The Ukraine crisis moves north. Is Arctic conflict spill-over driven by material interests?

Abstract

The Ukraine crisis has led to tensions between Russia and the western states and the Arctic is one of the affected regions. Regional cooperation, institutions, and international law are essential for Arctic governance, and the crisis may thus have wide-ranging consequences for high north politics. The present article develops an interest-based model of Arctic conflict spill-over and examines its strength, based on a case-study of the first 18 months of the Ukraine crisis. Three hypotheses for Arctic conflict spill-over are developed: Arctic conflict spill-over will be less severe than spill-over in other regions, the western states will be more assertive than Russia, and the smaller Arctic states will be less assertive than the larger states. A review of the crisis confirms the bulk of these hypotheses with some exceptions, thus demonstrating that an interests-based model holds some merit, while also showing that a complete understanding of Arctic conflict spill-over necessitates a broader approach. The article concludes that conflict spillover is unlikely, but not impossible, in the Arctic.

Introduction

International cooperation plays a significant role for Arctic governance, as climate change and globalization have led to new challenges for high north societies (Dodds 2010: 310). Protecting the Arctic environment, ensuring safe traffic at sea and proper search and rescue, faciltiating indigenous/northern political representation, and creating economic development require international cooperation through institutions like the Arctic Council and the Euro-Barents Council. The Arctic states (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States) have willingly cooperated on common challenges, and the high north is often hailed as a region with a particularly well-functioning system of regional governance. In the 2008 Illulissat Declaration, the five Arctic Ocean coastal states (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States) agreed to enhance regional cooperation and to settle regional borders peacefully by committing to respect the law of the sea.

Russia's actions in Ukraine since early 2014 have caused a fundamental crisis in east-west relations which may threaten the peaceful state of affairs in the Arctic. The Russian intervention in Crimea violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Great Britain, Russia, and the United States guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and it showed that great powers are willing to circumvent existing treaties and agreements, and weaken cooperative relations, to achieve their geopolitical goals. The crisis has caused tensions in the Arctic and it has made regional cooperation more difficult. It is therefore crucial to understand whether the Arctic is vulnerable to conflict spillover (when a conflict in one region raises the conflict potential in another region) and to estimate how significant these changes are for regional cooperation.

The literature that examines whether and how the Ukraine crisis has affected Arctic politics has been thorough in mapping escalatory incidents since February 2014, but it has not developed an explicit model of how and where conflict spill-over occurs in the region (Baev 2015; Select Committee on the Arctic 2014; Käpulä and Mikkola 2015; Willis 2014; Negrouk 2015; Conley and Rohloff 2015; Ward 2015, Anon. 2015a). Some authors argue that the region is becoming a new zone of conflict (Ward 2015; Anon. 2015a), while others see these warnings as exaggerated (Select Committee on the Arctic 2014; Willis 2014; Negrouk 2015). However, each camp talks past the other, as they emphasise different factors, different areas of the Arctic, and different actors, and often refrain from addressing the variables highlighted by their opponents. For instance, Ward sees recent statements by Russian vice-premier Dmitri Rogozin and President Putin and new Russian military modernising initiatives as signs of new Russian assertiveness in the high north (Ward 2015). Conversely, Negrouk argues that Russia is dependent on the west for Arctic energy technology, which is crucial for its high north energy industry, and that creates an opportunity for enhancing cooperation with Russia (Negrouk 2015). Only a theoretically grounded model that offers an overview of factors and the relationship between them, will allow scholars to estimate and debate the likelihood of Arctic conflict spillover. The theoretically grounded literature on the international relations of the Arctic has very little to say about conflict spill-over (Offerdal 2014; Le Miere and Mazo 2013; Keil 2014; Young 2009; Wegge 2011; Hough 2013).

The present article aims to develop a theoretically grounded model for analysing Arctic conflict spillover, based on defensive realism, an International Relations theory that highlights the importance of material interests for explaining state behaviour. To what extent can conflict spill-over from the Ukraine Crisis to the Arctic during the first 18 months of the crisis be measured and predicted by looking solely at the material interests of the Arctic states?

The article shows that an interest-based model takes one a long way in explaining Arctic conflict spill-over. The Ukraine crisis has had a relatively mild impact on Arctic politics, compared to other regions, as conflict spill-over is moderated by Russia's economic interests in the high north. The west, conversely, is less interested in the Arctic as such and pursues a more belligerent punishment strategy including the introduction of sanctions that include the high north. However, there are some aspects of the crisis that cannot be explained solely based on the material interests of the states involved. Canada has generally been more belligerent than one would have thought based solely on a geopolitical reading of Ottawa's material interests. The article does not analyse how domestic factors have affected each state's response to the crisis, but it seems reasonable to speculate that the Arctic's importance for Canadian national identity and Canada's substantial Ukrainian diaspora have affected Canadian policy (Dodds 2011; Carlson 2014). The article thus shows that there is strong evidence to suggest that material interests are perhaps the most important driver of regional politics, but interest-based explanations do not tell the whole story and other factors must be taken into consideration.

An interest-based analytical framework

As Wegge (2011) argues, Arctic politics can be treated as a subsystem of a larger global political system. That is, the Arctic has its own political dynamics which cannot be said to just reflect the politics of any other region (say, Europe, Asia, or North America), but the Arctic system is still connected to global politics, as events in other regions (for instance the Ukraine crisis) can change its dynamics. In the following, I will view the Arctic subsystem as defined by a multipolar structure with four great powers (the US, the EU, Russia, and China) and several minor states. The EU, though not a state, will be treated as a unitary actor.

As explained in the introduction, a good conflict spill-over model has to identify certain key factors that analysts can examine in order to estimate the conflict-proneness of a specific region. Defensive realism argues that material interests are the most important driver of state behaviour in the long run. The theory views states as somewhat rational security-seekers that try to minimise the threat posed by other states by increasing their own material power resources (Talioferro 2000; Waltz 1979). Unlike liberal scholars, who emphasise the importance of absolute gains for states, defensive realists argue that states also try to increase their power relative to other states in order to minimise the threat posed by other states (Grieco 1988). This search for power does not necessarily lead to conflict with other states, as states are weary of the risk and costs involved in engaging in security competition (Talioferro 2000). Instead, states search for opportunities for enhancing their relative power at a low cost and risk.

Defensive realists recognise that official policy statements may be deceptive and reflect a strategic attempt to manipulate public opinion or other states. Similarly, one cannot necessarily extrapolate previous behaviour into the future, as states may decide to change course if it is accordance with their interests. A state's interests are elucidated by looking at its strength in global politics, its geopolitical position, its internal economy and its attitude to the global order (whether it is a status quo or a revisionist power) (Waltz 1979: 116–123). Analysts should try to uncover the strength of the state and how different policy actions would influence the state's ability to generate power in the future.

The analytical framework developed in this paper highlights the importance of the link between states’ regional and global interests. Regionally, states try to occupy and exploit strategically important territories and resources, to forge regional alliances and to occupy positions in regional institutions to increase their strength vis-à-vis other states. Conflicts arise when several states see the opportunity to occupy the same prize (be it territory, resources, alliances or other power capabilities) and when they all believe that they have enough strength to grab said prize (Betts 2000: 21; Blainey 1988). The regional conflict potential can be exacerbated by security dilemmas, that is, a situation in which one state's attempts to increase its security creates insecurity in other states and thereby lead to security competition (Jervis 1978: 169–70; Åtland 2014). Analysing the conflict potential of a region entails looking for ‘loose’ resources and for potential security dilemmas and estimating whether these forces are strong enough to make conflict a relatively rational course of action.

States’ regional strategies are not just shaped by regional conditions, but are rather linked to their global strategy. States pursue certain goals in certain regions because these regional goals help them to pursue their global goals. For instance, as we shall see below, Russia's interests in Arctic oil and gas are intimately linked to its wish to remain a great power, as extracting and exporting these resources finances the Russian state in the long term. It is this link between the regional and the global level that explains why extra-regional conflicts spread. As states become entangled in tensions in one region, they will tend to shift their attention to winning this contest and they will begin to put more emphasis on short-term gains. For example, getting an upper hand in the Ukraine crisis has forced Russia to cooperate with China to gain short-term advantages, even if China poses a long-term threat to Russia (Blank and Kim 2016). If the conflict is deemed important, states will begin to punish their opponents in other regions to show them the cost of the original conflict, thus causing the conflict to spill over into the other regions. Whether each state pursues this course depends on the importance of the interests in the region compared to its global interests and whether it has alternative venues for punishment.

Not all states hold similar weight and great powers are, of course, more influential than smaller states. It is always difficult to categorise states (Handel 1981; Holbraad 1984; Vayrynen 1971), but in the following, I do so based on their power resources and the influence that gives them over the Arctic. Great powers are states that have sufficient military or economic power resources unilaterally to change the political environment of the Arctic, if they wish to do so (the US, the EU, Russia, and China fall into this category). Middle powers are states that yield some influence over the political environment of region, especially in regional institutions, but which lack the military independence to cause such an outcome without significantly hurting their own power position (Canada falls in that category). Finally, small states are states that cannot defend themselves militarily and only influence regional politics through alliances and international organisation (Denmark and Norway fall into that category).

The regional conflict potential thus depends on the link between the regional and global interests of the great powers. A great power may choose to isolate a region from conflict spill-over if it has important regional interests that overshadow its global interests. I will refer to such states as isolating actors. Whether this isolation is successful depends on the interests of the opposing state. The opposing state will agree to isolate the region if it too has significant interests in the region (if it is also an isolating actor). Conflict spillover is unlikely to occur in regions with only isolating actors.

Conflict spillover occurs when the region contains a state that has a global interest in allowing conflict to spread, the importance of which surpasses the interest it may have in regional stability, what I call punishing actors. Estimating whether a state is a punishing actor entails looking at whether they are revisionist or status quo actors on the global level. Revisionist states do not benefit from the status quo and they consequently have no interest in maintaining the current global order. Ceteris paribus, conflict spillover is to their benefit, as it shows the status quo states that they stand to lose if the revisionist state is not given a more prominent place in the world order. Revisionist states are therefore often punishing actors, unless they have specific interests in a specific region that prohibit them from benefitting from conflict spillover here. For instance, as we shall see below, Russia pursued a revisionist strategy during the first period of the Ukraine crisis, but its interests in the Arctic meant that it generally did not act as a punishing actor in the high north.

Status quo states have an interest in maintaining global stability and they are consequently less likely to allow a conflict to spread to other regions. They may be punishing actors in a specific region when faced with a revisionist state that aims to destabilise the current world order. In that case, the status quo state may use conflict spillover to punish the revisionist actor by denying it crucial interests. For example, as we shall see below, Arctic cooperation plays only a scant role for the US and the EU and they have consequently been willing to exploit Russia's dependence on the west in the high north by including sanctions against Russian Arctic oil and gas interests in their punishment schemes. This has made the Ukraine crisis more costly for Russia by shutting down its important energy interests in the high north. However, status quo states consequently tend to be limited in their punishment, as they have an interest in preventing conflicts from escalating and destabilising the status quo.

A region's propensity for conflict spill-over thus depends on whether the regional great powers are isolating or punishing actors. Regions with only isolating actors will experience very little spillover, while regions with punishing actors will experience spillover. As we shall see below, the west is a partially punishing actor in the high north, while Russia is an isolating actor. One would therefore expect Arctic conflict spillover to be less severe than spillover into other regions and one would expect Russia to be less bullish than the west.

Middle and small powers face different incentives and consequently have different interests than do great powers. Small and middle powers are more vulnerable to encroachment by larger states and they are therefore typically more reactive than great powers (Handel 1981: 9–76). They therefore tend to be more determined by their geographical position, especially the closeness of potentially aggressive great powers (Handel 1981: 6, 51, 70–76). Two general rules about the interests of small and middle powers are pertinent for the present analysis. First, if two states are located in the same geographical position, the stronger state will typically have more freedom of manoeuvre, because the threat posed by other states will be less severe. Second, small states that are located close to potentially aggressive great powers will typically adapt to the threat posed by that state and their foreign policies will be more constrained (Handel 1981: 72). The exact nature of their policies will reflect their specific vulnerabilities and overall circumstances.

Analysing conflict spill-over thus entails identifying whether the regional states are pursuing assertive or engaging policies vis-à-vis their opponents. Assessing a state's level of assertiveness, of course, depends on a certain level of interpretation. Analysts face an analytical conundrum in identifying whether a state's policies reflect a deep-seated wish to interrupt regional cooperation or a need to react to or pre-empt the policies of other regional actors. An isolating state may be forced to react to regional punishment initiatives by other states by instigating its own punishment schemes in order to maintain credibility and influence in the region. For example, if the United States punishes Russia in the Arctic, Moscow may have to punish the United States in the region, even if Russia is an isolating actor. When measuring conflict spillover, one should expect that both parties will include the region in their punishment scheme, if one of the parties does so. The crucial indicator is thus not simply the presence of punishment, but rather the relative balance between the two parties. When faced with penalty initiatives by a punishing actor, one would expect an isolating actor to instigate its own punishment scheme, but one would also expect that these programmes would be less bullish than the ones imposed by the punishing actor.

Thus, one can only understand the impact of the Ukraine crisis through an overview of the political, military, and economic interests in the Arctic for the five coastal states and the EU and how these interests relate to the global interests of all six actors. This is done in the following section by interpreting a review of existing analyses through a defensive realism lens. The EU is a key party to the Ukraine crisis and its policies can be shown to have affected how the crisis unfolded in the Arctic and it will therefore be included in the analysis.

Certain non-Arctic or near-Arctic states, like China, Japan, India, and various European countries have tried to influence the region in past years, but their influence is negligible in this context and they will consequently only be included when relevant for the five coastal states and the EU. The analysis examines whether each of the six actors have regional interests that are crucial for their global interests, if these interests are political, military, or economic in nature, and whether the state in question has enough strength to pursue these interests. The analysis looks at Russia and the western states as two separate blocks with the latter being defined by several actors and thus also different interests.

Energy interests keep Russia on a cooperative track

Russia's interests in Arctic cooperation are primarily economic in nature and they reflect both Russian regional and global interests. It aims to remain a great power and to avoid western interference in what Russian commentators term their ‘near abroad’. Moscow oscillates between cooperating with the west and resisting what it sees as western encroachments into its sphere of influence. Over the last decade, Russia has cooperated with the US on issues like counterterrorism and non-proliferation but Moscow is also wary of China's influence in the Central Asian region for example. However, the 2008 Georgia war and the current Ukraine and Syrian crisis show that Russia is willing to oppose the west when it sees it as serving its long-term goals (Tsygankov 2010).

Russia's fiscal sustainability depends on its vast oil and gas resources with the energy sector generating roughly half of the government's revenues (Laruelle 2014: 254) and this makes Arctic energy crucial for Russia's long-term global interests. Some parts of the Russian elite advocate a modernisation and diversification of the Russian economy to move away from the dependence on oil and gas in the long term, but even these voices recognise that a modernisation effort requires large capital investment which can only be funded by the hydrocarbon industry (Gustafson 2012: 450–452; Laqueur 2010). This sector faces its own challenges. As the plentiful and easily accessible fields in western Siberia dry out, Russian energy companies have to use new techniques to squeeze yield out of existing fields and to explore new on-shore fields in eastern Siberia and off-shore fields in the Arctic (Gustafson 2012: 456–473).

Policymakers in Moscow recognise that the Arctic constitutes a potential future ‘strategic resource base’ for Russia (Government of the Russian Federation 2009; Carlsson and Granholm 2013: 15; Staun 2015: 21; Klimenko 2014: 3). Geologists have yet to explore the resource potential in large parts of the Arctic and it is therefore difficult to estimate the resource base exactly, but forecasts indicate that it contains significant reserves of both natural gas and oil, much of which lies offshore (Gautier and others 2008). Although oil matters for the Russian energy sector, the Arctic mainly contains large amounts of natural gas. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that recoverable off-shore natural gas reserves in the Arctic (excluding the Pechora Sea) amount to roughly 258,000 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) (International Energy Agency 2011: 303). In other words, the Arctic may contain as much gas as all Russia's current proven reserves and 40 per cent of all Russia's recoverable reserves. If Russia was able to exploit all the recoverable gas that is estimated to be in the Arctic, these resources would correspond to 67 years of current total gas production. The most accessible major gas field alone, the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea, is thought to contain 22,800 mboe or enough gas to fuel Russia's entire gas industry for six years (Laruelle 2014: 143).

The IEA estimates that the recoverable oil and liquid natural gas reserves in the Arctic amount to 48,000 million barrels (mb) (some 14 per cent of Russia's total remaining recoverable reserves), even when excluding the oil-rich Pechora Sea (International Energy Agency 2011: 289). If Russian companies were somehow able to exploit all recoverable oil in the Arctic, the fields would supply enough to cover Russia's entire current production for 13 years.

Sea ice, low temperatures, sparse infrastructure, and significant environmental challenges make it a complicated endeavour to recover the Arctic oil and gas, and Russia is likely to focus on more accessible sources in Siberia in the short-to-medium term. The IEA projects that the Arctic (excluding the Pechora Sea) will only contribute 1.5 per cent of total oil production and 7 per cent of total gas production in 2035 (International Energy Agency 2011: 295, 306). The significant hydrocarbon reserves in the high north are more likely to gain strategic importance going towards the 2030s and 2040s, and the current slump in global energy prices has postponed the development of Russian Arctic hydrocarbons further.

Shipping through the northeast passage may also be a strategic resource for Russia. Due to difficult climatic conditions, hazardous waters, and the lack of ports along the way, the passage itself is unlikely to become a global rival of the Suez and Panama Canals or the Malacca Strait (Blunden 2012; Lasserre 2010). Instead, the passage may have strategic importance, insofar as it can come to serve as a transport route for onshore and offshore hydrocarbons. For instance, the onshore liquid natural gas (LNG) project on the Yamal peninsula aims to use the passage to transport roughly 150 mboe LNG to Asia (Moe 2014: 791–92).

Other Arctic sources of income include mining (metals, diamonds, and rare earth elements) and fishing, but they represent but a fraction of the potential in the hydrocarbon industry. Thus, these opportunities are not crucial for Russia's long-term strategy. Moscow will strive to exploit these resources and will go to great lengths to gain access to them, but they will not fundamentally shape Russia's regional strategy in the same way as oil and gas do.

Russia needs to import capital, technology, and know-how to exploit its Arctic hydrocarbons and western companies seem to be the most likely partners, though this role could arguably be filled out by companies from China or other non-western countries. Experts estimate that Russian companies generally have to increase their overall annual investment from roughly USD 25 billion today to around USD 50 billion in five years in order to maintain current production levels by finding new fields and developing the infrastructure and logistics needed to exploit them (Gustafson 2012: 459). Companies like Rosneft and Gazprom lack the capital to make these investments and have entered into partnerships with capital-rich international companies through agreements which place the responsibility for initial investments and, in essence, the bulk of the risk on the shoulders of the latter. For instance, ExxonMobil will essentially finance and run the entire exploration phase of its joint projects with Rosneft, the largely state-owned Russian oil company, in the Kara Sea (Henderson and Loe 2014: 29–30; Overland and others 2013).

Russian companies also need international firms to provide specific technologies and management experience for these projects and this makes Moscow interested in Arctic cooperation. Transnational energy companies operate in many different locations and have developed methods which in many cases can be adapted to handle specific challenges. For instance, in Sakhalin, where conditions resemble those found in the Arctic, ExxonMobil affiliates brought with them innovative construction and horizontal drilling techniques which significantly decreased overall costs and production time (Bradshaw 2010: 343–344). Furthermore, Russia needs sub-contractors to provide general services like well-drilling, production of specialist parts, and data analysis. Companies like Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes have specialist expertise which cannot be found in Russia, and such firms supplied 80 per cent of the technology used in Russia's off-shore industry before the Ukraine crisis (Farchy 2014). The Russian industry also lacks experience managing large, innovation-oriented projects. Western companies have extensive management experience and access to global supplier networks which enable them to execute the series of complex operations which make up an Arctic off-shore project. In Sakhalin, for example, these factors helped them achieve remarkable results (Gustafson 2012: 470–72).

In sum, Russia is an isolating actor in the Arctic, in spite of employing revisionist strategies on a global level. Keeping the Arctic peaceful and joining common initiatives in the region gives Russia easier access to the western know-how, technology, and capital that will help it pursue its economic interests in the high north, which are necessary to protect its great power status.

The west in the Arctic: great power indifference

This dependency on foreign capital and technology places Russia in a fundamentally different position than the EU and the US. Of the two latter, the US has more interests and influence in the Arctic. The EU is hampered by its lack of Arctic Ocean coastline. Although northern Finland and Sweden lie within the Arctic, no union member has coastline within the region (Greenland, though part of the Kingdom of Denmark, left the European Community in 1985). The EU does not have a seat or observer status in the Arctic Council. The EU can wield some influence in the council via permanent members Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. The sheer size of its economy also gives it some informal influence over regional decision-making and the Lisbon Treaty allows it to develop policies with implications for the Arctic, especially in areas such as energy, shipping, fisheries, and the environment (Koivurova and others 2012), but the fact that it lacks military power and the complex nature of its foreign policy decision-making processes limits its ability to affect regional decision-making (Offerdal 2010a).

Compared to the interests of other great powers, such as the United States and Russia, the EU's Arctic interests are few. Unlike Russia and the US, the EU is a military dwarf and it consequently does not have an interest in using the region for nuclear deterrence. The EU's energy-dependence on Russia is one of its grand strategic vulnerabilities and Brussels therefore needs to maintain access to independent energy sources, including Norwegian fields in the high north (Ebinger and Zambetakis 2009: 1227; Offerdal 2010b: 32). One could argue that this link makes the EU somewhat interested in Arctic stability, as stable relations are a precondition developing these resources. However, one should not exaggerate the importance of the EU's interests in Arctic energy, which are significantly less important than Russia's Arctic energy interests. Brussels does not control these energy projects and they will not increase the fiscal sustainability of the EU states significantly, even if EU companies become involved in them. In other words, whereas Russia's Arctic energy interests increase the fiscal sustainability of the state, gives Russia control over its own energy sources, and creates leverage against other states (including the EU), the Norwegian fields in the Arctic only increase the EU's supply diversity and diminish Brussels’ dependence on Russian energy slightly. Consequently, the EU's interests in Arctic energy are rather limited, and are easily outweighed by other interests. This lack of interest is also reflected in the small importance attached to high north energy in Brussels (Offerdal 2010b).

Of course, European companies seek business opportunities in the region and especially fishing and shipping are areas in which the EU has an interest in affecting regional decision-making. Brussels is also concerned about environmental preservation in the region. However, scattered business interests and environmental concerns are hardly grand strategic interests and in overall terms the Arctic is relatively unimportant for the EU, compared to other regions.

The US has more Arctic interests and influence than the EU, but few of Washington's interests depend on keeping the Arctic peaceful per se. Unlike the EU, the US is a military superpower that needs to maintain nuclear and conventional deterrence against potential adversaries. In the Arctic, the US wants to maintain its military manoeuvrability, including its ability to operate with its fleet of strategic submarines in the region, and to keep the radars at Thule, Greenland and Clear, Alaska, which constitute crucial nodes in its strategic nuclear missile warning system (Hilde 2014: 149, 156; Dörfer 2005: 176–177). The regional governance system explicitly excludes military issues, and the US is able to maintain its regional interests regardless of the Arctic institutions. Plentiful oil and gas reserves are found in Alaska, but US companies do not depend on the import of technology and capital to exploit these resources. The US’ Arctic resources are not essential for its long-term fiscal sustainability given the fracking revolution in the lower 48 states and low carbon transition progress. The US also has a few minor, political interests in the region. On top of a general interest in shipping, environmental issues, and fishing rights, the US wants to retain its right to free and unencumbered passage on the global seas and currently disputes claims that the northwest and northeast passages consist of internal or territorial waters (made by Canada and Russia, respectively) (White House 2013; Lundestad and Tunsjø 2015; Byers 2014: 128–170). So far, the states have decided to agree to disagree, and there is little chance of progress any time soon.

Furthermore, the US and the EU can use the Arctic to punish revisionist powers if need be. Simply put, the US and the EU are status quo powers which want to retain the current global order, and one of their key objectives is to deter other great powers from challenging that order. Until the Ukraine crisis, the US and EU did not work to hinder other great powers, such as China and Russia, from pursuing their individual interests in the high north. For instance, China was admitted as an observer state in the Arctic Council and has been allowed to have some regional influence, for instance in talks about central Arctic Ocean fisheries (Solli and others 2013). However, they can easily use their regional influence to make it more costly for China and Russia to pursue their Arctic interests, if they try to destabilize the global order.

Compared to the EU and US, the smaller high north countries generally have more Arctic-specific interests and they are consequently more interested in preserving regional cooperation. They generally face two external pressures. On the one hand, NATO plays a crucial role for their long-term security and they therefore have an interest in following the US and EU in punishing Russia for its infringements on Ukrainian sovereignty. On the other hand, they have more Arctic-specific interests than the US and EU and they are more vulnerable to Russian harassment, which makes them more interested in maintaining regional cooperation.

Denmark and Norway, which are located in a geo-strategically difficult space close to Russia, wish to maintain good working relations with Moscow while vigilantly protesting against the Kremlin's course of action in Europe. They both seek to develop Arctic commercial opportunities, especially in the energy sector, which may require support support from foreign companies. As they are both integral members of the western alliance and market system, getting access to such backing is non-problematic. Instead, they both have specific vulnerabilities that expose them to Russian harassment.

Denmark's status as an Arctic power hinges on Greenland staying within the Kingdom of Denmark (Ackrén and Jakobsen 2014). Greenlandic secession is the long-term goal of all Greenlandic parties, although fiscal problems make an independent Greenland unsustainable in the short term (Gad 2014). This complex constitutional arrangement makes Denmark vulnerable to Russian provocation. The Danish Armed Forces are stretched thin on the enormous Greenlandic territory and they would struggle to handle systematic harassment by Russian forces, which would cause a constitutional crisis between Denmark and Greenland. Furthermore, if military tensions came to the high north, the American presence in Greenland would increase and this would give the Greenlandic government an alternative patron upon which it could base an independent state (Jørgensen and Rahbek-Clemmensen 2009).

Similarly, Norway's territory (especially its economic fortunes in the Arctic) is exposed to Russian encroachment (Mouritzen and Wivel 2012: 127). Norway has substantial oil and gas interests in the Barents Sea and significant parts of these resources are located in areas that were disputed until the Russo-Norwegian border settlement in 2010 (Henriksen and Ulfstein 2011). Russia could make it difficult for Oslo to exploit petroleum resources found in the Barents Sea. The 2010 Barents Sea agreement stipulated that if any such resources traverse the border between Norway and Russia, the two countries will settle the matter at the negotiation table (Henriksen and Ulfstein 2011: 8–9). In case of an Arctic conflict, Russia could claim that some of the Norwegian deposits crossed the boundary, thus in effect halting the specific projects.

Unlike the Nordic states, Canada has few essential interests that depend on Arctic cooperation and Canada is not vulnerable to Russian harassment. Any political cleavages in Canada are less severe than those between Denmark and Greenland and its location on the North American continent makes Russian military harassment more difficult and less effective. The Canadian Arctic energy sector is still in its infancy with a significant potential for growth (Keil 2014: 172–173), but, unlike the Norwegian industry, Russia can do little to disrupt it through political or military initiatives. This is not to say that Canada does not benefit from Arctic cooperation. Article 76–85 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) enables the coastal states, including Canada, to claim the continental shelfs that run between North America and Asia. The Arctic Council and various bilateral agreements facilitate new environmental protection and economic development initiatives and allow the states’ coast guards to cooperate to exploit economies of scale (Government of Canada 2010). However, these benefits of Arctic cooperation are limited for Canada and easily outweighed by other concerns in the international sphere. One would therefore expect Canada to be more willing than the Nordic states to push for an assertive course against Russia. However, as a smaller power, one would also expect Canada to be less of a hardliner vis-à-vis Russia than the US. As we shall see below, Canada seems to have charted a course that goes against this prediction.

In sum, the EU and US are potentially partly punishing actors in the Arctic, as they have few, if any, core interests in the high north, and they do not depend on non-western actors. As status quo actors, they have an interest in global stability and in avoiding conflict spill-over in general, which limits their tendency to use the Arctic as a venue for punishment. Denmark and Norway are generally more interested in regional cooperation, because they have more high north interests and they are more vulnerable to Russian harassment. Canada is less vulnerable than Denmark and Norway and would consequently be less of an isolating actor.

Interest-based hypotheses

The review of the regional and global strategies of the key states revealed a certain imbalance between Russia and the west. Whereas the largest western actors, the US and the EU, have little at stake when it comes to Arctic cooperation, Russia depends heavily on the west when it comes to its main interests in the region. In other words, Russia is an isolating actor that would have an interest in keeping the Ukraine crisis separate from the high north, whereas the US and EU are punishing actors, which would be more willing to allow the Ukraine crisis to spill over into the Arctic.

This overview of the systemic and geopolitical forces facing the Arctic states can be used to derive three hypotheses about how they would react to the Ukraine crisis. First, one would expect that the crisis would affect other regions more than the Arctic, as all key actors have reasons to minimize spill-over into the high north. The US and EU have to balance two concerns. Washington and Brussels want to maintain global stability and therefore avoid the crisis expanding beyond Ukraine, but maintaining stability also means punishing Russia for its actions in Ukraine. The US and EU would therefore be willing to include the Arctic in their punishment schemes, but only in a limited way that does not antagonise Russia to the extent that the crisis spirals out of control. Russia has crucial interests in Arctic energy that depend on regional cooperation and stability and one would therefore expect it to be an isolating actor. According to the framework described above, the constellation of one isolating actor (Russia) and two partially punishing actors (the US and EU) would lead to a less conflictual situation than in other regions, where Russia is a punishing actor.

Second, one would expect the US and EU to be more assertive than Russia in the high north. Russia has significant material interests that depend on regional cooperation and stability, which makes it vulnerable to regional punishment by the US and EU. It makes sense for the US and EU to take advantage of that vulnerability, if they consider the Ukraine crisis to be significant for global stability. This does not mean that one would not see any assertive moves from Russia at all. States react to and pre-empt punishing moves by their opponents and it therefore may make sense for Russia to introduce punishing policies against the US and EU. In overall terms, however, one would expect the US and EU to go after Russia rather than vice versa.

Third, one would expect Denmark and Norway to be less assertive than the US and EU. The Arctic plays a large role in their foreign policies and they benefit from Arctic cooperation. Although they also benefit from maintaining NATO unity, they would be less willing than Washington and Brussels to allow the Ukraine crisis to spread. Of course, due to their small size, these states have very little influence over western policy and one would simply expect them to use the relatively small room for manoeuvre that they do have to strike a less assertive pose against Russia. Canada is less hampered by geography and less vulnerable to Russian harassment and one would therefore not be surprised if Ottawa was more bullish than the two Nordic states. Due to its smaller size and the relatively larger importance of Arctic affairs in Ottawa, compared to Washington, one would not expect Canada to be more assertive than the United States.

The following section tests these hypotheses empirically. Events largely resemble the patterns of the hypotheses with a few exceptions. The Ukraine crisis has led to tensions in the Arctic and it has hampered regional cooperation, as predicted by the first hypothesis. The western states have also been more bullish than Russia in the high north, as Western sanctions of Russia's Arctic oil and gas industry represents the most severe implication of the crisis. This thus supports the second hypothesis. However, the final hypothesis does not fully capture actual events. Whereas the Nordic states have been more dovish than the US, Canada has been more assertive in sanctioning Russia. This shows the limits of a purely interest-based analysis of Arctic politics and conflict spill-over.

Limited impact on Arctic politics

The interest-based approach is able to explain the bulk, but not all, of the conflict spill-over patterns in the Arctic during the first 18 months of the Ukraine crisis. The three hypotheses are reviewed in the following three subsections, where the impact of the crisis on diplomatic, military, and economic relations are analysed in each section. Diplomatic relations cover bi- and multilateral meetings between representatives of the relevant actors. Military relations include exercise patterns, deployment of capabilities and personnel, military cooperation, and actual confrontations between the armed forces, while economic relations encompass the interaction between firms and government regulation of economic activity. The analysis is based on a comprehensive evaluation of relevant events over the 18 months in question. The events are identified through a systemic search of media outlets and the list of events has been confirmed through informal background conversations with Arctic diplomats and experts.

Hypothesis 1. Less spill-over into the Arctic than other regions

The Ukraine crisis made Arctic politics more cumbersome as several areas of cooperation were closed down following the Russian action in Crimea, but there were fewer tensions in the Arctic than other regions, where Russia was not an isolating actor. The crisis had implications for the general foreign policies of the Arctic states, and it sparked diplomatic incidents which are not directly linked to the region. For instance, Russia and Canada completed a round of mutual diplomatic expulsions in the spring of 2014 (Mackarel 2014). Arctic cooperation was hampered as areas of diplomatic interaction were closed down. In 2014, Russia was not invited to a meeting in the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable and to pre-meetings before two North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum meetings (Østhagen 2014).

Cooperation in the Arctic Council continued, though it became more complicated due to the crisis. In the spring of 2014, Canada and the US boycotted a low-level Arctic Council task-force meeting, which was held in Moscow. The impact of this incident should not be overstated. The boycott affected just one of 57 Arctic Council events held in the year following the beginning of the crisis (Arctic Council 2015; Mackarel 2014). The 2015 biennial Arctic Council ministerial meeting, the main diplomatic event in the region, was also affected by the crisis. The meeting was prefaced by a controversial visit by the head of Russia's Arctic Commission Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister, who is banned from entering most western countries, to the Norwegian territory of Svalbard, which is governed by an international treaty guaranteeing access to signatories such as Russia. Although the visit did not, strictly speaking, violate the Norwegian sanctions against Russia, it did lead to audible Norwegian protests (Myers 2015; Pettersen 2015). Russia concurrently decided to send its environmental minister instead of Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov, who had been one of the most vocal supporters of high north cooperation (Myers 2015). One could argue that Lavrov's absence did not reflect a Russian attempt to disrupt Arctic diplomacy, but that it was a manoeuvre to avoid a confrontation between Lavrov and western politicians about Ukraine. Regardless of Lavrov's motives, his absence was clearly caused by the Ukraine crisis and it shows the difficulties that the crisis caused for Arctic diplomacy.

In spite of these few episodes, regional diplomacy still functions well. There have been plenty of opportunities to halt diplomatic cooperation in the region, most importantly the 2015 Arctic Council ministerial meeting. A few thorny issues became stalemated because of the crisis. For instance, the EU was not granted observer status at the meeting, in part due to Russian resistance, and the issue was deferred to 2017. However, even though this delay indicates deeper tensions, Russia refrained from using its position in the Council to make a more demonstrative stance vis-à-vis the EU. In overall terms, the states have remained dedicated to continued practical cooperation in the Arctic Council throughout the crisis and the 2015 ministerial meeting produced a declaration that largely maintained a productive agenda for the coming years (Arctic Council 2015). It is even possible that the few diplomatic episodes have made policymakers aware of the risk of conflict spillover and that they thus have helped maintain regional cooperation.

The military relations in the region also became more complicated, but the impact was less severe than in other regions. Due to NATO's general ban on military cooperation with Russia, planned joint exercises, like the 2014 Norwegian-Russian-American Northern Eagle exercise, were cancelled (Pettersen 2014e). A total of 15 bilateral Norwegian-Russian events were cancelled in 2014 (Pettersen 2014b). Instead, the parties conducted their own exercises, which were typically seen as threatening by the opposing party. Finland, Norway, and Russia organised large national exercises in the Arctic, and Russia conducted intercontinental ballistic missile tests in the region (Nilsen 2014c; Staalesen 2014b; Russia Today 2015; Grove 2015). However, the states simultaneously tried to maintain joint activities, as explained below (Pettersen 2014a, 2016).

The difference between the Arctic and other regions can be illustrated by comparing Russia's flight patterns in the high north and the Baltic region. The number of Russian flights along the borders of its Arctic neighbours increased slightly. For instance, Norway made 49 scrambles and 74 identifications of Russian planes in 2014, compared to 41 scrambles and 58 identifications in 2013 and 41 scrambles and 71 identifications in 2012 (Norwegian Joint Headquarters 2015). This has to be compared with a 300 per cent increase in scrambles over the Baltic countries, where NATO made 142 scrambles in 2014, compared to 47 scrambles in 2013 and just four scrambles in 2010 (Postimees 2014; Ministry of National Defence, Republic of Lithuania 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2014d, 2014e, 2014f, 2015).

Similarly, there were no major escalatory incidents between two Arctic nations in the high north during the Ukraine crisis on par with the Russian arrest of an Estonian border guard, the alleged intrusion of a Russian submarine into the Stockholm archipelago, or the many provocative manoeuvres by Russian and western forces in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and elsewhere. Two European Leadership Network reports estimate the severity of various episodes during the first year of the crisis. Just one Arctic episode, the Russian detention of a Lithuanian shipping vessel in the Barents Sea in September 2014, is ranked as a ‘serious incident with escalation risk’ and one could argue that this specific episode has more to do with Russian-Lithuanian relations than high north politics (Frear and others 2014; Frear 2015).

The crisis also affected economic relations in the region, as western sanctions explicitly target most of Russia's large energy companies operating in the high north, including Rosneft and Gazprom, and have already had significant implications for the Russian energy sector (European Union 2014; United States Department Of State 2014; Bond and others 2015). Russia, conversely, did not introduce Arctic-specific sanctions (Russian Federation 2014; Bond and others 2015). The impact of the sanctions are analysed more thoroughly below, but it seems reasonable to conclude that economic relations in the Arctic were not worse off than economic relations in other regions.

In sum, the effect of the Ukraine crisis confirms the first of the three hypotheses. The crisis complicated Arctic politics, but tensions were few compared to other regions. The major parties all had an interest in maintaining regional cooperation and this partly isolated the region from fall-out from the Ukraine crisis.

Hypothesis 2. The western block was more assertive than Russia

The west generally was more willing than Russia to include the Arctic in its punishment scheme. Russia and the west both used military and diplomatic means to punish one another, but these tensions was generally fairly limited. The west used its upper hand in the economic realm to punish Russia in an area in which Moscow was very vulnerable.

Both sides also used diplomatic means in their punishment schemes, but the overall implications were quite limited compared to what could have happened. As mentioned above, both Canada and the US boycotted a Moscow-based Arctic Council task force meeting. Another meeting was moved from St. Petersburg to Reykjavik to avoid further tensions, and contrary to the Council's unspoken customs no meetings are located in Russia in the present cycle. Although this shows that tensions have clearly affected the working relationship in the Council, the fact that Russia has accepted the current meeting cycle without vocal protests also shows that Moscow did not push all available buttons. In general, the parties still keep diplomatic channels open, and ministers have met occasionally (TASS 2014a).

Russia's reactions to Denmark's continetal shelf claim from December 2014 and its continental shelf submission from August 2015 also indicated that Moscow was willing to compromise to maintain good relations with its Arctic neighbours. Although the continental shelf delimitation process is partly a legal matter and the states’ room for manoeuver is restricted by UNCLOS article 76–85, the process is also governed by political concerns that reflect their mutual relations. A beligerent Russia could use various tools to impede the delimitation process. For instance, when Denmark made its submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), Russia could have protested against the Danish claim, which would, in effect, have halted the process. Instead, Russia accepted that CLCS evaluated the Danish claim. Also, Russia could have used the opportunity to engage its own domestic public through loud protests against western imperialism, but instead it chose a restrained and diplomatic approach. This indicates that Moscow wants to settle the issue quietly and that it generally wants to maintain regional cooperation (Rahbek-Clemmensen 2015).

Certain high-profile events, like Dmitry Rogozin's 2015 Svalbard visit or Sergej Lavrov's absence from the 2015 Arctic Council ministerial in Iqaluit, showed that Russia was at times willing to worsen Arctic relations to show its dissatisfaction. It is an open question whether these events were a Russian reaction to western pressure or driven by factors besides Russia's material interests in the region. Following the former interpretation, the western sanctions had put Russia under some pressure in the spring of 2015 and one could argue that it could be rational for Russia to show the west how it could disrupt regional cooperation. Rogozin's Svalbard visit and Lavrov's absence could be a crude way of telling the west that it could not necessarily depend on Russia staying on the cooperative track in the current situation. Following the latter interpretation, one could also see the events as being caused by domestic political concerns. They could be attempts by the Putin government to cater to nationalist sentiments in the Russian population or they could reflect an altered balance of influence within the Russian government, where more hawkish elements could have gained the upper hand. They may thus have been caused by other factors than Russia's material interests. However, regardless of how one interprets the specific incidents, the larger pattern of Russian behaviour follows the second hypothesis. The incidents in question were few and their importance was dwarfed by Russia's general attitude of cooperation and Russian diplomacy was thus not more assertive than that of the western states.

The crisis has affected military activity in the region and led to tensions, but Russia largely refrained from punishing the west as much as it could have. As already mentioned, both Russia and the western countries have held large military exercises, which have led to reactions from the opposing party (Russia Today 2015; Nilsen 2014c). Additional military capabilities are being deployed to the Arctic. For example, Danish fighters have exercised in the region and Russia has deployed and used more advanced fighters, like the SU-34 (Pettersen 2014c; Danish Defence Command 2014). Russia has established a United Strategic Command for its Northern Fleet and has announced that it will be opening airfields and radar stations throughout the high north (Jones 2014; Nilsen 2014a). Russia has also deployed new submarines, anti-aircraft missiles, intelligence capabilities, and nuclear warheads in the region (Staalesen 2014a; Nilsen 2014b; TASS 2014b). However, the Arctic was already undergoing a wave of military modernisation before the crisis. Its opening for human activity necessitates an increased government presence which does not necessarily indicate malign intensions. The Arctic was largely demilitarised after the end of the cold war, but the high north states have become aware of the need for more military presence. More military capabilities have been stationed in the region, but that increase comes on top of a very low baseline. The Arctic states may have sped up the process due to the crisis. It is difficult to determine whether these new capabilities reflect growing tensions or just a need for increased government presence to control and protect increased civilian activity.

Russian military flight patterns also indicate that Moscow hesitated to bring the crisis to the high north. If Russia wanted to escalate tension, it could have increased its flight activity by several hundred per cent. As mentioned above, identifications around Norway (74 in 2014) have only increased by less than 30 per cent and they are well below the Russian activity in the Baltic region. In comparison, during the 1980s, the Norwegian Armed Forces identified 500–600 Soviet flights per year, more than six times as many as the 2014 level (Norwegian Joint Headquarters 2015). The Russian Ministry of Defence does not provide systematic data for scrambles and identifications of western planes in the Arctic and it is therefore difficult to estimate whether NATO's Arctic flight patterns have changed during the crisis. Russia claims that the overall number of NATO sorties doubled in 2014 (which is disputed by NATO) and it seems reasonable to assume that NATO has not diminished its Arctic activity (Nardelli and Arnett 2015). Given that Russia has only become marginally more assertive in the region, it seems fair to estimate that neither of the two parties has become significantly more assertive than the other when it comes to military flights.

Whereas the military and diplomatic punishment schemes are rather balanced with both sides applying limited pressure on the other, the west is alone in applying economic pressure on Russia in the Arctic. While Russia's sanctions against the west do not include the Arctic specifically and mainly focus on agricultural goods, the western sanctions purposely ban the export of services and technology necessary for Russia's Arctic oil industry (European Union 2014; United States Department Of State 2014; Bond and others 2015; Russian Federation 2014). It is difficult to estimate the exact impact of the sanctions, as they coincide with a global energy price decrease that also hurt the Russian energy industry. However, Russian and western experts estimate that the sanctions will have severe long-term implications for Russia's oil production, which according to some analysts will have diminished by 25% in 2025 if the sanctions are kept in place until then (Farchy 2014; Panin 2014). Furthermore, the fact that Russian companies have had to give up crucial partnerships with western companies indicates that the sanctions have an impact. ExxonMobil has put its Arctic partnership with Rosneft on hold, which has meant that Rosneft had to halt all of its ten projects in the region (Farchy 2014). This has significantly hampered Rosneft's ability to develop these fields and the company has given up its plans to drill in the Kara Sea in 2015, even though initial findings were very promising (Pinchuk and Golubkova 2015). Similarly, a deal between Rosneft and North Atlantic Drilling, a Norwegian key supplier of drilling expertise, is falling through because of the sanctions (Milne 2014; Reuters 2015).

Russian companies and the Russian state have responded by trying to develop some of the necessary technology and know-how. Rosneft has announced that it wants to continue exploring the Arctic, but some analysts estimate that this strategy may postpone the company's high north activities more than a decade. Moscow is also pushing plans to create a state-owned oil services company to offer services that were formerly imported, but it would take years to develop the needed capacities and techniques (Kramer 2014; Saglam 2014).

All in all, events in the Arctic since February 2014 confirm the second hypothesis, as the western block has been more assertive than Russia in the Arctic. Russia has used its diplomacy and its military might to punish the west, but this punishment has been rather limited and it must be compared with similar military and diplomatic punishment initiatives by the west. Furthermore, the western sanctions explicitly target Russia's most important regional interests (its energy sector), where Moscow is most dependent on the west.

Hypothesis 3. Smaller states will hold back

The Arctic events following the Ukraine crisis partly contradict the third hypothesis. The small Nordic states were fairly hesitant in punishing Russia in the Arctic, while Canada seemed to chart a more assertive course during the crisis. Canada's assertiveness goes beyond what one would expect, based on its material interests.

Denmark and Norway both tried to maintain good relations with Moscow in the Arctic to the extent that it did not contradict NATO's general course against Russia. Both states have moved to deter Russian aggression in the high north. For example, as mentioned above, Danish F-16 fighters have exercised in the region for the first time ever, while Norway has hosted Joint Viking, a large Arctic NATO exercise (Danish Defence Command 2014; Russia Today 2015). These deterrence plans have been combined with initiatives meant to keep Arctic cooperation open. For instance, Denmark consulted Russia before it submitted its continental shelf claim in December 2014 to ensure that Moscow would accept that the claim would be evaluated by the UN's Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). The Danish continental shelf claim from December 2014 was more extensive than the Russian submission (which was filed in August 2015), but that did not reflect a wish to punish Moscow (Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Government of Greenland 2014; Rahbek-Clemmensen 2015). Similarly, Norway continued to conduct the annual Barents coast guard exercises with Russia in both 2014 and 2015 (which was not a military event and therefore not affected by the NATO ban) (Pettersen 2014a; Pettersen 2016).

Compared to the Nordic countries, Canada has charted a more assertive course. The Canadian government has been more bullish in its statements and it has used its chairmanship of the Arctic Council as a platform for criticising Russia. Like the two Nordic countries, Ottawa's policies have reflected both a wish for continued cooperation and an assertive course, but the balance has skewed more towards the latter. Like Denmark, Canada accepted the Russian continental shelf claim, but several incidents also indicate a more forceful course from Ottawa. For instance, before the 2015 Arctic Council ministerial, Leona Aglukkaq, the Canadian minister for the environment and chair of the Arctic Council, vowed that ‘Canada will use the Arctic Council ministerial meeting as an opportunity once again to deliver our tough message to Russia for their aggression against Ukraine’ (Weber 2015). Russia was very vocal in its criticism of the Canadian chairmanship, which, according to Sergej Donskoi, Russia's representative at the meeting, created ‘obstacles for the promotion of international cooperation in the Arctic’ (Anon. 2015b; Darchiev 2015). Furthermore, as mentioned above, Canada and the US boycotted a low-level Arctic Council task-force meeting, which was to be held in Moscow in the spring of 2014 (Mackarel 2014). Similarly, Russia and Canada completed a round of mutual diplomatic expulsions in the spring of 2014 (Mackarel 2014). The difference between the Nordic and the Canadian course largely conforms to the interest-based framework, which showed that Canada has less to lose from confrontation with Russia than Denmark and Norway.

Ottawa even seemed more assertive than Washington in its approach to Russia in the Arctic, which goes against the third hypothesis. For example, while the Canadian government used its chairmanship of the Arctic Council as a platform for criticising Russia for its actions in Ukraine, the American chairmanship has focused on low-politics environmental issues, such as black carbon, ocean acidification, and maritime protection (United States Department of State 2015). Secretary of State John Kerry, the US representative at the ministerial, only addressed the implications of the Ukraine crisis for the Arctic once in his official remarks during and after the meeting and he emphasised the need for maintaining peaceful cooperation in the region (United States Department of State n.d.). Compared to the approach of his Canadian counterpart, Kerry's approach was less assertive.

The Canadian assertiveness contradicts the third hypothesis and shows the limits of the interests-based framework. The US has a similar geopolitical position and a vast advantage in power resources and one would predict that Canada would be less bullish than its southern neighbour. Domestic factors are most likely the explanation for Ottawa's assertiveness.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article was to develop and examine the strength of an interest-based framework for Arctic conflict spill-over analysis. To which extent can conflict spill-over from the Ukraine crisis to the Arctic be explained by looking solely at the systemic and geopolitical interests of the Arctic states? Three hypotheses were derived from the interests of the Arctic states. An empirical analysis of the Ukraine crisis’ effect on Arctic politics showed that two of those three hypotheses were confirmed, while the latter hypothesis was partially contradicted by events. Canada's policy during the crisis falls outside of what an interest-based approach would predict.

This analysis helps us to understand Arctic politics in general. The Arctic studies literature debates the relative weight of different factors, with some authors emphasising the importance of globalisation and international institutions while others emphasise cultural factors or material interests (examples include Heininen 2010; Hough 2013; Keil 2014). The present article shows that a purely interests-based approach takes one far in understanding Arctic politics, but that one has to include other factors, including cultural and domestic dynamics of each state including political leaderships and national medias, in order to grasp all aspects of regional politics. This indicates that perhaps material interests are analytically more important than other factors. Further studies are needed to examine whether this is the case or more generally when it comes to think further about the interplay of co-operation and conflict in the Arctic region. In spite of not explaining all events during the crisis, the interest-based model provides an important analytical baseline that allows analysts to identify unusual cases, such as the Canadian approach during the crisis.

The analysis also shows that conflict spill-over is unlikely, but not impossible, in the Arctic. Unlike the cold war, in which the Arctic was perhaps the most militarised region in the world, it is currently defined by two great powers that do not have an interest in allowing conflict to spread to the high north. The United States is interested in maintaining global stability and therefore avoiding conflict spill-over if possible, while Russia is concerned for its Arctic energy interests, which require regional stability and cooperation. However, this does not mean that the relative peace in the region will necessarily persist. The current sanctions regime targets Russia's crucial Arctic energy interests and they may thus undermine the crucial factor that keeps Moscow on the cooperative track. Furthermore, the analysis also showed that domestic factors also matter. Internal power struggles or the need for shoring up support from the population may also push Russia onto a more confrontational track. The Arctic may have avoided substantial conflict spill-over from the Ukraine crisis and this situation will most likely persist, but analysts and policymakers should not necessarily extrapolate this situation into the future. The current analysis focuses narrowly on the Ukraine crisis, but thorough analysis of other case studies would most likely yield a more sophisticated understanding of how extra-regional conflicts affect Arctic politics.