Centering the Polar Regions

In the public imagination, the Arctic and the Antarctic are typically seen as far removed regions, beautiful landscapes of ice and snow, sparsely inhabited by both humans and wildlife. However, both polar regions have become more prominent as the threat of climate change has become salient in public discourse. Many key issues have been highlighted, such as melting ice sheets and glaciers that cause sea levels to rise in coastal regions all over the planet. But what is the geopolitical significance of these regions and how are they relevant for peace and conflict dynamics?

A New Chapter in the Arctic

During the Cold War the Arctic was heavily militarized, including nuclear capabilities and early warning radar systems to detect enemy missiles. As the direct connection between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Arctic was of a crucial geostrategic importance for nuclear deterrence. The Northern Fleet, the biggest section in the Soviet armed forces, was based in the Arctic, as was the Soviet submarine fleet.

With the end of the Cold War, the focus in the region shifted to moving towards a circumpolar region unified in dealing with environmental protection and sustainable development. Gorbachev envisioned a zone of peace “from Vancouver to Vladivostok”. In 1996 the Arctic Council was born (see info box). But this trajectory ended in 2014 after the Russian annexation of Crimea. With the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, cooperation was nearly entirely suspended. While the Arctic has entered a new chapter, the legacy of Cold War militarization endures and security issues are once again taking center stage.

The region continues to be of great geostrategic importance to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with the Northern Fleet as the most modern part of the Russian military infrastructure. Additionally, it also holds enormous economic value, being the source of most of the country’s resources such as gas and hydrocarbons. Via the so-called GIUK gap, the stretches of open ocean between Greenland, Iceland and the UK, Russian forces in the Arctic are capable of advancing towards the North Atlantic very quickly. Russia is now perceived as a threat to Europe’s security, which has led even Finland and Sweden to join NATO after they had practiced a balanced and cautious security and foreign policy for decades.

“NATO’s presence in the region was limited in the post-Cold War period; and there was a silent consensus that NATO would stay out of the region”, researcher Olena Podvorna explains. “In the spirit of Gorbachev’s speech and the concept of Arctic exceptionalism it was decided that no political and military issues would be on the Arctic Council agenda. However, with the disclosure of energy resources in the late first decade of the 21st century the situation changed. Many non-Arctic countries expressed their eagerness to influence the Arctic’s development. Already then NATO was asked to elaborate its position towards the region. But in those days the issue concerned the economic (more precisely – energy) dimension of security.”

With the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, traditional security concerns appeared on the agenda of the Arctic states. Since then, Nordic and Baltic countries have intensified their cooperation with NATO, though taking care not to advertise this too much. “The countries were facing a dilemma”, Podvorna elaborates, “to raise their level of security, but simultaneously not to provoke Russia. It didn’t work. On February 24, 2022, it became clear that Moscow was resolute and ruthless in its desire to change the European security order. Hard security issues returned to the agenda of all European countries. In this way, the entrance of NATO to the Arctic became irreversible. Its role, however, is still being shaped. All five countries of the Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO), that is Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, are now NATO members.”

NATO now emerging as a player in the Arctic poses a new challenge for Arctic Studies. The biggest gap relates to the North-Atlantic Alliance and its existing and prospective policy in the region. Where previously traditional security issues were seen as not that relevant for the region and researchers were not particularly interested in exploring them, there is now a need for researchers to develop new approaches, as Olena Podvorna is currently doing in her project.

A New Role for NATO?

Traditionally, NATO has kept a low profile in the Arctic and its role was determined by the Arctic states. In particular, Norway has invested a lot of political and diplomatic efforts in engaging the Alliance in the Arctic. Now this is a task for other European Arctic states as well.

So-called gray zone activities or hybrid warfare — e.g. covert operations designed to bolster relative strategic advantage — have increased in the region over the last decade: Russian fishing ships crossing borders, allegedly by mistake, undersea cables being cut, thus causing damage to cyber infrastructure, or unknown submarines being spotted near the Swedish coast are just some examples. Similarly to the Cold War, we also find the use of state propaganda and covert disinformation to attack the values on which European societies are founded. The broader aim of this strategy is to undermine political unity within Europe and to install new spheres of influence for reactionary political movements following Russia’s “might is right” rule. Such activities target the civilian population predominantly, aiming to provoke panic and destabilize countries internally, which can lead to the undermining of a state’s security as a whole. However, such efforts are difficult to detect and their effects are difficult to determine, and there is much debate as to how they ought to be dealt with.

“It’s quite remarkable”, says Podvorna, “that over the last ten years or so all the Nordic countries in the Arctic were just closing their eyes. They saw that Russia was doing something suspicious, but the mantra was always ‘Let’s not provoke them!’ Obviously, such a policy can be explained and understood. However, when you deal with a ruthless aggressor, the policy and strategy should be different. We ended up with the unjustified full-scale aggression. Finally, Russia and its behavior are defined as a threat by NATO in the Strategic Concept 2022 and by European Arctic states. These countries can’t protect themselves on their own, nor can they protect the Arctic, whose military-strategic significance has increased. That’s why they asked NATO to come.”

This broader NATO presence raises the deterrence threshold for any hostile actions by Russia. However, the question concerning a prospective role for NATO as a game changer in the Arctic is still open and unclear.

The task at hand will be to shape the rules for what NATO should do in the region to safeguard the security of Northern Europe and of the Baltic states in particular. “I think this is also a moment when NATO is changing”, explains Podvorna. “NATO is reassessing itself and maybe its entry into the Arctic will help it find a new identity, to understand what NATO is about in the 21st century, and whether it is possible to create a new security strategy, a hybrid one, combining traditional and non-traditional security thinking and practice. Thinking about hard security issues should not necessarily be counter positioned to so-called soft issues, in particular climate change and environmental issues.”

Precisely these questions lie at the heart of Olena Podvorna’s research project. She studies the effect of Russia’s war against Ukraine on the European Arctic security and the role of NATO in the High North: how both NATO and the Arctic as a region change and develop a conception of itself and how this role is communicated into society. This process might see NATO taking on new responsibilities, such as cyber defense, combatting disinformation or providing education on how to behave in emergency situations.

Protecting the Peace in the Antarctic

In contrast, environmental issues are still at the very center of attention in the Antarctic. Its governance is also quite different, when compared to the Arctic. The fate of the Antarctic is not defined by neighboring states, but by the Antarctic Treaty System (see info box), which has been in place since 1961 and is widely considered to be one of the most successful multilateral governance agreements. For decades, the region has been shielded from outside wars and conflicts, a status commonly dubbed Antarctic “exceptionalism”.

The Antarctic Treaty System has made it possible to manage threats and deal with fears. For instance, Australia was afraid of Soviet Union installations in the Antarctic for decades. The Antarctic Treaty System doesn’t allow for any military capabilities other than for logistics, and it allows inspections to be sent to any base at any point. This means that security concerns can be handled much better than in the Arctic.

“The Antarctic Treaty is very successful, but it has all these pros and cons”, researcher Patrick Flamm elaborates. “It is a hierarchical system and it has an inside and an outside. One could ask: Who are these 29 nations to claim that they can decide upon the Antarctic on behalf of everyone?” Anyone can sign the treaty and attend the consultative meetings. But in order to have any substantial decision-making power, countries must demonstrate that they have a scientific track record in the region, for example by setting up a research station or conducting an expedition. This, of course, requires resources which often only rich countries can mobilize, with the effect of making the system exclusionary.

Flamm identifies two current challenges for the Antarctic. The first concerns shifts in global politics and international conflicts creeping into the protected space of Antarctic diplomacy. The emergence of newer players such as Asian countries, especially China, on the global stage means that they also want to have a say in Antarctic affairs. At the same time, the Russian invasion of Ukraine poses a threat to Antarctic exceptionalism – the biggest challenge since the 1980s, as Flamm argues. For the first time ever, one Antarctic Treaty Consultative Party is waging a full-scale war against another. In the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Berlin a few months after Russia attacked in February 2022, Ukraine spoke out against the Russian invasion pointing out that it also posed a threat to the Ukrainian Antarctic program.

More general issues of disagreement between the parties to the treaty concern for example marine living resources like fish and krill. A balance must always be struck between conservation and rational use. Some countries would like to fish more, for example China, but also New Zealand or Norway. The second major challenge is, of course, the climate crisis. “The Antarctic Treaty sets the Antarctic aside, protecting the local environment”, says Flamm, “but due to the climate crisis, the greatest threat to the environment in the Antarctic comes from unsettled earth system dynamics. The Antarctic must be protected not only in the Antarctic.” Instead, by centering the Antarctic, what we see is the need for action everywhere on the planet. The challenge will be both to protect what has been achieved and to make sufficient adjustments to overcome the upcoming crises. (ewa)