Читать книгу The Arctic and World Order - Группа авторов - Страница 13

To look further into the plethora of “Arctic issues,” and to understand the various networks underpinning the Arctic “regime,” we invited policy practitioners, environmental and political scientists, historians, lawyers, and energy experts, from Arctic and non-Arctic states, from Anchorage to Adelaide, to take stock of present-day circumstances in the North. We asked them to explore the changes underway in the earth system, climate and ecology, in culture and society as well as in the spheres of politics and economics, law and security. We also encouraged each to look ahead, to consider where the Arctic may be headed, and how the relationship between the Arctic regime and world order may evolve, over the next 20 years as the planet literally heats up.

In his lead essay, Oran R. Young examines the recent course of Arctic international relations as well as likely future developments in this realm through an account of the narratives that have guided the actions of key players over the past three decades. During the 1990s and into the 2000s, the Arctic zone of peace narrative dominated the landscape of Arctic policymaking. The period since the late 2000s has witnessed the rise of competing perspectives on matters of Arctic policy, including narratives highlighting the global climate emergency, energy from the North, and Arctic power politics. Though the Arctic zone of peace narrative remains alive in the thinking of many, these competing perspectives have become increasingly influential. Young argues that the interplay among the four narratives will play a central role in shaping the future of policymaking regarding Arctic issues. One likely scenario is a disaggregation of the Arctic policy agenda, with the Arctic Council continuing to rely on the Arctic zone of peace narrative to address a range of Arctic-specific issues, while major actors (including non-Arctic states) turn to other narratives as they deal with issues featuring close connections between the Arctic and the broader global order.

Henry P. Huntington shows how collaboration on conservation measures across the Arctic space have been effective and offer promise for the future. He also charts continuing dangers from pollutants, plastics, and the potential for industrial accidents, in addition to rapid warming and loss of sea ice. The Arctic is also susceptible, like any other region of the world, to the effects of many small actions, each seemingly justifiable on its own, but collectively causing greater and greater environmental damage. While current modes of Arctic cooperation may avert major disasters, Huntington cautions that they are not adequate to the environmental and biodiversity challenges we face without a new vision for the Arctic aimed at what we as a society want to see, not just what we want to avoid. What the Arctic looks like in 2040 and beyond, he argues, will depend on the choices we make today, globally, regionally, and locally. Protecting the status quo may seem the easier path, but in the long run leads to a diminished Arctic. We should aim higher.

Inuuteq Holm Olsen makes a powerful case that those who call the Arctic home must have a say when it comes to discussions and decisions that affect them. He warns that more and more actors, many of them on the outskirts of the region, are seeking to determine Arctic affairs even though there is no consensus on what it even means to be Arctic, who belongs to the Arctic and to whom the Arctic belongs. “Nihil de nobis, sine nobis,” he writes: Nothing About Us, Without Us.

Victoria Herrmann uses the frame of tipping points to model governance options for a resilient Arctic order in a climate-changed world. After taking stock of current Arctic tipping points, she imagines a future shift of the world order and evolving Arctic regime governance models that would adequately address those and additional tipping points, and that could support Arctic residents to be resilient in a new normal by decentralizing power and buttressing paradiplomacy efforts. She offers a number of ways to tip the current state of Arctic affairs into a future scenario of Arctic governance that is resilient, inclusive, and just.

Any discussion of Arctic futures must address changing dynamics among resource exploitation, new transportation possibilities, and security considerations. Arild Moe reviews various reasons—geography, cost and global markets—why predictions about a resource race in the Arctic have not yet come to pass. He then explores the more dynamic and diverse conditions in various Arctic sub-regions. These considerations are particularly relevant to the evolving relationship between Russia and China when it comes to exploiting the region’s natural resources. Russia stands out with the largest resource base and a petroleum dependent economy. The authorities have strongly advocated and supported Arctic petroleum development. While Russia’s ambitious Arctic offshore strategy has stalled, mainly because of Western sanctions, its development of huge liquified natural gas projects onshore has been successful. China has become an indispensable partner in that business, although it has not yet been willing to take high risks offshore.

Lawson W. Brigham takes a closer look at governance and economic considerations related to global shipping as the loss of Arctic sea ice provides for greater marine access throughout the region and potentially longer seasons of marine navigation. He argues that these opportunities will continue to be subject to practical and significant constraints, such as the lack of major population (and consumer) centers in the Arctic. In addition, governance of the Arctic Ocean is framed by the UNCLOS, and recent Arctic-state treaties on search and rescue, and oil spill preparedness and response, and new International Maritime Organization regulations for ships sailing in Arctic waters (the Polar Code) that provide for enhanced marine safety and environmental protection will all frame and shape future shipping possibilities. Levels of large ship traffic in a future Arctic Ocean will be primarily driven by the pace and extent of natural resource development; ships on destinational voyages (bulk carriers, tankers, and LNG carriers) will carry resources out of the Arctic to global markets. This is the dominant shipping along Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) today and will likely be in the foreseeable future. New niche market opportunities may plausibly evolve for summer, trans-Arctic navigation, but Brigham concludes that the future of Arctic marine operations and shipping remains as complex and highly uncertain as ever, despite the emergence of a bluer, ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer.

Mia M. Bennett and her co-authors glimpse the future to offer an additional perspective on the issue by looking more closely at the Transpolar Sea Route (TSR), which would represent a third Arctic shipping route in addition to the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage. They address the latest estimates of the TSR’s opening, various scenarios for its commercial and logistical development; TSR geopolitics, and the environmental and socioeconomic consequences of transpolar shipping for people in communities along the TSR’s entrances. They contend that even though climate change is proceeding rapidly, there is still time to prepare for the emergence of a new Arctic shipping corridor.

Arctic resource exploitation of course raises the question of current geopolitical conditions and the defense postures and strategic capabilities of the actors in the circumpolar North. As Ernie Regehr points out, Russia—as the biggest actor with by far the longest Arctic coastline—is undeniably at the center of the region’s changing military landscape. Given the importance of its own Arctic resource base, the potential it sees for the NSR, the need to protect its Arctic sea-based deterrent, and sovereignty and border concerns along its newly-accessible Arctic Ocean frontiers, Moscow’s accelerated military preparations in the recent past respond in large measure to public safety, national security, and strategic deterrence imperatives.

The question persists whether those expanding military capabilities warrant a heightened threat assessment by Russia’s Arctic neighbors. To be sure, North America and northern European face serious security challenges related to Russia, but these are not primarily driven by competing interests intrinsic to the Arctic. The absence of deeply-rooted Arctic-specific conflicts, according to Regehr, means that there is the possibility of effectively addressing Arctic security objectives on their own merits. And while Arctic security concerns are currently rising—not least due to other external pressures—there are initiatives and policies available to reduce tensions and to protect the region from becoming unduly exposed to the mounting geostrategic competition outside of the region. Full Arctic isolation from global dynamics is clearly not possible, but in the now-familiar language of pandemics, there are political and military behavioral changes that could help flatten the Arctic tension curve and keep it at levels that diplomacy can continue to manage.

J. Ashley Roach offers a primer on the important relationship between freedom of the seas and the Arctic regime. He includes four helpful appendices on 1) the legal regime of the Arctic Ocean, 2) straits used for international navigation in the Arctic Ocean, 3) maritime boundaries in the Arctic Ocean, and 4) extended continental shelves in the Arctic Ocean. Providing U.S. and Canadian views on the importance of freedom of the seas, he argues that those freedoms are threatened by China, Iran and Russia, despite their respective commitments to UNCLOS rules. He then offers perspectives on a future Arctic Ocean in 2040.

Alexander N. Vylegzhanin traces, from a Russian perspective, the evolution of Arctic law since the 1825 Anglo-Russian Boundary Convention and the 1867 Russia-U.S. Convention Ceding Alaska, which went far to determine the status of the northern polar spaces. He then explains how modern treaty rules of international law, including the UNCLOS, regulate relations among states regarding activities across the world ocean. He warns that the relatively stable legal order that has characterized the Arctic could be undermined if political rivalry between the United States and Russia (or between other Arctic states) in other regions prevails, and each involves non-Arctic allies in Arctic military activities.

As regards the North West Passage (NWP), Suzanne Lalonde stresses how for over fifty years, and while remaining premier partners in the Arctic, Canada and the United States tried to manage what they acknowledged was a significant disagreement over this waterways’ status. Despite their stark “difference and disappointment,” to quote President John F. Kennedy, Canada and the United States have been enjoying a long history of respectful collaboration in the Arctic. This pragmatic approach—agreeing to disagree and getting on with the business of resolving issues of mutual interest and concern—is arguably more important than ever as the Arctic region bears the brunt of climate change. Lalonde explores two major developments linked to climate change with a profound impact on the NWP debate: increased access to and foreign interest in Canada’s Arctic waters and the strengthened voice of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.

Nengye Liu applies a theoretical framework regarding power, order and international law to the Arctic, arguing that this explains the root of Western anxieties regarding China’s rise in the Arctic. The chapter also discusses driving forces of the current development of international law in the Arctic. To imagine a desirable future for the Arctic, it suggests that China should adopt an Arctic Policy 2.0 with concrete plan to strike a delicate balance between economic development and environmental protection.

Lassi Heininen looks at prospects for Arctic relations through the prism of the COVID-19 pandemic shock. He cautions that some leaders could use the pandemic as an excuse to turn to authoritarian solutions to their respective health, political and economic problems, and to offer those solutions as models for others to emulate. He argues that this would be a disaster for the region, which has moved successfully from military tension to high geopolitical stability, even as it faces rapid environmental degradation and climate change. By going beyond the “hegemony game” the Arctic states can work to achieve their aim of maintaining “peace, stability and constructive cooperation.” He suggests that if the Arctic stakeholders can follow through on their commitments to climate change mitigation and global environmental security, rely on scientific recommendations, and apply high ethical principles to resilient solutions to resource utilization, the global Arctic will offer lessons to learn.

Picking up on this theme, P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Ryan Dean recount how scholars have developed and mobilized various formulations of “Arctic exceptionalism,” suggesting that either different norms or rules are or should be followed in the circumpolar north to build and promote a peaceable regime, or that the region is exempt from “normal” drivers of international affairs. They broaden this aperture by examining and parsing contemporary articulations of this regional concept. Some critics argue that conventional concepts of Arctic exceptionalism perpetuate naïve, utopian faith in regional cooperation that cannot override global strategic competition, while simultaneously advancing arguments that Arctic states must undertake extraordinary responses to protect their sovereignty and provide security in the Arctic because the region is exceptionally vulnerable. While Arctic exceptionalism was originally used to advance the cause of peace across the region, Lackenbauer and Dean illustrate how Arctic exceptionalist logic is also used to support narratives that portend conflict and thus call for extraordinary action to defend the Arctic as a region apart. Rather than taking the dominant definition and employment of “Arctic exceptionalism” as the (singular) “proper” articulation of the concept, they point to several “Arctic exceptionalisms” at play in recent debates about the so-called Arctic regime and its place in the broader world order.

Andreas Østhagen seeks to bring clarity to the confusing multitude of actors and layers of engagement in Arctic (geo)politics. He unpacks the notion of Arctic “geopolitics” by teasing out the different, at times contradictory, dynamics at play in the North along three “levels” of inter-state relations: the international system, the regional (Arctic) level, and bilateral relations. By labelling these three levels as “good,” “bad,” and “ugly,” he showcases how the idea of conflict in the Arctic persists, and why this does not necessarily counter the reality of regional cooperation and stability.

As this book shows, one of the emerging questions of security in the Arctic has been how to address the growing strategic concerns of non-Arctic states. Despite the established view among Arctic governments that local security rests primarily within their purview, some non-Arctic states are now pressing to be included in current and future Arctic security dialogue, especially as the region opens up to greater economic activity. Among the factors driving this phenomenon are concerns from non-Arctic states about spillover of Arctic threats into their milieus, the desire to obtain ‘club goods’ in the form of accepted legitimacy as Arctic stakeholders, and the need to be heard in future areas of Arctic governance. One non-Arctic state, China, is widely seen as ‘forcing’ the debate about the role of non-Arctic governments in the circumpolar north, but other states outside of the region are also presenting their own views on Arctic security and potential threats, while at the same time seeking status as participants in Arctic security discourses. Marc Lanteigne argues that there is now a need for Arctic states to better address the security concerns of non-Arctic actors as the region continues to become internationalized in environmental, economic and military security.