P. Whitney Lackenbauer
On 6 December 2024, Canada released its revised statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy (CAFP),1 which “supplements” its 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework (ANFP) “international chapter”2 given profound geostrategic changes globally that have spilled over into Arctic affairs. Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly’s foreword paints a dramatic picture lamenting how:
for many years, Canada has aimed to manage the Arctic and northern regions cooperatively with other states as a zone of low tension that is free from military competition. … However, the guardrails that we have depended on to prevent and resolve conflict have weakened. Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine has made cooperation with it on Arctic issues exceedingly difficult for the foreseeable future. Uncertainty and unpredictability are creating economic consequences that Canadians are facing everyday.3
In this briefing note, I offer some reflections about what remains the same, what has changed, and what is new in the CAFP. Minister Joly was careful neither to cast the 2025 policy as the culmination of a new full-scale co-development process like the one that yielded the ANPF (see my brief note with Peter Kikkert in Arctic Yearbook 2019) nor as a full strategy like Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy released in 2022.4 Instead, the policy statement reiterates that Canada’s desired end state is “a stable, prosperous and secure Arctic” with “strong and resilient Arctic and Northern communities,” with Canada’s foreign policy serving to “advance the interests and priorities of Indigenous Peoples and northerners who call the Arctic home.” Similarly, the Conservatives’ 2010 Statement on Arctic Foreign Policy set its vision for the Arctic as “a stable, rules-based region with clearly defined boundaries, dynamic economic growth and trade, vibrant Northern communities, and healthy and productive ecosystems.”5 In this sense, rather than representing “a fundamental change in how we look at the Arctic”6 one might see Canada’s 2024 statement as a logical continuation of Canada’s Arctic foreign policy since the late 1990s,7 albeit with a much stronger emphasis on defence and security.
Margaret Williams & Loann Marquant
In August of this year, the greatly hyped summit in Anchorage, Alaska between President Trump and President Putin raised eyebrows around the world and prompted protests across America’s lone Arctic state. Inviting a leader who is charged with war crimes and responsible for the illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine to the United States for a peace-making mission seemed misguided and ill-conceived on many levels. At the same time, some Arctic experts viewed the selection of Alaska for this high-level meeting as an opportunity to highlight commonalities that the U.S. and Russia share in the region. Russia pundits pointed to the significance of Putin’s inclusion of Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s envoy on foreign investment, in his delegation to Alaska1 and wondered whether Alaska’s natural resources might be part of a future deal.2
In addition to discussions about potential deals to exploit Arctic resources, many observers wondered whether the summit would also signal a thawing of the U.S.-Russia relationship and lead to renewed cooperation in sectors beyond business and finance. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of international and bilateral projects in the Arctic have been suspended. Many of those were scientific in nature, involving Russian, American and European researchers in efforts to document the status of climate and oceanic conditions, wildlife populations, and numerous other aspects of the Arctic environment. Other programs were aimed at conserving shared ecosystems and species.
Over a period of 18 months from 2023 to 2025, the authors of this Briefing Note interviewed dozens of American and Russian scientists and conservationists whose work had been impacted by the interruption of this cooperation. Interviewees included ornithologists, fisheries scientists, marine mammal biologists, environmentalists, climate experts, and other experts. Their responses consistently highlighted cooperation as an essential element of their professional successes for two main reasons: (1) working across the U.S.-Russia boundary gave them access to information that was central to understanding their particular topic or species in question; and (2) regular contact with their international partners built a foundation of trust and led to long-term friendships on which many successful projects depended, even thrived.
Tamara Lorincz
In September 2024, three significant events took place in St. Petersburg, Russia that brought women from around the world together to discuss ways to build peace and cooperation in the Arctic and in other regions in these difficult, turbulent times. The events represented cross-cultural and transnational feminism in action.
Gabriella Gricius & Nicholas Glesby
NATO’s role in the Arctic has become increasingly salient in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Alliance. While debates continue over whether NATO should take on a more serious role in the European Arctic or risk heightened militarization, our briefing note highlights that NATO has always been active in Arctic security. We instead ask how NATO operates across “different Arctics” (Greaves, 2019). The North American and European Arctics present vastly different operating environments, constraints, and opportunities. We outline NATO’s presence in these sub-regions, showing that while NATO is playing an increasingly central role in European Arctic security, it remains limited in the North American Arctic due to NORAD’s presence. Our briefing note argues that this approach has served NATO well, enabling the Alliance to respond strategically to security threats while avoiding escalation. We conclude by assessing whether such an approach can hold in the more tense geopolitical environment of the 2020s, marked by intensified great power competition.
Stefan Brocza
The mutual defence clause was introduced in 2009 under Article 42 (7) of the Treaty of the European Union. It says that EU countries are obliged to assist a fellow member state that has become “a victim of armed aggression on its territory” and that this support should be consistent with potential NATO commitments. No formal procedure has been set out and the article does not say that the assistance should be military in nature, so countries such as Austria or Ireland that have a policy of neutrality, can still cooperate. Greenland is not EU territory, but it is listed in Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union as “overseas countries and territories.” It is therefore closely associated with the EU – and it is of course part of the Danish Kingdom, a EU Member State. Therefore, the Mutual Defence Clause of the EU would be applicable for Greenland.
Paul Dickson
Deterrence as the desired outcome of affecting an adversary’s real and potential choices through defence and security activities. It is premised on communicating credibility and will, where a significant proportion of the credibility and will is capability. Deterrence is the elemental defence policy objective of NATO and NORAD. Deterrence must also be a deliberate choice, informing other decisions, not an assumption or incidental.
The current threat environment warrants a more deliberate and integrated approach to deterrence planning. Conventional threats to sovereignty and security are increasingly direct, as states openly disregard international law and border inviolability. Coercive kinetic threats are compounded by state-directed actions that undermine national interests without crossing the threshold of war, gradually eroding trust in democratic and civil society institutions and norms. These below the threshold-of-war or hybrid threats are also designed to exploit government responses constrained by authorities and divisions of responsibility as well as institutional weaknesses (Wang & Zakheim, 2025)
Integrated deterrence is a concept advanced by the US as the “intellectual paradigm shift” needed to enable the integration and synchronization of all the instruments of state, and indeed of society, allies and partners, for defence and security to maintain a campaign in an ongoing strategic competition. Integrated deterrence as an aspiration should enable governments to integrate planning to cooperate and collaborate across domains and theatres, using all instruments of national and allied power against a spectrum of threats deliberately targeting across boundaries to avoid aligning with institutional, national or alliance boundaries. It is premised the need to bolster and expand deterrent activities to address the concern that hybrid techniques can win the competition without resort to open conflict. A fundamental feature of integrated deterrence campaigning is that it will be continuous and dynamic. In short, it is an attempt to promote integrated planning across governments, societies and allies to deter threats. (United States Government, JCC, 2023)
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