Arctic

This report assesses the defense policies of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden as they apply to the Arctic. Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its militarization of the Kola Peninsula, and its opposition to the liberal international order forced Arctic states to revisit their defense policies. Some focused attention on the Baltic Sea. Others focused on territorial defense. Still others focused on the Arctic. By 2021, however, each state had a relatively well-defined defense policy for the Arctic. This report details each policy’s content, trends over time within each country, and areas of convergence or divergence across countries. The report then places the concept of domain awareness within the context of Arctic defense strategies. The report concludes with recommendations on acquiring and using manned and unmanned systems, data links, distributed basing, and military exercises to ensure a secure and stable Arctic.

The Arctic Council was launched in 1996 as an informal, consensual, and cooperative mechanism without either legal personality or operational mandate. It was designed to enhance measures to collectively protect the Arctic’s environment and to explore sustainable development opportunities. The Arctic Council turns 20 years old in 2016, and it has grown larger and more complex - welcoming new observer states such as China and India, initiating two legally binding agreements on search and rescue and oil spill response, and creating a permanent Secretariat. As the increasingly dynamic Arctic environment undergoes vast physical and geopolitical transformations, is the 20-year old Arctic Council’s organizational structure adequate and fit for its purpose? Can the Council remain at the center of Arctic-related activities under its current mandate? Is a substantial rethink of the Council’s governance structure necessary to ensure its productivity and longevity for the next 20 years? This report considers these questions and outlines four possible scenarios and strategies for Arctic Council reform and repair, as well as the implications for the Arctic Council in the future.

During the last decades, global interest for the Arctic, an area of 25 million square km of which 14 million for the Arctic ocean, increased due to the climate change which led to the melting of the ice cap and the thawing of the permafrost. The attention of the global players is attracted not only by energy and natural resources but also by new maritime routes. This creates new environmental challenges and leads to potentially dramatic changes to international trade, which will contribute to the globalization of this area. This evolution is one of the reasons for the growing interest of the large global players for the governance of this area, in the first place of which the People’s Republic of China, India or Singapore.
These changes went not unnoticed by the EU, which, as early as 2002 under the Danish presidency of the Council, showed its intent to be a global actor by introducing the concept of “Arctic window” into its Nordic dimension. As reaffirmed in a resolution of the European parliament in March 2014, this concern was endorsed last May by the foreign affairs Council, which considered that Europe should reinforce its contribution to the Arctic cooperation. It pleads “for an active commitment of the EU with its Arctic partners in view of meeting the challenges of sustainable growth, in a prudent and reasonable way”.