Xi’s grand global vision is combined with shrewd diplomatic tactics. His string of state visits in May 2017 to Finland, Alaska and Iceland was no coincidence: Finland was just about to take over the rotating chairmanship of the Arctic Council from the United States, to be followed by Iceland two years later. In Iceland—situated at the crossroads of the transatlantic shipping lanes and the gateway to the Arctic Ocean—China had used the opportunity of the global financial recession to push a free trade agreement, concluded in 2013. The new Chinese embassy in Reykjavik is the biggest in the country.
Xi’s visit to Finland was a chance for him to shore up support in the EU, China’s biggest trading partner. When lobbying for Chinese financial involvement in the creation of new shipping and transport corridors such as Rovaniemi-Kirkenes railway line and the Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel, he had his eye also on penetrating Eastern and Central European markets as part of the glittering BRI silk-road web.
Furthermore, China is working with Russia and Nordic partners to build the shortest data cable connection between Europe and Asia: a 10,000 km trans-Arctic telecom cable from Finland via Kirkenes in Norway and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Another intersection of this is planned with a cable for the Bering Strait, from Chukotka to Alaska. The Finnish project, called “Arctic Connect,” plans to deliver faster and more reliable digital communications between Europe, Russia and Asia through a submarine communication cable, built by Huawei Marine, on the seabed along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The $1.2 billion, 13,800 km cable is expected to be finished between 2022–2023. It will be owned by an international consortium, also including Russian and Japanese companies.84
Finland, home to the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, hopes to turn itself into a node of digital communication in the netflow world through this interconnection and attendant investment in Finnish data centers. With Arctic Connect, Finland wants to improve regional connectivity while providing the necessary infrastructure. It is an attractive destination due to its geopolitical location between East and West and history of neutrality are believed to make Finland the “Switzerland of data,” but also because of its reliable energy and internet infrastructure, access to green energy and cold climate-related reduction of cooling cost, reduced energy tax for data centers, transparent legislation and skilled workforce. Arctic Connect is believed to benefit the Finnish economy with €1.38 billion and over a decade generate over a thousand jobs annually. This is not pie in the sky; Google, for example, has already invested almost €2 billion in a data center in Hamina.85
China is interested within the framework of the “Digital Silk Road” in building transcontinental and cross-border data cables that would bypass data cables and as such would be better shielded from outside actors. It must be noted, that for all the excitement, there are no illusions in Finland and the EU at large, that Chinese (and Russian) offensive intelligence gathering capabilities are likely to increase. After all, the Chinese companies contracted to build the project, including Huawei, are obliged by PRC law to collaborate with intelligence services. In addition, the construction of Arctic Connect will enable China to implement underwater surveillance capabilities it has been developing through military-civilian fusion in the South and East China Seas.86
Beijing unveiled its systematic Arctic strategy with a grand white paper on the “Polar Silk Road” on January 26, 2018. The paper openly challenges the dominant position in the region of the Arctic Eight or the inner Five. China declared that it was time for Arctic countries to respect “the rights and freedom of non-Arctic States to carry out activities in this region in accordance with the law.” Since “the governance of the Arctic requires the participation and contribution of all stakeholders,” China said it would move to “advance Arctic-related cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative”—a potentially hegemonic claim of its own, as we also see with its digital network activities.87
The Arctic is thus definitely heating up, physically as well as politically, raising a multitude of questions at all levels as to the region’s future in terms of its resource management and governance.
Understanding the Present, Exploring the Future
To look further into the plethora of “Arctic issues,” and to understand the various networks underpinning the Arctic “regime,” we invited policy practitioners, environmental and political scientists, historians, lawyers, and energy experts, from Arctic and non-Arctic states, from Anchorage to Adelaide, to take stock of present-day circumstances in the North. We asked them to explore the changes underway in the earth system, climate and ecology, in culture and society as well as in the spheres of politics and economics, law and security. We also encouraged each to look ahead, to consider where the Arctic may be headed, and how the relationship between the Arctic regime and world order may evolve, over the next 20 years as the planet literally heats up.
In his lead essay, Oran R. Young examines the recent course of Arctic international relations as well as likely future developments in this realm through an account of the narratives that have guided the actions of key players over the past three decades. During the 1990s and into the 2000s, the Arctic zone of peace narrative dominated the landscape of Arctic policymaking. The period since the late 2000s has witnessed the rise of competing perspectives on matters of Arctic policy, including narratives highlighting the global climate emergency, energy from the North, and Arctic power politics. Though the Arctic zone of peace narrative remains alive in the thinking of many, these competing perspectives have become increasingly influential. Young argues that the interplay among the four narratives will play a central role in shaping the future of policymaking regarding Arctic issues. One likely scenario is a disaggregation of the Arctic policy agenda, with the Arctic Council continuing to rely on the Arctic zone of peace narrative to address a range of Arctic-specific issues, while major actors (including non-Arctic states) turn to other narratives as they deal with issues featuring close connections between the Arctic and the broader global order.
Henry P. Huntington shows how collaboration on conservation measures across the Arctic space have been effective and offer promise for the future. He also charts continuing dangers from pollutants, plastics, and the potential for industrial accidents, in addition to rapid warming and loss of sea ice. The Arctic is also susceptible, like any other region of the world, to the effects of many small actions, each seemingly justifiable on its own, but collectively causing greater and greater environmental damage. While current modes of Arctic cooperation may avert major disasters, Huntington cautions that they are not adequate to the environmental and biodiversity challenges we face without a new vision for the Arctic aimed at what we as a society want to see, not just what we want to avoid. What the Arctic looks like in 2040 and beyond, he argues, will depend on the choices we make today, globally, regionally, and locally. Protecting the status quo may seem the easier path, but in the long run leads to a diminished Arctic. We should aim higher.
Inuuteq Holm Olsen makes a powerful case that those who call the Arctic home must have a say when it comes to discussions and decisions that affect them. He warns that more and more actors, many of them on the outskirts of the region, are seeking to determine Arctic affairs even though there is no consensus on what it even means to be Arctic, who belongs to the Arctic and to whom the Arctic belongs. “Nihil de nobis, sine nobis,” he writes: Nothing About Us, Without Us.
Victoria Herrmann uses the frame of tipping points to model governance options for a resilient Arctic order in a climate-changed world. After taking stock of current Arctic tipping points, she imagines a future shift of the world order and evolving Arctic regime governance models that would adequately address those and additional tipping points, and that could support Arctic residents to be resilient in a new normal by decentralizing power and buttressing paradiplomacy efforts. She offers a number of ways to tip the current state of Arctic affairs into a future scenario of Arctic governance that is resilient, inclusive, and just.
Any discussion of Arctic futures must address changing dynamics among resource exploitation, new transportation possibilities, and security considerations.