Review Article Rivalry and Cooperation in the Arctic: Contending Perspectives

Review article Rivalry and cooperation in the Arctic: contending perspectives NAZRIN MEHDIYEVA International relations in the Arctic: Norway and the struggle for power in the new north. By Leif Christian Jensen. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. 2016. 208pp. Index. £69.00. isbn 978 1 78453 213 0. Available as e-book. The scramble for the poles: geopolitics of the Arctic and Antarctic. By Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2016. 228pp. Index. £55.00. isbn 978 0 74565 244 3. Available as e-book. The new Arctic governance: SIPRI Research Report No. 25. Edited by Linda Jakobson and Neil Melvin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. 216pp. Index. £35.00. isbn 978 0 19874 733 8. On 12 September 2016, the Arctic Research Foundation announced that a wreck found in the middle of Terror Bay, in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut, had been identified as HMSTerror , the second of Sir John Franklin’s legendary Arctic explorer ships. The discovery of the first, HMSErebus , came two years earlier, on 8 September 2014—after 166 years of fruitless searches. The ill-fated 1845 Franklin expedition started on a wave of euphoria to conquer the Arctic wilderness, but ended with all 129 men perishing in the grisliest circum- stances after becoming locked in ice in the heart of the Arctic Archipelago. The wrecks had been designated as a National Historic Site by Canada long before either ship was found.1 When discovered, the resting places of both ships were well outside the perimeter of 10 square kilometres that the federal government had established as the boundary for the national heritage site.2 This, however, did not discourage then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper from using the finds to promote the national sovereignty discourse. In his view, finding Frank- lin’s ships was not ‘just about the story of discovery and mystery’ but also, and 1 Parks Canada moved to declare the missing wrecks a national historic site in order to protect them in 1992: http://www.lieuxpatrimoniaux.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=19683. Entering the historic site without an explicit written permission carries a fine of up to C$100,000 for individuals and C$500,000 for corporations. These restrictions do not affect the right of access by beneficiaries for harvesting as provided in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/nu/epaves-wrecks/plan.aspx. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 16 Jan. 2017.) 2 Steve Ducharme, ‘HMS Terror, Franklin’s second ship, finally found in Nunavut’,Nunatsiaq Online, 12 Sept. 2016, http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674hms_terror_franklins_second_ship_finally_found_in_ nunavut/. International Affairs 93: 2 (2017) 455–463; doi: 10.1093/ia/iix013 © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Nazrin Mehdiyeva perhaps more so, about ‘laying the basis for what’s, in the longer term, Canadian sovereignty’. 3 It is not at first glance obvious how the discovery of two historical wrecks that sailed under the authority of Britain before Canada was even born as a state contributes to the country’s national project of bolstering its Arctic identity or sovereignty over the North-West Passage. But Harper’s discourse is illuminating on how the country has used the Franklin expedition to strengthen its Arctic claims: expeditions sent to the Canadian Arctic in search of the lost Franklin Expedition have increased our knowledge of the North … We have mapped thousands of miles of Arctic seabed. We have recovered artifacts that shed new light on the search for the Northwest Passage. In doing so, we have strengthened Canadian sovereignty in the North … [The find] also demonstrates Canada’s ability to operate in the harsh and remote Arctic at a time when international interest in the Arctic region is growing.4 Canada is, of course, far from the only state to invoke and nurture the images of Arctic exploration and discovery as a basis for its claims to Arctic sovereignty. The descent of the Russian submarine to the bottom of the central Arctic Ocean in August 2007 to plant the country’s flag on the seabed 4,200 metres below the North Pole was—and was widely seen as—Moscow’s attempt to further its claims to the Arctic seabed. While from a purely legal standpoint the descent had no value in advancing Moscow’s claims, it nevertheless constituted a strong geopolitical intervention thanks to the powerful imagery that it evoked. Moreover, the veteran polar explorer and parliamentarian who led the Russian mission, Artur Chilingarov, added to the hype by proclaiming that its aim was to prove that the ‘Arctic is Russian’ and the titanium flag would be a permanent mark of Russia’s presence at the pole.5 Two of the three books reviewed here—The scramble for the poles and Interna- tional relations in the Arctic—examine the roles that discourses, symbols, images and ideas, frequently conflicting and contested, play in furnishing political and cultural accounts of the Arctic states. These accounts, in turn, inform and shape their political strategies and practices. In so far as discourses are understood to produce reality, examining them becomes meaningful and relevant, as they serve as ‘preconditions for actions’ (International relations in the Arctic, p. 16). Furthermore, symbolic acts of appropriation and geopolitical imagery, such as the descent of the Russian submarine, are routinely used as tools of nation- and statebuilding by the Arctic states. These are coupled with grandiloquent statements of knowledge and prowess in the northern frontier, which is professed to offer signifi- 3 Steve Rennie, ‘Franklin find as much about sovereignty as solving a mystery’,The Canadian Press, 11 Sept. 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/franklin-find-as-much-about-sovereignty-as-solving-a-mystery -1.2763117. 4 Stephen J. Harper, ‘Franklin discovery strengthens Canada’s Arctic sovereignty’, The Globe and Mail, 12 Sept. 2014, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/franklin-discovery-strengthens-canadas-arctic- sovereignty/article20590280/. 5 ‘Artur Chilingarov: My dokazali – Arktika nasha’ [We have proved that the Arctic is ours], MKRU, 7 Aug. 2007, http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2007/08/07/88555-artur-chilingarov-myi-dokazali-arktika- nasha.html; Tom Parfitt, ‘Russia plants flag on North Pole seabed’,Guardian, 2 Aug. 2007. 456 International Affairs 93: 2, 2017 Rivalry and cooperation in the Arctic cant economic opportunities. That the politics of appropriation, no matter how void of legal content, touch a sensitive nerve and create political tension became apparent when Canada warned that Russia’s actions in the North Pole resembled a fifteenth-century land grab. As Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall astutely point out, the notions of a ‘land grab’ and ‘scramble’ act as powerful reminders that past colonial experiences are well and alive in the representations of the Arctic, where ‘a kind of extractive colonialism lives on’ (The scramble for the poles, p. 21). Following Russia’s claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, which Moscow asserts is the extension of its continental shelf, Denmark has filed a competing claim to the area and Canada intends to do so in 2018. The claims will be investigated by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which will decide on the validity of the scientific evidence. The Commission will make recommendations as to the outer limits of the shelf of the claimant state and these are to be considered final and binding.6 However, if the delineated limits of the extended shelf overlap, as is the case here, the states concerned would have to work out a provisional agreement and, if following the decision the limits still overlap, then the states would have to negotiate among themselves on setting the final borders.7 In a pre-emptive attempt to ‘speed up the consideration of Russia’s application’, Moscow attempted in 2016 to negotiate with Denmark bilaterally over the 550,000 square kilometres of the territory that overlap in the Russian and Danish claims.8 Copenhagen’s quick rejection of the offer prompted speculation that it has a stronger claim. While the discussion of Russia’s claims to the North Pole are virtually absent in all three books, the third book covered in this review, The new Arctic governance, contains excellent analyses of Russia’s strict adherence to UNCLOS provi- sions to date in seeking to establish extended continental shelf limits in the Arctic Ocean. It is Moscow’s willingness to abide by UNCLOS—in large part because it serves Russia’s interests to do so—paralleled by the strong official emphasis on cooperation with other Arctic states, that has helped to dissipate tensions in the Arctic following the 2007 episode. Russian–Norwegian cooperation in particular is discussed in considerable detail in International relations in the Arctic. The one message shared by all the contributors to the three volumes, who use different approaches, narratives and examples, is that the Arctic is a complex geophysical and geopolitical space: lively and contested but also stimulating and cooperative. It is a space in which human agency can be powerful, even destruc- tive, willing and able to conquer the frozen frontier, but also frail, ineffective 6 UNCLOS, Article 83, http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/UNCLOS- TOC.htm. 7 Richard Milne, ‘Denmark rejects Russia call for swift talks on Arctic rights’, Financial Times,12 Sept.

Load more