Arctic Yearbook 2013
Heininen, Exner-Pirot & Plouffe
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For political realists (i.e. strategic planners, military persons, policy-makers or academics working in
the disciplines of Political Sciences) the Arctic region is often understood through the lens of
strategic studies, the military-political and economic interests of a nation-state, or even super-
powers. This perspective does not always take into account earlier legacies, such as colonialism and
a capitalist world-economy which tied the Arctic region into the resource needs of European
imperial powers (Wallerstein, 1987).
Correspondingly, in classical forms of geopolitics, the entire North has mostly been understood as
a vast reserve of natural resources, and military space and testing ground for the performance of
sovereignty, national security and economic interests of the Arctic states. During the Cold War
period, this world-view frequently went hand-in-hand with intense militarization, meaning
investments into infrastructure and constant patrolling, military training and testing, such as nuclear
tests, and the physical displacement of indigenous communities under their jurisdiction. This
militarized, environmentally damaged and divided Arctic, however, started to thaw in the late 1980s
due to increased interrelations between peoples and civil societies of the region, as well as the
consequent international cooperation and region-building by the Arctic states.
Followed from this the Arctic and the entire North emerged as a ‗new‘ area for international
cooperation – it was said even to be a distinctive region – with co-operative and region-building
measures, such as the establishment of the Arctic Council by the Ottawa Declaration in 1996
(AHDR, 2004: 17-21). This implied a recognition that there are several states and non-state actors
as well as their willingness to promote deeper international cooperation, particularly environmental
protection, in the entire North; and consequently, a significant shift away from the Cold War
mentality to define the Arctic as a thinly-populated periphery and military training and testing
ground.
In addition to increasing international cooperation, this meant an implementation of extraction-led
models concerning energy resources and other potential minerals, and a continuity of a military
presence across the region. Furthermore, it meant more sophisticated ways for Arctic states to
proactively control their national territories, particularly for the coastal states challenged by growing
environmental concerns (due to climate change) in their maritime zones (Canada,
Denmark/Greenland, Norway, the Russian Federation and the United States). These trends also
revealed how the Arctic is transforming into a platform to host (sub)national, regional/circumpolar
and international processes including science and higher education, trade and other economic
cooperation, and claims to indigenous autonomy.
By the early-21
st
century, as a result of the first significant geopolitical change, the three main themes
of ‗post-Cold War circumpolar geopolitics‘ were increasing practices of cooperation by regional non-
state actors as some sort of ‗mobilization‘ of non-state actors; ‗regionalization‘ of decision-making
processes, and region-building by the Arctic states; and a new kind of relationship between the
region and the outside world (AHDR, 2004: 207-225; also Østreng, 2008). As a result of these
developments, or trends, the entire North became a peaceful area with high stability and without
armed conflicts, even if environmental degradation, militarization and intense industrialization, as
Cold War legacies, remained as regional challenges.