Organized by Mikkel Runge Olesen (mro@diis.dk) and Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen jrc@sam.sdu.dk) on behalf of The Danish Institute for International Studies and by Johannes Riber Nordby (ifs-06@fak.dk) on behalf of the Royal Danish Defence College, the Ministry of Defence, and Centre for Military Studies, Copenhagen University.
The absence of high north security competition is a precondition for the region’s well-functioning cooperative order. The Arctic states seem to have a common interest in keeping the peace. This panel examines if and how military conflict could come to the Arctic. How likely is a high north conflict? What is the relationship between regional and global dynamics? Does the Arctic become more conflict-prone as the climate change opens the region for human activity and exploitation? Has the Ukraine crisis brought conflict to the Arctic? What role will Russia and China play in the polar region? What would an Arctic security competition actually look like? What role do indigenous communities play in the high north security dynamics? How can the Arctic states prevent a future conflict?
09:15-12:00 (including coffee 25 minutes)
Russia’s High North Policy and the Impact of the Ukraine Crisis
Chair: Jakob Aa. Jørgensen, Danish Ministry of Defense jakobjor@gmail.com
Discussant: Mikkel Runge Olesen, Danish Institute for International Studies mro@diis.dk
13.15-15.30
The Ukraine Crisis and High North Cooperation
Cooperation or conflict in the Arctic: A Literature Review
Mikkel Runge Olesen, Danish Institute for International Studies (Denmark) mro@diis.dk
Chair: Jørgen Staun, Royal Danish Defence College
Discussant: Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, University of Southern Denmark jrc@sam.sdu.dk
ABSTRACTS
Russia’s Arctic security strategy: post-Ukraine reassessment
Ekaterina Klimenko
Researcher, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
For the last five years the Arctic region has enjoyed a very high level of cooperation not least because Russia has opted for increased collaboration with its Arctic neighbors. However, the geopolitical tensions between Russia and the West have raise question with regard to sustainability of this cooperation. Arctic is certainly among Russia’s top priorities when it comes to national security. Along with the strategic energy resources and shipping lines Arctic is critical for Russia’s military security. The Arctic is Russia’s only access to Atlantic. The Kola peninsular is hosting the Russian Northern fleet of the Russian federation that accounts up to two thirds of its submarine fleet, which is crucial for Russia’s nuclear and naval confrontation with the USA and NATO. Although for the last five years Russia has been relatively open and cooperative in its Arctic strategy the recent increase in Russia’s military activities in the region have casted doubts on whether it will continue its course on keeping the Arctic ‘the zone of peace and cooperation’ in the foreseeable future. The paper will analyze Russia’s security strategy in the region. In particular it seeks to answer following question: What are Russia’s main security interests and concerns in the Arctic? How to interpret Russia’s recent military build-up in the region? What are the prospects for continuing hard and soft security cooperation in the Arctic between Russian and its Arctic neighbors in the aftermath of the Ukrainian crisis?
The Ukraine Crisis Moves North – When Do Global Conflicts Affect Arctic Politics?
Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, University of Southern Denmark
The Ukraine crisis has made Russia and the West less inclined to cooperate and to respect existing international law and institutions. Regional cooperation, institutions, and international law are essential for Arctic governance, and the crisis may thus have wide-ranging consequences for High North politics. This article examines when and how extra-regional conflicts – like the Ukraine crisis – can spill over into the Arctic and destabilize regional cooperation. The literature on Arctic politics does not address how extra-regional conflicts may affect the polar region. The article seeks to close that gap by developing a grand strategy framework for analysing conflict spill-over into the Arctic, and it uses that framework to examine the impact of the Ukraine crisis. The crisis has had a relatively mild effect on High North politics, as Russia is interested in keeping the peace due to its economic interests in the region. However, the Western sanctions may alter Russia’s strategic calculus, and the crisis may have a detrimental effect on Arctic politics in the long run.
The Aftermaths of Ukrainian Crisis: U.S. – Russian Arctic Relations and its implication for China
DENG Beixi, Assistant Professor, Division of Polar Strategic Studies, Polar Research Institute of China
In the post-Cold War era, despite a lack in Arctic security framework, Arctic states manage not to risk ruining the relatively well-functioning regional governance mechanism, the favorable investment environment and considerable potential economic returns. However, the existing mechanism could not resist interstate conflicts of global dynamics from spilling over onto the Arctic, as US-EU sanctions on investment and technological transfer to the Russian Arctic oil industries re-evoke the “East-West” rivalry in the Arctic. The containment of U.S. and its allies to China from the south and east, and to Russia from the west, compel the two states to realign and strategically approach closer.
The presentation aims to offer an overview on the U.S. – Russian relations in the Arctic from historic perspectives, with the assumption that the easement of U.S. – Russian relations in late 1980’s serves as prerequisite and impetus to the thriving Arctic governance regime, (e.g. Arctic Council & sub-regional groupings) and today U.S. – Russia relations constitute the core to the Arctic geopolitics. Then is analyzed the role of Arctic Council as “Firewall” in a two-way process, which on one hand, prevents global dynamics, specifically U.S. – Russia tension happening elsewhere form spill-over on the Arctic and on the other hand, facilitates the spill-over from developing cooperation on normative and civilian security to reaching political consensus on Arctic stability. Lastly, focus will be on impacts on the Arctic geopolitics of China-Russia Arctic Strategic approaching, which has started but in limited scale, as well as U.S. factors in it.
Russia’s strategy in the Arctic
Jørgen Staun
Royal Danish Defence College
Russia’s strategy in the Arctic is dominated by two overriding discourses – and foreign policy directions –which at first glance look like opposites. On the one hand, an IR realism/geopolitical discourse that often has a clear patriotic character and its proponents are often willing to put power, including military power, behind the national interests in the area. Opposed to this is an IR liberalism, international law-inspired and modernization-focused discourse, which has as an axiom that the countries operating in the Arctic all benefit the most if they cooperate peacefully. So far, the IR liberalism discourse has been dominating Russian policy in the Arctic, led by, above all, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has chosen to let the Foreign Ministry set the line for the Russian Arctic policy, presumably due to pragmatic reasons. However, after the war in Ukraine and the resulting Western sanctions regime, this policy has come under pressure. The question is what the consequences are for the so called “Arctic Exceptionalism” – the until now peaceful cooperation between all five coastal states in the Arctic – if there is a change in the overall Russian discourse on the Arctic due to the Russian-Western disagreements over the Ukraine.
Denmark and China in the Arctic region
Camilla T. N. Sørensen
Assistant Professor, Ph.D.
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
China has in recent years sought to enhance its role in the Arctic region seeing both potential economic and strategic opportunities in the areas of raw material and energy development and in the increased use of Arctic maritime sea routes as well as potential growing risks related to the changing climate in the Arctic region. Despite it not being high on the Chinese foreign and security policy agenda, Beijing continuously express a desire to be involved in the evolution of Arctic affairs – to be an ‘Arctic stakeholder’ (‘beiji lihaiguanxi guo’) – through cooperation with Arctic and non-Arctic states, e.g. in the Arctic Council, where China was accepted as an observer in 2013. This is also part of Chinese efforts to present China – and get international acceptance and respect for China – as a responsible great power. In this paper, the focus is on how Denmark seeks to manage the growing Chinese interest in the Arctic region. The debate in Denmark – and on Greenland – on future developments in the Arctic region has a strong focus on China. On the one hand, there is a strong interest in attracting Chinese investments to develop Greenland, but on the other hand there is a fear of Chinese investors, firms and workers coming to ‘take over’ as Greenland opens more up for exploration and extraction. On top of this, there is in Copenhagen an acknowledgement of the potential benefits for Denmark – for relations between Denmark and China on many other issues – in supporting a Chinese role in the Arctic region and in strongly engaging China on Arctic issues. Relations today between Denmark and China are very good with cooperation strengthening on many issues and frequent high-level visits and dialogues. However, as China becomes more active in the Arctic region, relations between Denmark and China also risk becoming more challenged by the Arctic issue. This especially if China becomes more involved in the economic development on Greenland. It might also become more challenging for Denmark to manage its relations with China in the Arctic region if great power relations – great power competition – start to influence developments in and around the Arctic region more. Under President Xi Jinping, China has started to lead a more assertive and active foreign and security policy causing great concern in the US. Denmark is a strong ally of the US so if the strategic mistrust and rivalry increasing characterizing US-China relations come to influence developments in and around the Arctic region it will also strongly constrain Denmark policy options and the Danish approach to engagement with China on Arctic issues.
Keywords: Arctic region, Denmark, China, neoclassical realism, small state foreign policy analysis
A broader view of Arctic cooperation
Professor Michael Byers
University of British Columbia
Russia’s annexation of Crimea has called into question the future of Arctic cooperation. After years of working with Russia on pollution prevention, search and rescue, shipping and fisheries management, the other Arctic states are asking: Can we trust Russia to behave differently in the North than it is behaving in the South? History suggests that we can: At the height of the Cold War, the five Arctic Ocean states concluded the 1973 Polar Bear Treaty. In 1982, Canada, Russia and the United States played leading roles in the negotiation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which contains provisions of central importance in the Arctic today. Economic realities also point towards continued cooperation, because the Arctic is an extremely expensive region in which to operate. On the one hand, militarization of the Arctic could consume entire national budgets, while on the other hand, any cooperation – on search and rescue, oil spill cleanup, etc. – offers significant cost savings. We can therefore conclude that Arctic cooperation is likely to continue. The more interesting question may be whether continued cooperation in this region can help to reduce tensions elsewhere.
Cooperation or conflict in the Arctic: A Literature Review
Mikkel Runge Olesen, Danish Institute for International Studies (Denmark) mro@diis.dk
Scholarship on ”hard” security dynamics in the Arctic has traditionally been divided over a few very basic questions: the degree of conflict potential in the Arctic region, and what to do about it. This article takes stock of the debates between two groups of researchers (and a large group of in-betweens), which in the article are named respectively “warners” and “reassurers” as well as a group of “inbetweeners”. The warners, the article argues, sees the Arctic region as a region of potential conflict brought about by newly accessible resources, increased military activity in the region and, lately, by spill-over from the crisis in Ukraine. The reassurers, on the other hand, argue that the region is much more stable because of strong interests with all Arctic countries, including Russia, to cooperate on the economic development of the region. The article looks at two key periods in Arctic security scholarship: First, it takes stock on research during the period 2007 to 2013 finding the “reassurers” to gradually gain ground. Second, it looks at the most recent scholarship, from 2014 and onwards, and on how that scholarship has had to deal with one key question in particular: the effects of the spill-over from the Ukraine Crisis to the Arctic. This article comes out in favor of cautious optimism, but the jury is still out, and effects on Arctic cooperation of a generally worsened Western-Russian relationship is likely to be a key question for scholarship on Arctic security dynamics for the foreseeable future.
The Developing Arctic Security Regime: Wishful Thinking or hardly thinking?
Rob Huebert, University of Calgary
Throughout the 2000s there had been a growing chorus that the Arctic was somehow a unique international space and that it was destined to remain a region of peace and international cooperation. It was argued that there were no issues in the region that could not be resolved through peaceful means. However, the Russian annexation of the Crimea and its continued use of military force in that region has demonstrated how fleeting good relations can be between the major actors in the Arctic. The crisis has also re-opened the debate regarding the core strategic interests of the major powers in the Arctic. This talk will examine whether or not the Arctic has been truly a zone of international peace and security - and if so why- or if the region faces the same geopolitical realities that are found in all of the other regions of the globe – and if so what are they?
Arctic Military Security before and after Ukrainian crisis: Evolution of military-strategic approaches of Russia and NATO countries
Dmitriy S. Tulupov
From the outset of the “Arctic euphoria” in 2007/2008 major concerns about the arms race and even a potential military conflict in the Arctic have been an integral and the most popular element of the regional political discourse. Rising hostility between Russia and NATO over the ongoing Civil War in Ukraine has become an additional negative factor, posing a threat to strategic stability in the Arctic. However, there is no substantial evidence to claim that conventional military conflict between Russia and NATO will start in the Arctic. From this perspective, Baltic Sea or Black Sea region seem to be more likely battlegrounds. Even during the Cold War, the Arctic warfare was regarded as a very costly and challenging task due to multiple reasons, i.e. logistical, climatic technical etc. In spite of the rapid development of military technologies, the situation has little changed for the last 25 years – the Arctic remains an “important backyard” of the Euro-Atlantic security complex.
