350
Arctic Yearbook 2015
Organization (NATO), it is also possible to cover the aggravating nexus of the currently strained
NATO-Russia relations (Åtland & Pedersen Torbjørn 2014). This situation is fostered even more by
the fact that thirdly, both countries are sharing a direct national border and fourthly, have for different
reasons, a considerable share of their armed forces deployed above the Arctic Circle (Wezeman 2012).
The Arctic region – a traditional security community under pressure of the
Ukrainian crisis?
Based on the theoretical framework of security communities, the aim of this section is to identify to
which degree the Arctic today can be considered a traditional security community. Based on the
assumption that regional security cannot be treated separately from global security developments, if
and to what degree has the recent crisis in Ukraine influenced this development. Treating many-sided
and direct relations as a necessary precondition, the identification of the existence of the precondition
will be the point of departure, followed by an assessment of the Arctic’s norms in dispute settlement,
for collective action as well as its collective identity.
Many-sided and direct relations
The Arctic Council (AC) is at the core of multilateral relations in the High North (Bailes & Heininen
2012: 12). Its mandate seeks to “provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and
interaction among the Arctic States, with the involvement of the Arctic indigenous communities and
other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and
environmental protection in the Arctic” (The Ottawa Declaration 1996). The Barents Euro-Arctic
Council (BEAC) and the Northern Dimension of the EU (ND) provide additional formats for
discussing possible means of cooperation on non-military aspects of security in the High North (Bailes
& Heininen 2012: 13).
Since the AC explicitly excludes dealing with issues of military security (Ottawa Declaration 1996),
there are no official Arctic-specific multilateral forums dealing with traditional issues of military
security (Regehr & Buelles 2015: 72). The informal annual meeting of the Arctic’s Chiefs of Defense
Staff (CHOD) (ibid.: 72 f.), the newly established Arctic Coast Guard Forum (ACGF)1 (U.S. Coast
Guard 2015), other joint military and coast guard exercises as well as minor forms of military cooperation are thus the countries’ only forums for discussing military and traditional security
perceptions exclusively among each other (Regehr & Buelles 2015: 69 ff.).
Apart from solely Arctic-specific forums, all Arctic states can address a large variety of their military
security concerns related to the region through a number of non-Arctic-specific multilateral forums.
For this purpose most important are the OSCE’s ‘Forum for Security Co-operation (OSCE – FSC)’,
the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) of NATO as well as the NATO-Russia Council (NRC)
from which the latter is only available to NATO member states and the Russian Federation. Members
of the Arctic states’ armed forces further officially meet during the cooperative implementation of the
OSCE’s Vienna Document 2011 (VD’11) on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures (CSBMs)2
the implementation of the treaty on Open Skies (OS).3
Schaller