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Publisher's note: This comparative article reveals how the general focus of Canadian and Russian threat perceptions in the Arctic have shifted from a Cold War fixation on hard defence to accommodate soft security issues over the last three decades. Both countries now pay greater attention to threats and challenges stemming from climate change, security, and safety risks associated with resource development and increasingly accessible sea routes. Although concern about military conflict arising from Arctic disputes continues to frame some media discussions in both countries, most strategic analysts and academics have moved away from this line of argument. Instead, military functions now include assertion of Canadian and Russian sovereignty over their respective internal waters, as well as protection of resources in their exclusive economic zones and on and in extended continental shelves; protection of economic interests in the North, including mineral and bio-resources; prevention of potential terrorist attacks against critical industrial and state infrastructure; and dual-use functions, such as search and rescue operations, surveillance of air and maritime spaces, support to safe navigation, and mitigation of natural and human-made catastrophes.
Publisher's note: Over the last decade(s), the European Union (EU) has established itself as geopolitical actor seeking to actively engage in the spatial ordering of its neighbourhoods. In order to better understand the existing geopolitical nature of the EU, this article addresses the question of the EU’s decade-long endeavour to construct legitimacy in its Northern Neighbourhood; an area often neglected in discussions about the EU’s geopolitical role. By examining its Arctic involvement between 2008 and 2018, this article enquires into the EU’s broader role as an international actor with an evolving geopolitical identity. Over the last decades, the EU has exhibited geopolitical ambitions alongside its own conceptualisation of world order, rule of law and good governance. This article establishes a clearer picture on how the EU as an amalgamation of its various institutions has tried to impose these geopolitical ambitions on a neighbouring region that itself experiences a manifold change in the early twentieth-first century. It gets to the conceptual bottom of what exactly fashioned the European Union with geopolitical agency in the Arctic region – internally and externally. The article is based on a decade of research on the EU as an emerging Arctic actor.
Publisher`s note: Climate change has turned the Arctic simultaneously into an environmentally highly fragile space and a region offering manifold economic opportunities. The notion of ‘Arctic Paradox’ aptly captures the trade-off between environmental protection needs and economic prospects. We investigate how the European Union has positioned itself regarding this Paradox by asking to what extent its Arctic policy discourse integrates environmental concerns. Analysis involving the main strategies of EU institutions, and the EU’s Arctic and major non-Arctic members finds three co-existing coalitions with differing visions of environmental policy integration in the Arctic. The aggregate EU discourse on the Arctic is currently ‘green by omission’, that is, by explicitly avoiding a clear stance on the trade-off embodied in the ‘Arctic Paradox’. We attempt to explain this, and conclude by discussing the likelihood of the EU developing a genuinely environment-oriented Arctic policy.
Publisher`s note: This article provides a synthesis of the latest observational trends and projections for the future of the Arctic. First, the Arctic is already changing rapidly as a result of climate change. Contemporary warm Arctic temperatures and large sea ice deficits (75% volume loss) demonstrate climate states outside of previous experience. Modeled changes of the Arctic cryosphere demonstrate that even limiting global temperature increases to near 2 °C will leave the Arctic a much different environment by mid-century with less snow and sea ice, melted permafrost, altered ecosystems, and a projected annual mean Arctic temperature increase of +4 °C. Second, even under ambitious emission reduction scenarios, high-latitude land ice melt, including Greenland, are foreseen to continue due to internal lags, leading to accelerating global sea level rise throughout the century. Third, future Arctic changes may in turn impact lower latitudes through tundra greenhouse gas release and shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation. Arctic-specific radiative and heat storage feedbacks may become an obstacle to achieving a stabilized global climate. In light of these trends, the precautionary principle calls for early adaptation and mitigation actions.
Publisher's note: This paper discusses the (re)production of state and supranational regional spaces through speech acts. Emphasis is placed especially on speech acts that ‘construct’ regions and concurrently (re)position specific states as ‘legitimized’ actors within supranational space. Relatedly, focus is directed to how such repositioning is linked to territory–network interplay in establishing and contesting power relations in supranational regional institutions. The paper discusses first how the region-building process in the Arctic – and power relations within the Arctic Council – has relied on territorial legitimation in which ‘Arctic states’ are rendered as the key ‘Arctic’ actors. The focus is then shifted to how France and Japan, states considered ‘non-Arctic’, have recently repositioned themselves in relation to the region in order to gain legitimacy. The key conclusion of the analysis is that by engaging with the observer criteria set by the Arctic Council, ‘non-Arctic’ states are redefining themselves in relation to the region, simultaneously (re)producing the Arctic region and non-Arctic states in relation to each other. This paper also argues that in attempting to dismantle some of the territorial criteria on which the established power relations within the Arctic Council rely, these states are pursuing the reinstitutionalization of a ‘global’ Arctic with renegotiated power relations.
Publisher`s note: The 20th anniversary of the Arctic Council (AC) in 2016 provided an excellent opportunity for evaluating the council’s performance over its two decades in operation. Along the AC’s appraisals, various commentators – both from within and without the council’s circles – put forward proposals to reform the AC in order to, arguably, strengthen it and enhance its effectiveness vis-à-vis new challenges facing the Arctic. Interestingly, most of those accounts have only tenuous, if any, connection with the general literature on international environmental regimes and their effectiveness. As a result, they do not draw from the insights flowing from this literature and, in reverse, they miss an opportunity to contribute to the broader body of knowledge about international environmental institutions. The lack of systematic inquiry also hampers our ability to accumulate knowledge about the performance of the AC itself. To address that matter, this article draws up a basic framework through which future assessments of the AC’s effectiveness could be grounded in the general literature on international regimes. The study treats the AC as an institution or regime as these terms are used in the broader literature on international relations. It adopts the political definition of institutional effectiveness and is based on literature reviews related to international regimes and the AC as well as, whenever relevant, on the subject of Arctic governance at large. Overall, the article underlines the critical importance of systematic inquiry and transparency in producing insights regarding the AC’s effectiveness – as of any other institution – to allow for accumulation of our comprehension of what makes the AC work.
Publisher`s note: Following the UK defence secretary’s announcement in September 2018 that the Ministry of Defence is to devise a Defence Arctic Strategy, Duncan Depledge, Klaus Dodds and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe look back on how UK defence has engaged with the Arctic over the past two decades and draw attention to the shift in focus from climate change to hard security threats. They analyse what this means for the development of national Arctic policy in general, including the potential for divergence with other stakeholders such as the Foreign Office and the Scottish government. They conclude by considering how UK Arctic policy might change after Brexit.
Publisher's note: Mainly due to global warming, ice melting in the Arctic is accelerating and this trend is expected to continue, which will provide another efficient alternative sea route between Western Europe and East Asia for marine transportation of goods. Compared to the existing Suez Canal Route, the Northern Sea Route will be economically attractive and viable opportunity in international trade aspects for the two parties. European countries as well as East Asian countries are trying to benefit from it by actively participating in several activities towards development and commercialization of the Arctic route. As transport through the Arctic route continues to develop, we investigate beneficial (competitive) impact of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) on three Asian countries (China, Korea, and Japan) and four major European counterpart countries (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France). For the study we use grey relational analysis with four quantitative influence factors (distance, transport cost, iceberg cost, and trade volume) to rank countries by their commercial benefits from opening the NSR.
Publisher`s note: The globalised Arctic has in recent years witnessed an influx of extra-regional actors, many of whom come from East Asia. Although there is an abundance of analysis of the roles of East Asian nation-states—including Japan and China—in Arctic governance and resource development, research on East Asian subnational governments’ (SNGs) increased Arctic engagement has not drawn much attention. Leaning on the concept of paradiplomacy and being particularly inspired by Alexander S. Kuznetsov’s explanatory framework for the study of SNGs’ involvement in international relations, this study examines the motives behind East Asian subnational governments’ involvement in Arctic affairs and the attitudes of national governments towards this involvement. Based on the study of Hokkaido Prefecture in Japan and the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning in China, this article argues that the East Asian SNGs’ Arctic initiatives are mainly based on economic objectives, especially those connected with new transportation routes in the Arctic Ocean. Scientific cooperation also plays an important role in the evolving subnational Arctic engagement. At the national level, East Asian SNGs are actively interacting with their respective central governments, which have, in general, been supportive of their Arctic endeavours.
Publisher's note: Research confirms that China is becoming more engaged in the Arctic. However, international relations scholarship often extrapolates from relatively few instances of activity to wide-ranging claims about Chinese priorities. Fortunately, Chinese political discourse is organised by labels that allow us to study how the Arctic is classified and ranked along China’s other foreign policy priorities. This article analyses two such classifications – “important maritime interest” and “strategic new frontier,” exploring how they have come about, what they mean, and how they add political priority to the Arctic. It argues that hierarchies are constructed in two ways: by adding gradients and by including/excluding in categories of priority. It views categories as performative: they not only convey information about character and relative importance of interests but are also used for achieving different objectives. By focusing on foreign policy classifications, the article contributes to a more nuanced and precise understanding of China’s Arctic interests.
Publisher`s note: China's Arctic policy attracts highly attention worldwide, especially on how China views the current legal framework of the Arctic, how China defines its role, interests and priorities in the Arctic and how China engages in the Arctic international governance. The aim of this paper is, through analyzing China's first white paper on Arctic policy from the perspective of international law, to provide a comprehensive overview of China's perceptions on the legal status and framework of the Arctic, China's identification, policy goals, basic principles, policies and positions as well as practices relating to its participation in Arctic affairs. It concludes with two distinct characteristics of China's Arctic Policy.
Publisher`s note: Climate induced geo-physical transformations occurring in the Arctic are also attributing to geopolitical transformations of the region. Opening up of the Arctic is resulting in a geopolitical race amongst the Arctic and non-Arctic states to dominate emerging economic and strategic opportunities in the region. Transformations in the Arctic assume global links and possess a potential of significantly impacting the Arctic as well as the Asian states. China’s assertiveness to become a Polar Great Power has set a course for new Asian perceptions towards the region. In pursuits of its economic, environmental, scientific, social and strategic endeavours, China is making significant inroads in the region to meet its short and long-term objectives. This paper makes an attempt to reconsider India’s approach towards the Arctic not by taking China as a benchmark, but rather as a useful backdrop to broaden and deepen India’s engagements in the circumpolar north.
Publisher`s note: Environmental changes in the Arctic region attract global attention. China, with its growing power, has been steadily increasing its presence in the region and in January 2018 published its first Arctic policy paper. At the same time, there are numerous actors within China that are interested in the Arctic and have the capacity to influence China’s Arctic decision-making process. However, what is less clear, is how China’s Arctic policy is being formulated across the Chinese government and what role different subnational actors play in its formulation and implementation. This research seeks to fill this gap. Drawing on fieldwork and Chinese texts, this study aspires to further develop our understanding of the workings behind Chinese state policy formation.
Publisher`s note: The article examines China’s Arctic policy features and the meaning of the first published White Paper of 2018 for the future behaviours of the PRC. The author reviews the interests of the PRC in the High North, and the political objectives and means. The article pays special attention to the origins of Chinese policy in the Arctic, including the national strategy, expert discourse and regional specifics. The author discusses the role of the Chinese public and private actors for the implementation of national achievements in the circumpolar region. The article examines Chinese interpretations of key international documents regulating activities in the Arctic, and the significance of these interpretations for the implementation of the PRC policy. The special emphasis is made of the diplomacy features and the role of the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power when China is interacting with different actors. The author explores the interconnection of the White Paper ‘China’s Arctic policy’ with the implementation of the ‘Arctic Silk Road’. As an outcome, the author indicates principles explaining China’s Arctic behaviours in the long-term perspective.
Publisher's note: The Arctic has attracted world attention in recent years as global warming began melting the sea ice at a much faster rate than recorded after 1979, the year when record-keeping began for the region. This new-found attention is also linked with greater accessibility of the Arctic Ocean, which is creating a geopolitical competition for resources and control. So far, the world media has focused primarily on the efforts of China in the Arctic due to its economic might, resulting in numerous academic literature. In comparison, the efforts of India in the Arctic have been relatively lesser researched and discussed. Those available have provided conflicting and sometimes debating opinions. It is with this understanding that the article discusses India’s past and present engagement in the Arctic, with possible future trends and recommendations for India’s evolving engagements in this region.
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