Hotting Up? Geopolitical Rivalry and Environmental Security in the Arctic.

• Author: Hough, Peter
• Position: COMMENTARY

Introduction

Traditionally the Arctic has been on the margins of international political interest. Geopolitically the region has usually been a relatively benign one with seemingly little to fight over. Commercial interest in the High North had largely ended by the early twentieth century by which time the region's whale and seal stocks had been exhausted and legendary Norwegian explorer Amundsen had proven that the fabled North West Passage over Canada was frozen. The Arctic played a very limited role in the First and Second World Wars and did not figure greatly in the Cold War, beyond being utilized by the superpowers for the stationing and testing of nuclear weapons. As a remote part of the world largely neither industrialized nor cultivated it also tended not to be a primary concern when environmental politics took off in the 1960s. Pollution or resource depletion were not the major concerns they were becoming in other parts of the world. Until the 1990s geopolitics or environmental security were rarely invoked in Arctic diplomacy.

Climate change, though, has changed this and brought the Arctic 'in from the cold' in both regards. Retreating ice sheets have revealed potential economic opportunities for extracting fuels and minerals, as well as opening up new sea lanes previously abandoned as infeasible. This has awoken the interest of governments and businesses from within and outside of the High North but has also threatened to unleash damaging environmental change in a new scramble for resources. Pollution has already greatly worsened due to climate change and would worsen even more with greater industrial encroachment. To date, the changing Arctic landscape has not prompted significant encroachment or a damaging resource war as the region's governments have looked more to cooperative solutions than confrontation. However, as with many facets of international relations, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens to undo decades of fruitful co-management of the High North and usher in a new kind of literal Cold War.

The Rise of Arctic Geopolitics

In 2007 the Arctic was uncharacteristically thrust to the forefront of political scrutiny and the world's media when a robot from a Russian submarine placed the national flag on the exact location of the North Pole for the first time in history, in a symbolic act of conquest both retro and futurist. The Russo-phobic response of some Western media and politicians to this stunt was also reminiscent of fears from yesteryear provoked by 'the Bear' and seemed to many to be a likely precursor for a new geopolitical struggle between East and West. Canadian Foreign Minister, Peter Mackay, epitomized Western irritation at the Russian initiative by stating to television reporters: You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say "we're claiming this territory."(1) However, the governments of Canada, along with fellow Arctic littoral states, Denmark and Norway, have also been busy in recent years claiming extra (underwater) territory, albeit in a less extravagant fashion. The melting of the Arctic ice sheets has opened up new possibilities for navigation, fishing, and, most particularly, the exploitation of underground resources once thought too costly to extract, awakening the interests of governments and Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) from within the Arctic states (U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland) and beyond.

At around the same time that the Russian robot was at the North Pole, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was carrying out a 'Survey of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,' the results of which further thrust the region into the media spotlight and realms of the realpolitik. This much-quoted survey, carried out in conjunction with fellow geologists from Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Norway, and Russia, estimated that the region contained 22 percent of the world's undiscovered fossil fuels: 13 percent of oil and 30 percent of gas. These findings were, of course, in addition to proven reserves already being extracted near the Northern coasts of Alaska, Canada, and Russia, amounting to 10 percent of the world's known remainder. 84 percent of all these undiscovered deposits are offshore and much of it lies under parts of the Arctic Ocean beyond the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the states and is hence, as yet, not under any sovereign control.(2)

The combined effects of the Russian robot and the U.S. geological survey prompted some bellicose reactions in many sections of Western media and academia. A 2008 article in Jane's Intelligence Review, widely cited in the UK popular press, reasoned that Russia's war against Georgia and the general high stakes could see them, and possibly other Arctic states, 'make pre-emptive military strikes' to secure resources.(3) Similarly, another widely cited article, by a former U.S. Coast Guard Officer in the conservative journal Foreign Affairs, warned of 'armed brinkmanship' due to the anarchic nature of the emerging Arctic political landscape.(4)

Seemingly supporting such reactions was a notable reassertion of energy security interests in a series of foreign policy statements by the Arctic powers. The Fundamentals of Russian State Policy in the Arctic up to 2020 and Beyond vowed to establish military and coastguard groups to protect new economic interests in line with their extended Continental Shelf claim (which includes the Lomonosov Ridge to the North Pole) and stated that the Arctic would become "the country's top strategic resource base by 2020."(5) The U.S. traditionally ambivalent to the Arctic beyond their own Alaskan oil fields was also awoken by the Russian robot and geological surveyors. One of the last acts of the Bush Junior government was to release a Homeland Security Directive on the Arctic, the first official U.S. foreign policy statement since 1994, which announced that Washington would "assert a more active and influential national presence to protect its Arctic interests."(6) The release of the Canadian government's Comprehensive Northern Strategy in the same year was in the context of their already well-established 'use it or lose' strategy which had prompted regular naval maneuvers around the Arctic islands and promised the construction of a major military base at Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island. In 2009, the Norwegian...