"The Conflicted Arctic Military Postures of Old Cold War Rivals"

See The Simons Foundation's Disarming Arctic Security page for briefing papers on military policies and practices in the Arctic region by Ernie Regehr, Senior Fellow in Arctic Security at The Simons Foundation.

The Conflicted Arctic Military Postures of Old Cold War Rivals

December 18, 2013

Military developments in the Arctic have come to more prominent public attention in recent weeks and months in the wake of a series of Russian defence ministry announcements and the Pentagon’s new Arctic Strategy document. While all Arctic States, collectively and individually, now acknowledge that bilateral and regional disputes are clearly not to be adjudicated by military means, current Russian and American military initiatives and policy declarations suggest these two enduring rivals remain burdened by a kind of strategic schizophrenia. On the one hand, the two defence establishments profess and in some measure reflect the same spirit of cooperation that characterizes the work of the Arctic Council; on the other hand, neither the Russians nor the Americans seem able to avoid bringing to the Arctic elements of the rhetoric, rationales, and deployments that characterized their Cold War rivalry.  Continue reading...

Ernie Regehr, O.C. is Senior Fellow in Arctic Security at The Simons Foundation, and Research Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo.