Abstract
Britain remains at risk of being peripheralised in Arctic affairs because of the new geopolitical order that emerged in the region after the Cold War. That geopolitical order was defined by a process of circumpolarisation, through which the eight Arctic states sought to establish their primacy over the region, even in areas beyond their national jurisdiction. This chapter investigates the history of circumpolarisation and how, despite various tensions, it has become central to shaping relations between the Arctic states, and between the Arctic states and the rest of the world. It further argues that if Britain and others are to challenge circumpolarisation from the outside they need to invest more in building up their connections with the Arctic.
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Notes
- 1.
Both connection and disconnection, topologically speaking, should therefore be regarded as constituted by socio-material processes and not geographical conditions.
- 2.
A third IPY was held in 1957–1958, although its broader scientific mandate led to it being renamed the International Geophysical Year (or IGY).
- 3.
It is worth noting that among indigenous peoples of the Arctic, there was also great interest in circumpolarity—many of these groups had arbitrarily been separated from one another by the imposition of geopolitical borders in the Arctic. The Inuit Circumpolar Council established in 1977 was responsive to this.
- 4.
Ice, land, and water have all been treated differently in international law. These themes have been explored recently by the ICE LAW Project led by Durham University (www.icelawproject.org).
- 5.
Another term which has proven ‘stretchable’ over the years as countries such as Britain and China have sought to highlight their proximity to the Arctic.
- 6.
Initially, there was to be a non-government scientific organisation and a separate intergovernmental forum but the latter was dropped, resulting in governments taking greater interest in the development of IASC.
- 7.
Informally, Arctic affairs are also shaped by other sites of knowledge exchange such as international policy conferences (see Depledge and Dodds 2017).
- 8.
Both the Central Arctic Ocean and the deep sea bed beyond continental shelves fall outside the national jurisdictions of the A8 but the possibility of commercial exploitation in these areas is likely to still be hampered by hazardous environmental conditions for some time yet.
- 9.
See Chap. 4.
- 10.
For a fascinating account of the expedition, see McDowell and Batson (2007).
- 11.
The decision by Russia to restart the Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, including over the North Pole only added to the hype that started to build around the Arctic in 2007 (BBC News 2007b).
- 12.
Scott Borgerson description of ‘the coming anarchy’ in the Arctic may well have been nodding to Robert Kaplan’s (1994) famous essay of the same title published in The Atlantic in 1994, which had painted a dire vision for the world’s future in which resource scarcity and climatic upheaval had ‘destroyed the social fabric of our planet’ (Kaplan 1994).
- 13.
While the European Parliament was not alone in calling for a new legally binding instrument to govern Arctic affairs it attracted the most attention, not least because tensions between the EU and Canada were already in the spotlight over the seal ban issue.
- 14.
Author interview with Foreign Office official, June 20, 2013.
- 15.
Examples include the Mamont Foundation, Guggenheim, MacArthur Foundation, WWF, Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, European Climate Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
- 16.
Davos being a reference to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together top business leaders, political leaders, intellectuals, and journalists to discuss pressing global issues.
- 17.
The EU’s application was received ‘affirmatively’ at the Kiruna Ministerial but a final decision was not to be implemented until the seal ban issue with Canada was resolved.
- 18.
Not being states, Alaska, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands were ultimately subject to the decisions of their national governments.
- 19.
The British delegation likely only got away with a more exuberant performance in 2014 because it did not officially represent the Government. The Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond’s video message at the same event was far more cautious. For an account see Depledge (2014). No country, including Britain, has attempted anything similar since.
- 20.
For more on Arctic ‘carto-politics’ see the work of the Danish political scientist Jeppe Strandsbjerg (2012).
- 21.
In 2002, the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) recommended that the Arctic Council encourage Britain to reduce releases from Sellafield. The Arctic Council’s subsequent ‘Inari Declaration’ in 2002 was a little softer, urging all non-Arctic European states to take action to reduce releases of radioactivity from reprocessing facilities.
- 22.
Author interview with Foreign Office official, 19 October 2011.
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Depledge, D. (2018). The Circumpolar Arctic. In: Britain and the Arctic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69293-7_3
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