The NSR in the Context of Arctic Environmental Cooperation and National Security: Some Concluding Remarks

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on the interrelatedness of regional environmental cooperation and national security as expressed in the pan-Arctic processes of regionalization, civilianization, mobilization and reconceptualization of security. The overall objective is:

• I. to assess the political usefulness of the employed conceptualizations on Arctic security and environmental cooperation against the realities of contemporary politics;

• II. to discuss the NSR in the context of the former to highlight the route’s environmental and security position, character and status in Arctic international relations in general; and

• III. to assess the challenges of the NSR as a source to promote and enhance a feeling of pan-Arctic community among the various levels of Arctic politics, both vertically within and horizontally between regional states. The core question here is whether the present challenges of the NSR as perceived by regional actors may further and deepen the present regionalization of the Arctic to develop from being a co-ordinate political region to a full-fledged integration region (see chapter 1).