Yesterday, DIMS held an international conference on the impacts of climate change on Arctic security. Situated at the North Atlantic House in Copenhagen, the 170 conference participants – who represented foreign embassies, Danish and foreign militaries, Danish and international media, academia, and Arctic business interests – discussed how the melting of the Arctic ice cap changes the regional security dynamics, making the area around the North Pole an area of interest for the regional states and the global superpowers. Change is coming to the Arctic – the scientists, however, disagree on how it is going to play out.

The first session focused on the basic geopolitical dynamics of the Arctic. Dr. Leif Toudal Petersen from the Danish Meteorological Institute outlined the pace of the melting process and described which areas will be ice-free first. It was interesting to see that the Arctic will be covered in winter ice for many decades to come. The summer ice, however, will be melting and we will probably see ice-free summers in the ocean north of Russia. However, even when the Russian areas will be ice-free, sea ice will still be covering the oceans around the Canadian archipelago and Greenland. This has implications for the access to sea routes such as the Northwest Passage, which might be trumped by the Northeast Passage or even the Cross-polar Passage as the primary Arctic sea route between Europe and Asia.

Afterwards, Dr. Scott Borgerson from the Council on Foreign Relations and Dr. Sven Holtsmark from the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies debated whether the changes brought on by global warming would cause a new conflict between Russia and the US. Basing his analysis on traditional neorealist theory, Dr. Borgerson held that believing that states will not compete for resources is a case of idealist folly. Dr. Holtsmark, on the other hand, claimed that the bulk of the Arctic resources are located within national territory or within areas that will unquestionably become national territory within the UNCLOS process. Therefore, even from a realist stance, there will be no Arctic contest for resources. The debate left a couple of questions unanswered. Even though Dr. Holtsmark’s point about the location of the Arctic resources is well taken, will the question of access to sea routes not cause problems in the near future, given the commercial ad military interests of Russia and the US? Given that the Arctic is undergoing a rapid process of change, is there not a need for general concern as national bureaucracies and militaries adjust to the changing situation? Is this just a theoretical matter of different versions of realism (that is, between a perception of threat-based realism (like Walt’s balance-of-threat approach) and a purely structural position (like the Waltzian balance-of-power approach))? Finally, if Dr. Borgerson’s position is indeed the position of Washington, will that not simply overrule the geopolitical dynamics of the region and spark a conflict with a weary Russia?

Pia Vedel Ankersen gives her presentation on Greenlandic public opinion (Source: Sermitsiaq)

The second session took a closer look at the Russian and Chinese positions in the Arctic. Here, Dr. Jakup Godzimirski from the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs presented his thoughts on Russia’s Arctic ambitions. He described how Russia’s foreign policy is closely tied to its position as an energy exporter and gave a couple of scenarios for how Russia might approach the West in the future. Finally, he showed how Russia is not a unitary actor when it comes to the Arctic. In Russian policy debates, the Arctic is comprehended through several types of logic and therefore, one cannot simply infer that Russia will act aggressively in the Arctic from its energy policy.

Afterwards, Dr. Nan Li from the US Naval War College presented his research on China’s Arctic ambitions. According to Dr. Li, the Arctic plays a role in Chinese strategic debates. However, the Chinese Polar capabilities, primarily the icebreaker Xuelong, severely restrict China’s ability to act in the Arctic. Therefore, China seems accept that the Arctic territory will be divided by the Arctic 5 (although China would like an international treaty like the Antarctica treaty). Instead, China concentrates on the Arctic sea routes, having strong interests in keeping the Northeast Passage open for military and commercial traffic.

Having outlined the broad picture in the two former sessions, the third session focused on the position of Greenland in the Arctic. Dr. Pia Vedel Ankersen from the University of Greenland portrayed how the Greenlandic public opinion perceives the possibility of independence from Denmark. Given the lack of financial and educational resources in Greenland, Dr. Ankersen did not foresee a self-sufficient, independent Greenland within the next 40 years. However, her polls showed a huge majority in favor of independence. Even when asked if they would accept a decline in social welfare, 38 percent of the population was for independence. This indicates an interesting tension between a bureaucratic logic of appropriateness and the general national mood in Greenland. Finally, Dr. Ankersen also pointed out that Denmark uses climate policy as a mechanism to hamper industrial development in Greenland and asked if this was indeed a mechanism on neo-colonialism.

Following her presentation, Rear Admiral Nils Wang from the Danish Fleet described how the Danish military operates around Greenland. He described how the tasks took many forms, including sea patrolling and patrolling with the dog patrol Sirius and noted that this patrolling was indeed a product of border disputes in the beginning of the 20^th century. Given the future Arctic challenges, such as border patrolling, SAR, and surveillance, he drew some perspectives to the future of the Danish military presence in the Arctic.

The final presentation in the third session came from Professor Clive Archer from Manchester Metropolitan University, who analyzed the prospects for a Greenlandic shift from cooperation with Denmark to cooperation with Canada or the US or simply full Greenlandic independence. He described how Greenland in the past 50 years gained an independent voice in the negotiations between Denmark and the US. Piggybacking off Dr. Ankersen’s presentation, he showed that Greenland probably would have to accept cooperation with a partner state or accept a radical decline in social welfare. He demonstrated that although it is possible that Greenland would break free from Denmark and cooperate with other states, it is uncertain if these other states would be willing to enter into this relation. In any case, there did not seem to be a win-win situation for all partners and therefore, the status quo would be the most likely outcome. However, Greenland would most certainly be able to continue to gain benefits through negotiations with Denmark and the US.

Having concluded the three sessions, the conference ended with a keynote address from Professor G. John Ikenberry from Princeton University. Here, Professor Ikenberry drew the broad picture, outlining how security is perceived in the post-Cold War world. His talk was based on a second order analysis that did not infer its conclusions from the facts of the world, but rather from the way security is understood in contemporary academic discourse. He challenged the basic pessimism found in contemporary first-order analyses. The world is not dispersing; it draws itself closer together. The world order consists of a “concert” of states, cooperating within an order, based on liberal, normative principles. One can hardly imagine an alternative to the current liberal framework. In the coming years, one should be aware of three mega-trends that affect the durability of the concert. First, Professor Ikenberry predicted a return to multipolarity, where new poles, such as India and China, will rise and US power will fall. The key question here is whether the US will accept this fall or if the concert will implode under its own weight. Second, one has to be aware of the break down of order in key states. Finally, the integration of rising states and new shareholders in the concert will be crucial, if it is to survive. In the end, this a matter of adapting existing institutions to these overall changes.

Essentially, Professor Ikenberry’s presentation had implications for some of the prior presentations. If security were indeed a matter of securing a loose “concert of states” rather than a realist maximization of interest, how would that affect the geopolitics of the Arctic region as outlined in the first session? Does Washington think Arctic security within a broad security community framework? If the primary US interest is to keep this “concert of states” together, will the US oppose a division of the Arctic that might benefit Russia?

In that manner, the conference found answers to some of the basic questions about the security dynamics in the Arctic. We learned that climate change indeed changes the way states operate in the Arctic, we got an outline of how the different capitals see themselves as part of this changing tide, and we saw that the change would have local implications for the relationship between Copenhagen and Nuuk. In the end, however, the conference asked more questions than it answered. The answers to these questions will not be found at a conference, but rather in the political events of the coming decades.