Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and Cooperative Security in the Arctic

A Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and Cooperative Security in the Arctic

October 14, 2014

Summary
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. But proposals for establishing the Arctic as a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) face major challenges, not the least of which is the effort to accommodate states that are still in possession of nuclear weapons, the US and Russia, as members of a zone whose primary principle is to ban the possession of nuclear weapons by any state within such a zone. The way forward is thus to promote the progressive denuclearization of the Arctic, reduce nuclear risks and the role of nuclear weapons in the security policies of the US and Russia, and to preserve the existing non-militarization of the surface of the Arctic Ocean through a treaty. To that end, the mandate of the Arctic Council should be broadened to include Arctic security concerns, and re-energized disarmament diplomacy should seek to improve global strategic relations that will be conducive to further reductions in nuclear arsenals, and to encourage non-nuclear weapon states in the Arctic to formalize and entrench their collective status as a zone free of nuclear weapons.

Introduction*
One particularly compelling manifestation of Arctic distinctiveness is in the unusual geostrategic confluences the region embodies. The challenges of environmental fragility and a changing climate intersect with the human rights imperatives of its indigenous people; active territorial claims drive the evolutionary application of the Law of the Sea; traditional security rivals are now prodded by pragmatism and mutual self-interest to cooperate; and a concentration of nuclear weapons still hangs in Damoclean warning over the top of the world. Just as the Arctic is believed to have once formed a land bridge for the earliest human migration from Asia to the Americas, it today promises to build new and paradigm-shifting bridges across geostrategic divides and between continents. The potential for bringing nations and peoples together for peace and development is boundless, but so too is the potential for conflict.

So the promise of cooperation is already tempered by resurgent military activity. The years immediately following the Cold War saw a lull in military/strategic attention to the Arctic, but now the region is host to increasing nuclear submarine and bomber patrols, ballistic missile defence installations, and the build-up of conventional military capacity. Indigenous populations are taking wary note, strategic relations between the old Cold War rivals that now must share the Arctic cannot escape being jolted by far off events, and some contemplate (while others fear) a growing security role for NATO in the Arctic. Russia is certainly expanding its military infrastructure in the region, with observers divided on whether the objective is improved management and emergency response capacity, related especially to the Northern sea route, or whether Moscow once again views the Arctic primarily through the lens of geopolitical competition.

The presence of nuclear arsenals and countermeasures in the region adds a dramatic element of both danger and urgency to shaping the future Arctic, and the idea of converting the Arctic into a zone without nuclear weapons has been a feature of both Cold War and post-Cold War hopes of reinventing the Arctic as a region of cooperation rather than conflict. Furthermore, a nuclear weapon free Arctic is not just about transferring weapons out of the Arctic, but about contributing to overall reductions in global arsenals. The kind of cooperation needed is modelled in Antarctica, the world’s first denuclearized continent, albeit an uninhabited one, as per the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. Antarctica remains an example of a demilitarized and denuclearized continent where competing territorial claims have been shelved, environmental concerns have priority, and both claimant and non-claimant countries conduct scientific and research work alongside one another. 

Indigenous peoples have proposed and endorsed an Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in 1977, 1983 and 1998. In 2007 the Canadian National group of the Nobel Peace laureate organization Pugwash issued a paper calling for an Arctic NWFZ, and in 2012 the Danish national Pugwash group held a meeting to consider the commitment in a Danish government policy paper that “in dialogue with Denmark's partners, the government will pursue the policy of making the Arctic a nuclear weapon free zone.”

A 2010 survey, conducted for the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, of over 9000 residents of the eight Arctic states, showed substantial popular support right across the region for an Arctic NWFZ. The respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: “The Arctic should be a nuclear weapons free zone just like Antarctic is, and the United States and Russia should remove their nuclear weapons from the Arctic.” The results showed mixed but still significant support in the nuclear weapons states (NWS) of Russia and the US (56 and 47 per cent respectively), strong agreement in all six non-NWS in the Arctic (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) (between 74 to 83 per cent).

In 2009 the opening recommendation of an Arctic NWFZ Conference in Denmark called for the development of modalities for establishing “a nuclear weapon free and demilitarised Arctic region.” Whether those objectives – a NWFZ and demilitarization more broadly – are best pursued in that order, simultaneously, or in reverse order is an important tactical question, but it is clear that the two pursuits are indelibly linked and are also key ingredients for the development of a cooperative security environment in the Arctic.

The following does not make the case for such a zone, that having been done effectively by several current writers and conferences. The focus instead is on exploring current NWFZ proposals, and the challenges they face, with a view to identifying ways in which measures to demilitarize and denuclearize this key geostrategic zone can contribute effectively to the pursuit of global zero, a world without nuclear weapons.  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.