and shipment of natural resources from the North without serious environmental impacts. Moreover, resource development provides the best option for securing the economic sustainability of northern communities and remote areas. Implicit in this perspective is the proposition that mutually beneficial economic activities can provide a basis for enhancing social welfare and securing peaceful relations as well as a presumption that one way or another we will find effective responses to the climate problem that do not require drastic changes in the character of industrialized societies. A striking feature of current debates regarding matters of Arctic policy is the pronounced tendency of proponents of the global climate emergency narrative and the energy from the North narrative to operate within the confines of their own discourses without engaging in any sustained effort to resolve the disconnect between the two narratives.
Then there is the shift toward a heightened sensitivity regarding great-power politics in the Arctic.21 A revitalized Russia has taken steps to reclaim its status as a great power, a development featuring the modernization of Russia’s Northern Fleet based largely on the Kola Peninsula, the reoccupation of military installations abandoned in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and the acquisition of an expanded fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. China has taken steps to increase its influence in the Arctic largely through economic initiatives including the incorporation of the Arctic into its signature geopolitical vision articulated in the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. Having shown relatively little interest in Arctic politics for a number of decades, the United States has now begun to articulate muscular assertions regarding the rise of high politics in the Arctic, the need to act vigorously to counter Russian and Chinese efforts to exercise power in the high latitudes, and the importance of embarking on a concerted effort to strengthen American capabilities to operate effectively under Arctic conditions.22 This has resulted both in a number of concrete measures, such as the reactivation of the U.S. Navy’s 2nd Fleet, and in a raft of calls for enhanced capabilities justified by an asserted need to be prepared to engage successfully in high politics in the Arctic.
The resultant Arctic power politics narrative is, for the most part, a straightforward application of the tenets of the theories of realism or neo-realism to current developments in the Circumpolar North.23 Some analysts find it easy to slip into relatively extreme formulations of this narrative. They assert that there is a “new Cold War” in the Arctic;24 some even argue that the original Cold War never ended with regard to developments in the Arctic.25 Several commentators have gone so far as to assert that armed conflict among the great powers is now a distinct possibility in the far north, a prospect that could trigger the onset of World War III.26 No doubt, these are extreme views, articulated in some cases by observers who have little knowledge or even distorted conceptions of the geography of the Arctic and the biophysical, economic, and political realities of the region. But it is surprising how easy it is to revert to a power politics narrative in the effort to craft a coherent story regarding developments occurring in the Arctic today.
It is reasonable to conclude that this tells us more about the mindset that many analysts bring with them as they turn their attention to Arctic affairs than about the realities of what is happening in the Arctic itself. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we can dismiss the influence of the Arctic power politics narrative.27 As social constructs, narratives can play influential roles in shaping realities over and above their role in lending coherence to accounts of actual developments taking place in a region like the Arctic.
What do all these developments mean for the Arctic zone of peace narrative that guided thinking about Arctic policy during the 1990s and 2000s? Although this narrative no longer dominates the discussion of Arctic issues, it remains influential, especially among those striving to promote cooperative initiatives within forums like the Arctic Council. The council provided the setting for the negotiation of three legally binding instruments among the eight Arctic states during the 2010s: the 2011 Arctic search and rescue agreement, the 2013 oil spill preparedness and response agreement, and the 2017 agreement on the enhancement of cooperation relating to science. Responding in part to the initiatives of the council, the International Maritime Organization reached agreement in 2014/2015 on the terms of a legally-binding Polar Code applicable to commercial shipping in the Arctic. In 2018, moreover, the five Arctic coastal states and five others (China, Iceland, Japan, Korea, and the European Union) signed a Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement. Meanwhile, the Arctic Council’s Working Groups have continued to take steps that have made a difference regarding specific issues like the protection of flora and fauna.28 At the beginning of 2013, a permanent Arctic Council Secretariat began operations in Tromsø, Norway. And at the close of the Swedish chairmanship in May 2013, the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting issued a statement asserting that the “Council has become the pre-eminent high-level forum of the Arctic region and we have made this region into an area of unique international cooperation.”29
Looked at from the vantage point of the developments discussed in the preceding paragraphs, this rather self-congratulatory declaration now seems somewhat naive. Still, it is not entirely unjustified. The Arctic zone of peace narrative—suggesting that the region and its governance are unique and somewhat insulated from outside political forces—continues to guide the thinking and actions of many practitioners and analysts engaged in Arctic affairs, producing a track record featuring a number of significant achievements in the realm of international cooperation.
The Future of the Arctic
What can we infer from this analysis about the future of the Arctic? There is no basis for expecting one or another of the four interpretive frameworks considered here to (re)emerge as a consensual narrative to guide the thinking of practitioners and analysts concerned with issues of Arctic policy. Because key elements of these narratives are non-falsifiable, we cannot accumulate and deploy evidence that would demonstrate that one or another of these narratives is superior to the others and ought to be chosen as a guide to thinking about Arctic policy going forward. At this stage, the influence of two or more of the narratives is very much in evidence even in individual diplomatic events or policy-relevant conferences. It is common, for example, to proceed from one session to another within a single conference in which the first session highlights the critical importance of the Arctic in the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system, while the next session drills down on the ins and outs of extracting fossil fuels under Arctic conditions and on ways to address the challenges facing the operations of ships used to transport oil and natural gas from the Arctic to markets located in industrialized societies in Asia, Europe, and North America.30
Nevertheless, some observations emerge from this account of policy narratives that are distinctly relevant to thinking about the fate of the Arctic in the coming decades. There is no prospect of returning to the conditions of the 1990s when the Arctic seemed peripheral to the main arenas of international relations and non-Arctic states did not protest vigorously in response to actions on the part of the Arctic states to assert their primacy regarding matters of circumpolar regional policy and to claim for themselves dominant roles in the design and operation of mechanisms like the Arctic Council.31
Both the biophysical and the geopolitical links between the Arctic and the overarching Earth system are destined to become tighter and stronger during the foreseeable future. While there are lively debates about such matters as the potential impacts of specific developments (e.g. the release of methane and carbon dioxide from melting permafrost) on the climate system, there is no doubt about the importance of what happens in the Arctic for the future of the Earth’s climate system. Similarly, the reemergence of great-power politics in the Arctic, this time including China as a major player, is a reality today rather than a future prospect. It is alarmist to expect this will lead to armed clashes in the Arctic. The exercise of influence in this arena is much more likely to feature economic initiatives or even scientific competition than the use of military force. But the inclusion of the Arctic in global strategies, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, will make irrelevant any idea of dealing with the Arctic as a self-contained region to be set aside from the impact of global forces.
Several newly emerging developments reinforce these observations. De-globalization, attributable to non-Arctic forces