arctic states in the region and about who is an Arctic stakeholder, given that many southern countries are not only developing interests in Arctic resources but also facing climate change challenges that in some cases can be traced directly back to the Arctic itself.

It is tempting, when looking at the dominant debates surrounding the current rethinking of Arctic security, to simply restrict ourselves to the classic geopolitical/hard security questions and issues raised above. To do that, however, would be falling into the black box or billiard ball traps that international relations specialists warn about when describing the limitations of only looking at security from the state or governmental levels (Bull 1977; Singer 1961). This in turn reifies the idea of “trickle down” security whereby the security of the state and its borders automatically translates into security for those living within those states (Hoogensen and Rottem 2004). Despite classic characterizations of the Arctic as remote and desolate with “little international relevance” (Young 1989), the region is a compilation of diverse states which are home to even more diverse peoples. It is thus crucial to look at security challenges on the individual level, known as “human security” to better understand the ways in which different peoples experience insecurities and/or provide for their own security. Some human insecurities have always been present in the region, while others have appeared as a result of the dramatic change in the Arctic’s geographies. These have included security challenges related to economic development, gender, health, mobility, non-state organizations, social norms, and various forms of cooperation beyond the state (Hoogensen Gjørv et al. 2014). What is the interplay between these areas of security and between various levels ranging from individuals and communities to governments, sub-regions, and the Arctic as a whole?

As part of the blank-space/desolatation rhetoric about the Arctic, there has also been the impression that the legal regimes that are plentiful throughout the rest of the world are either missing or irrelevant in the Far North. The truth is quite the opposite, given that many aspects of international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other forms of international maritime law are hardly absent from the region: the Arctic Ocean is, after all, an ocean. Moreover, new forms of governance have begun to appear as a result of changes in the region. A Polar Code came into operation in 2017 to better regulate civilian maritime traffic in the Arctic, and a fishing ban in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) was approved in October 2018 to ensure that as the waters surrounding the North Pole become ice-free in the coming decades, a race for the region’s seafood resources does not cause further damage to the center of the Arctic (IMO 2019; Independent Barents Observer/Radio Canada 2018). There has also been a growth in Track II (sub-governmental) organizations that discuss numerous scientific, economic, political, and strategic subjects related to the Far North. These include the Arctic Circle, founded in 2013, which meets every year in Reykjavík and has since produced spin-off forums in places ranging from Québec City to Shanghai, as well as the Arctic Frontiers meeting in Tromsø and the US-based Arctic Encounter Symposium. While there is certainly more talk in and about the Arctic over the past decade, how much of it is actually contributing to the region’s overall security?

Then, of course, there are the security challenges that are directly tied to Arctic climate change itself. Although environmental security is still a relatively new discipline compared to traditional materialist schools (i.e., those that look almost exclusively at weapons and wealth), it is becoming further understood that the warming conditions and changed weather patterns in the region are creating threats to security from many directions. Will traditional ways of life have to be abandoned? Will new resource extraction projects further harm the environment and displace local communities? Will environmental threats bring Arctic states together or divide them? Attendees at the May 2019 Arctic Council Ministerial in Rovaniemi, Finland, received an unwelcome wake-up call to the possibility of inaction on Arctic climate change: the US delegation, deferring to Trump’s obstructionist climate change denial, refused to sign any policy document that included the term “climate change” (Lanteigne 2019b). Instead, the United States sought to focus on the growing challenges posed by Russia and China to Arctic security and rule of law, moves that may further divide the region politically.

Given all of these significant changes in the realm of Arctic security, this book unpacks and deconstructs the various concepts of security that have appeared in the Arctic in recent decades. It argues that the concept has become more complex not only because of the vagaries associated with climate change but also because of the human responses to it.

Chapter summaries

This handbook opens with an overall view of the Arctic from a historical perspective, written by historian and law professor emeritus Alan Henrikson, in Chapter 2. This overview sets the stage for subsequent sections of the book, which cover different themes relevant to Arctic security.

Theoretical perspectives

Part I describes theoretical perspectives that are relevant to our understanding of Arctic security. It is clear from this section that there is not just one way to understand security in the Arctic. This section commences with an examination by Padrtova of typical approaches to Arctic security – that is, military and state security approaches. This third chapter complements the first two chapters in the handbook – the introduction and historical perspective – as it offers a platform for thinking beyond state-based perceptions of security in the Arctic and also expands the discussion to understanding Arctic security as a regional security complex. Padrtova distinguishes the traditional approach of security, based on realism, from the nontraditional approach, based on liberalism. The author discusses the factors that led to the extension of the concept of security from being solely based on military and state security to incorporating other areas, such as environmental, economic, food, health, and societal security. This shift in the perception of danger also marked the beginning of a fundamentally different political environment, both in a real and a theoretical sense.

In the book’s fourth chapter, Chater, Greaves, and Sarson examine how security issues in the Arctic are managed through a multilayered regional governance system. The complex web of governance institutions that provide fora for problem-solving and cooperation includes the Arctic Council, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and the Northern Forum. The authors also examine alternative or unconventional security institutions related to the emergence of nonmilitary security challenges and non-state forms of regional governance, focusing on the role of Indigenous autonomous governance arrangements. The authors conclude that strong state and sub-state governments exist alongside long-standing international regimes and organizations, creating a region where the rule of domestic and international law is strong and respected.

Continuing with the theme of Arctic security, Bertelsen explores the impact of international security events and factors on Arctic security. Employing a historical perspective, the author outlines how regional and international conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, the two World Wars, and the Cold War had geostrategic implications for security in the Arctic. The author concludes that, simil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Understanding Arctic security: what has changed? What hasn’t?
• 2. The Arctic peace projection: from Cold War fronts to cooperative fora
• PART I: Theorizing Arctic security
• PART II: The Arctic powers: “Arctic Five” and “Arctic Eight”
• PART III: Security in the Arctic through governance
• PART IV: Non-Arctic states, regional, and international organizations
• PART V: People, states, and security
• Index