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Archive for November, 2014

Close Encounters with the Russian Military: Implications for Arctic Security Cooperation?

Posted on: November 25th, 2014 by Ernie Regehr

What does the recent burst of Russian military activity or brinkmanship, as some have characterized it, mean for the Arctic? While current Russia-NATO strategic posturing may accurately reflect the sorry depths to which relations between Russia and most of the Western world have sunk, a new SIPRI report on “Russia’s Evolving Arctic Strategy” is among some timely antidotes to the return-of-the-cold-war-in-the-Arctic narrative.

Close encounters with the Russian military do seem to be on the rise. Russian bombers have been on more frequent flights over the Barents, Norwegian, and Baltic Seas, as well as along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. Further south there has been a Russian air presence over NATO vessels in the Black Sea, and ships of the Russian navy sailed near Australia’s northern exclusive economic zone in a not fully appreciated military accompaniment to the G-20 summit.

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

A nuclear-weapons-free Arctic?

Posted on: November 20th, 2014 by Ernie Regehr

Changing climatic conditions in the Arctic have brought regional security concerns into renewed focus, and security relations in the north are in turn inevitably affected by confrontations in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, the region continues to develop as a “security community” in which there are reliable expectations that states will continue to settle disputes by peaceful means and in accordance with international law. In keeping with those expectations, the denuclearization of the Arctic has been an enduring aspiration of indigenous communities and of the people of Arctic states more broadly. (more…)