Putin’s New Arctic Policy Focuses on Control of Resources and Security, Not Cooperation and the Environment

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 31 – Russia’s new Arctic policy document, which Vladimir Putin signed five days ago, focuses on the need for Russia to develop natural resources in that region for itself and to defend Russian security against outsiders rather than on international cooperation in the North and a concerted effort to deal with the consequences of global warming.

            The new strategy document (http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/news/64274  and static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/ru/J8FhckYOPAQQfxN6Xlt6ti6XzpTVAvQy.pdf) thus represents a significant shift from the 2013 version it replaces, far more nationalist and mercantile and less cooperative and focused on trade.

            Atle Staalesen, the editor of the Barents Observer portal, provides a content analysis of the document which makes these points. He notes that there are 26 references to oil, 38 to gas, 26 to the Northern Sea Route, and 46 to infrastructure development. There are also 31 mentions of national security (thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2020/10/behind-putins-new-arctic-strategy-lies-rude-quest-natural-resources).

            In contrast, the environment is mentioned only ten times, climate change nine, and renewable energy only three times. The word “international” appears only nine times, and references to any kind of cooperation with other countries only eight. Seven years ago, the balance between these two groups of terms was just the reverse.

            The new policy has led Aleksey Kupriyanov of IMEMO to argue this both reflects and presages an even harsher competition among Artic powers and others and that what is happening in the North will be the model for what is likely to follow in the Antarctic as well (profile.ru/politics/pochemu-konkurenciya-za-arktiku-budet-stanovitsya-vse-bolee-zhestkoj-424873/).

            And it has frightened and angered the numerically small peoples of the Russian North who see this policy as a reprise of Stalin’s, one that will destroy the environment around them threaten their survival as Moscow focuses only on economic development and greater military power (severreal.org/a/30923987.html).

            As a result, Putin’s new strategy document sets the stage for more conflict over the North both at home and abroad, with the Kremlin leader having dropped all pretense about international cooperation except as a means to play one power off against another or about a solicitous attitude toward Northern peoples except for propaganda in support of its larger goals.