The changing Arctic:
How involved should NATO be?
In 2009 NATO Review
visited the High North
to analyse the security implications
of the Arctic ice melting.
One of the key issues that needs
to be determined is the sea.
At present, there’s a huge
mass of ice around the North Pole,
but that's quickly melting.
Once that becomes navigable sea,
the question remains:
Who owns that?
Four years later,
NATO’s North Atlantic Council,
which represents all 28 members,
visited the region,
at the invitation of Norwegian
Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide.
We asked the minister why he felt
the region needed more attention
and how NATO could help.
Minister, you’ve invited
the NAC to visit the High North.
Can you tell me what the motivation
behind that invitation was?
The Arctic is a region that should
be of great interest to the Alliance.
Not because it is
in any type of crisis or drama,
rather the other way around,
this is an area of cooperation,
but it is also an area,
which is opening up to new activities,
which we did not see before,
because of the icecap.
It’s more on the global agenda
and the European agenda,
America’s, Canada’s
and also Russia’s agenda.
And we are also seeing
that a lot of Asian countries,
China and South Korea
and Japan, Singapore, India,
a lot of countries far away
from the Arctic, take an interest.
They see this
as a global development.
In the Arctic
there are different countries
and different national
perspectives and priorities.
Is this is a challenge? It’s a security
area with conflicting interests.
There have been
different views on the degree
to which this is
an issue on NATO’s table.
That’s true, but I hope we will
be able to talk us through that.
So that we understand
that those of us who argue in favour
are not arguing in favour
because we need a military presence
to fence off somebody else,
but simply that the area is important.
It’s our vicinity and an entry point
to both North America
and to Northern-Europe,
and as such it should be
on NATO’s watch list.
Just as we are
interested in the Black Sea,
which is
the neighbourhood of NATO,
or in the Mediterranean
or the Baltic Sea,
we also think the Arctic
should be on NATO’s watch list.
It’s getting more important
and it’s not only important
to those of us who live in the Arctic,
but the new sailing routes,
connections, resource race...
There are enormous
fossil fuel resources for instance.
We always took an interest
in areas with fossil fuel,
like in the Arab world.
There are new opportunities for
minerals, shipping, fishing and so on.
A lot of countries will be interested in
overseeing that this is well managed.
Possibly the biggest
problem is territory.
Which territory belongs to who?
This is ongoing whilst
the other issues are being decided.
Is it possible to move forward
whilst the territory issue
remains an ongoing dispute?
So, yes, there are still some,
relatively few overlapping claims,
but the good news is that everyone
agrees on how they’re to be solved.
By law and by judicial mechanisms
that we all invest in
rather than by conflict or fighting.
That’s really good.
I think that the challenges
we will be seeing in the Arctic
are not so much between countries.
They are more shared challenges
that countries have to solve together.
And I don’t think all these issues
should be solved in NATO.
There are issues
to be solved in the Arctic Council.
There are issues
that will be solved in the IMO,
because they are about quality,
shipping or platforms.
In terms of the challenges that the
area throws up, there are numerous.
The mineral resources,
the trade routes, the transit, etc.
Where do you start?
- We have instruments
that are capable of dealing
with the level of activity of today.
We do not have instruments,
which are ready
to deal with the activities
that we will have in ten years.
So, we have to step up our activities
when it comes
to regulating transport lines,
regulating quality of shipping,
try to solve the intersection
between oil and gas exploitation
and fishing or other marine
resources on the other side.
And we have to keep working to
deconflict the still overlapping claims
that are up in the area. We have
deconflicted ours with the Russians.
Recently, Canada and Denmark
agreed on the division line
between their economic
claims in the Lincoln Sea.
There are less disputes,
but we have to keep working.