Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 5, October–November 2009, pp. 121–142
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After a period of substantial demilitarisation in the Arctic at the end of the Cold War, there is growing recognition of the new strategic significance of a region where security, economics and the environment interact. Tensions have been rising between Russia and the four other Arctic Ocean littoral states – Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark (which is responsible for Greenland’s security and foreign policy) – as climate change, opening up new economic opportunities, is changing the geostrategic dynamics in the region. There are unresolved disputes among the latter four states, all of them members of NATO, and national interests, narrowly defined, could always override alliance solidarity. However, the fault lines between the NATO states on the one hand and Russia on the other appear to be deepening and the sense of common space is under pressure as the circumpolar states jockey for competitive economic advantage. Future military conflict, while not likely, cannot entirely be ruled out, because of the enormous economic stakes in an area where some boundaries of maritime jurisdiction remain to be settled. That situation is not critical in terms of military security; it is more a revival of traditional power politics than a new Cold War. There is a risk, however, that the overall strategic objective of maintaining stability within a zone of peace and cooperation could be forgotten. Growing military activity, closer security coordination among the Western states, and inflammatory rhetoric could set off a vicious circle, jeopardising the wide-ranging collaboration put in place since the end of the Cold War.
Rising tensions
While the Antarctic is a non-militarised scientific and nature reserve, the Arctic includes the territory and inhabitants of eight states. Of the five states fronting the Arctic Ocean, Russia has by far the largest coastline, more than 17,500 kilometres long, and the largest Arctic population. As much as 20% of Russian GDP derives from north of the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Ocean and its shores are by no means the highly militarised zone of confrontation they were during the Cold War, but climate change, proceeding at a much higher rate in the Arctic than in the rest of the world, and the retreating ice cap, are giving it a new strategic importance. The region is now economically as well as militarily significant. In 2009 the US Geological Survey estimated that this area, where some maritime boundaries remain at issue among the coastal states, contains some 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and about 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, mainly offshore under less than 500 metres of water. The undiscovered natural gas is mainly concentrated in Russia. These estimates suggest that Russia is likely to end up with the largest share of Arctic resource wealth and that its strategic control of natural-gas resources is likely to be strengthened in the future.High energy prices and technological advances may hold out the prospect of oil and gas extraction in hitherto inaccessible regions, although for the foreseeable future such extraction is likely only in...
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Margaret Blunden is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Westminster, London.
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