Thawing ice and increasing militarization drives European Arctic tensions

An unprecedentedly vast area of the Arctic Ocean remains ice free as Russia’s Laptev Sea, known as the “birthplace of ice” for its key role in freezing the Arctic Ocean each year, has itself failed to freeze over by late-October for the “first time since records began” (Moscow Times, 2020).

An Increasingly ice-free ocean further facilitates and indeed drives, the growing geopolitical competition over the Arctic by making the region ever-more commercially exploitable and easing logistical challenges (Mads Qvist Frederiksen, 2019). Russia plans to exploit the economic opportunities its Arctic territories present, particularly in oil, gas, and shipping (RT, 2020). It has also heavily militarized the region, especially the Kola Peninsula (Mathew Melino, 2020), which Moscow recently argued was for its “national security” to protect its new investments, as it deemed the Arctic is threatened by destabilization from NATO aligned states (Atle Staalesen, 2020).

Partly as a consequence of Russia’s Arctic build-up, which the Swedish Defence Minister perceived as “almost similar to the Cold War” (Atle Staalesen, 2020), Sweden is set to expand its defence budget by 40% before 2025 (Reuters, 2020), and in a move repudiating its previous conception of the Arctic as a conflict-free zone (Nima Khorrami, 2020) reactive its defence assets in the Arctic Circle (Thomas Nilsen, 2020). It concurrently has committed its military to study ways to strengthen their Arctic presence (Strategi för den Arktiska Regionen, 2020).

According to The Arctic Institute, much of the geopolitical risk in the Arctic currently stems from possible “miscalculation and not understanding adversaries’ intentions” (Alec Luhn, 2020), making the rapid build-up of military assets and the increased volume of military operations by all Arctic actors, enhanced by deteriorating trust, and logistically facilitated by easing conditions, ever-more likely to accidentally create an incident that spurs regional tensions towards conflict.