Research Project
Can cooperative Russian and Western Arctic policies survive the current crisis in Russian-Western relations?
Events
Is Russia's Arctic policy developing in a more confrontational direction? Or will it remain conducive to constructive cooperation with other states in the region, thus preserving the Arctic as a distinct policy field?
We hypothesize three potential and distinct modes of policy-making that may result in different Russian approaches to the Arctic: a "realist mode" centred on security and distribution of power, an "institutionalist mode" centred on preserving cooperation within established institutional regimes, and a "diplomatic management mode" also centred on security interests, but characterized by cautious adjustment of courses of action within different policy and geographical areas.
This project traces the changing weight of these modes in the Russian debate on the Arctic, as well as how these modes condition Russian policies in and on the region. Our analytical point of departure is that Russian Arctic policy must be understood as a product of a dynamic "two-level game" between domestic and international factors.
On the one hand, official policies are shaped by domestic actors and institutions that protect and project various views and interests, and are therefore subject to negotiation on the domestic arena. On the other hand, a state's security policies and relations are not formulated in isolation from the policies of other states. If the Arctic comes to be viewed also by Western Arctic powers as primarily an arena for state-contestation and security, that will play into and shape Russian policies. In line with these assumptions, the project will complement the study of how Russian Arctic policy is produced with supplementary case studies of the Arctic policies of two of Russia's Western Arctic partners, Norway and the USA.
Watch the Russia Conference 2018, summing up results from the project:
The following seminars have been organized as part of this project outside NUPI:
- Vi må snakke om Russland og Nordområdene (Norwegian)
- The Arctic of the Future: Strategic Pursuit or Great Power Miscalculation?:
Follow CANARCT updates on Twitter:
Publications by external project contributors:
- See updates from Pavel Baev's (PRIO) blog Arctic Politics and Russia's Ambitions
- Pavel Baev (2019): Russia’s Ambivalent Status-Quo/Revisionist Policies in the Arctic i Arctic Review of Law and Politics
- Valery N. Konyshev and Alexander A. Sergunin (2018) Российско-американские отношения в Арктике:сотрудничество или соперничество? (U.S.-Russia Relations in the Arctic: Cooperation or Competition?) In World Economy and International Relations, vol. 62, no. 9, pp. 103-111
- A. Sergunin and Konyshev, V. (2017) 'Russian military strategies in the Arctic: change or continuity?', European Security, 26 (2): 171–89
- V. Konyshev and Sergunin, A. (2019) 'The Changing Role of Military Power in the Arctic', in Matthias Finger and Lassi Heininen (eds.), The Global Arctic Handbook (Cham: Springer International Publishing),pp. 171-95
- A. Sergunin (2019) 'Subnational Tier of Arctic Governance', in Matthias Finger and Lassi Heininen (eds.), The GlobalArctic Handbook (Cham: Springer International Publishing),pp. 269-87 available at
- V. Konyshev, Sergunin, A., and Heininen, L. (2018) '"Globalnaya Arktika" kak region novogo typa', in Valery I. Mikhaylenko (ed.), Asimmetri regionalnykh integratsyonnykh proyektov XXI veka (Ekaterinburg: Ural University Press),pp. 412–27
See an overview of NUPI's work on the Arctic and Russia and Eurasia here and here.
Project Manager
Participants
Articles
The Russia Conference: Cold Peace in the Arctic?
On September 14, NUPI’s Russia Conference took place in Oslo. Couldn’t be there? Watch the entire event, including Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide's key note speech, on YouTube.
New publications
Governing the Arctic: The Russian State Commission for Arctic Development and the Forging of a New Domestic Arctic Policy Agenda
After a period of relative neglect in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Arctic is back on the agenda of the Russian authorities. To ensure efficient coordination and implementation of its Arctic strategy, the government in 2015 established a State Commission for Arctic Development. It was to serve as a platform for coordinating the implementation of the government’s ambitious plans for the Arctic, for exchange of information among Arctic actors, and for ironing out interagency and interregional conflicts. Based on a case study of the State Commission for Arctic Development, this article has a twofold goal. First, it explores the current Russian domestic Arctic agenda, mapping key actors and priorities and examining the results achieved so far. Second, it discusses what this case study may tell us the about policy formulation and implementation in Russia today. We find that while the government’s renewed focus on the Arctic Zone has yielded some impressive results, the State Commission has been at best a mixed success. The case study demonstrates how, in the context of authoritarian modernization, the Russian government struggles to come up with effective and efficient institutions for Arctic governance. Moreover, the widespread image of a Russian governance model based on a strictly hierarchic "power vertical" must be modified. Russia’s Arctic policy agenda is characterized by infighting and bureaucratic obstructionism: even when Putin intervenes personally, achieving the desired goals can prove difficult.
Norway and Russia in the Arctic: New Cold War Contamination?
The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has already obstructed cooperation across a range of issues. Could it also affect state interaction between Norway and Russia in the Arctic—an area and a relationship long characterized by a culture of compromise and/or cooperation? Here we start from the theoretical premise that states are not pre-constituted political entities, but are constantly in the making. How Russia views its own role and how it views other actors in the Arctic changes over time, calling for differing approaches. That holds true for Norway as well. To clarify the premises for interaction between Russia and Norway in the Arctic, we scrutinize changes in official discourse on Self and Other in the Arctic on both sides in the period 2012 to 2016, to establish what kind of policy mode—“realist,” “institutionalist,” or “diplomatic management”—has underlain the two countries’ official discourse in that period. Has Norway continued to pursue “balancing” policies undertaken in the realist mode with those in the diplomatic management mode? Which modes have characterized Russia’s approach toward Norway? Finding that realist-mode policies increasingly dominate on both sides, in the conclusion we discuss how the changing mode of the one state affects that of the other, and why a New Cold War is now spreading to the Arctic.
How the New Cold War travelled North (Part I) Norwegian and Russian narratives
The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has already obstructed cooperation across a range of issues. Could it also affect state interaction between Norway and Russia in the Arctic—an area and a relationship long characterized by a culture of compromise and cooperation? In two policy briefs we examine changes in how Russia and Norway have approached each other in the Arctic in the period 2012–2016. This first brief presents the development of official Norwegian and Russian narratives on the relations between the two countries in the Arctic. Such narratives stipulate logical paths for action. Showing how Norwegian and Russian policies have changed in line with these narratives, we conclude that what some refer to as “the New Cold War” is indeed spreading to the Arctic.
How the New Cold War travelled North (Part II) Interaction between Norway and Russia
This policy brief examines changing Russian and Norwegian approaches to each other in the period 2012–2016, and discusses how the “New Cold War” spread to the North. This is an intriguing question, since both parties had initially stated that, despite the overall worsening of Russia–West relations following the crises in Ukraine, the North should be protected as a space for peaceful interaction. To address this question, watching and tracking the changing patterns of Russian exercises and military modernization is not enough; understanding the rise in tensions requires studying the effects of the interactions underway between the parties in this region. Three interaction effects need to be taken into consideration in explaining why the tense relations following the conflict in Ukraine spread to the low-tension Northern theatre. In this, we stress the interactive dynamics that ensues when two parties start to view each other as threats, interpreting new moves by the other as expressions of hostile intent. Further, we explain the observed New Cold War “contamination” with reference to domestic policy agendas and practices of decision-making. On both the Norwegian and the Russian sides, the new military posturing in the North, now interpreted as part of a growing conflict, has emerged partly as a side-effect of implementing what actually were longstanding national goals.