Climate Change & International Security: The Arctic as a Bellwether International (original) (raw)

While the two previous findings suggest that the Arctic states are focused on building a cooperative security environment in the region, there is a third, apparently contradictory trend toward modernizing their military forces in the Arctic. Some have already begun rebuilding their Arctic military capabilities, and most of the others are drawing up plans to do so. Consequently, if political cooperation in the region should sour, most of the Arctic nations will have forces that are prepared to compete in a hostile environment. Finding 5: Non-Arctic states and organizations seek roles in the Arctic. The EU and NATO have been examining the issues of governance and security in the Arctic. NATO's initial focus appears to be on improving coordination of security-related issues, such as search and rescue. Given the importance of the region to NATO members such as Canada, Norway and the United States, it seems likely that NATO will remain engaged in the region. The EU's interest is framed in the context of ensuring that new governance mechanisms are designed to include the interests of all European states. The EU has also issued policy statements that place a strong emphasis on protecting the environment. Separate from the EU, France has announced that it plans to provide its military with some Arctic capabilities. Although it has not expressed geopolitical interest in the Arctic, China plans to increase its scientific research activities in the region and has added a strategic studies department to its Polar Research Institute. Finding 6: Underlying causes of policy developments. The principal cause of renewed national interest in the Arctic is the increasing accessibility of Arctic waters resulting from global warming and new maritime technologies. Accessibility leads to the potential for new sea routes or the expansion of old ones, an important issue for both Russia and Canada. Western nations have focused on augmenting scientific research, environmental protection, sustainable development, and a constabulary and military presence. The United States stake in the Arctic is comparatively small, and historically it has tended to act with minimal interest in the region compared with the other Arctic states. Russia has invested tens of billions of dollars in Arctic oil projects, and its recent policy statements and actions suggest that it will act assertively to safeguard its oil wealth and position in the Arctic. Although oil and gas are less central to the core interests of the rest of the circumpolar powers, the importance of Arctic oil will grow for all nations as oil prices continue to rise and the desire for energy security grows. * This section is reproduced from Mabey, et al. (2011) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Minor modifications were made by the original author (J. Gulledge).