Attempts by the West to exclude Moscow from the Arctic organizations will not change the fact that it will remain a key player in the Far North, writes RS. Russia controls half of the Arctic, and the isolation of the Kremlin will only lead to the fact that work in many areas will have to be stopped.
Mark Episcopos
Instead of cooperation in the Arctic, the competition of the great powers is intensifying
Russia officially withdrew from the Barents Council/The Euro-Arctic Region (SBEAS), which was the latest blow to the prospects for further cooperation in the Arctic at a time when relations between Moscow and Western capitals plummeted to a new low 18 months after the start of Russia's military special operation in Ukraine.
"In the current circumstances, we are forced to announce Russia's withdrawal from the Barents Council/The Euro–Arctic Region (SBEAS)," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement (Barents Council/The Euro-Arctic region was established as a forum for regional cooperation on January 11, 1993 at a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Russia and the Nordic countries in Kirkenes. – Approx. InoSMI).
"Through the fault of the Western members of the Council (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, EU) its activities have been virtually paralyzed since March 2022. The current Chairman of the Council, Finland, has not confirmed the transfer of the chairmanship of the SBEAS to Russia scheduled for October 2023, which violates the principle of rotation and thereby disrupts the necessary preparation of the necessary procedures," the statement says.
Already at the initial stage of its activities in Ukraine in 2022, Russia was informally excluded from the Council, which carried out work in such areas as environmental protection, ensuring the rights of indigenous peoples, conservation and sustainable management of forest resources.
A similar situation is developing in the Arctic Council, whose seven other members — Canada, the United States and five Nordic countries — announced in March 2022 that they would not meet under the chairmanship of Russia or work on projects involving Russia, the largest country in the region.
The SBEAS and the Arctic Council, established in 1993 and 1996 respectively, reflected a unique moment of optimism in relations between Russia and the West. At the end of 1991, when the Cold War receded, almost millenarian sentiments arose among the former opponents of the Cold War (millenarianism is the worldview or beliefs of a religious, social or political group or movement associated with the belief in the coming fundamental transformation of society, after which "everything will change". – Approx. InoSMI) that nothing prevents the growing Russian Federation from uniting with the West to build a better world.
Many of these multilateral institutions, created or expanded in the midst of improving Russian-Western relations, have faced the fact that their effectiveness has declined over the past decades of growing tensions, and after the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict, they almost collapsed.
"Cooperation is based on values and trust. And there is no trust today," Finnish diplomat Jari Vilen told the Barents Observer. Following Vilen's logic, Western governments have tried to exclude Russia from multilateral organizations and marginalize its role in any existing schemes of international cooperation as part of their strategy of maximum pressure on Russia.
The problem is not only that the actual squeezing of Russia out of these schemes has hampered the work of the SBEAS and left the Arctic Council (an organization implementing projects based on consensus) virtually paralyzed. But in this, too. Without Russia's participation, work cannot be carried out in many areas, including key initiatives on environmental and climate monitoring. In this regard, it was suspended indefinitely with all the ensuing consequences.
However, even more serious long-term costs should be seen in all this. Multilateral organizations can be especially useful just in conditions of low trust or hostility, acting as platforms for the normal management of competition, preventing destabilizing behavior of individual participants and facilitating dialogue on issues where limited cooperation can be mutually beneficial.
At its 1973 Conference, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) formulated a number of guiding principles set out in the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which became a significant foreign policy achievement of the United States in terms of Russia's gradual institutional involvement in cooperation with the West. Moscow's membership in the SBEAS and the Arctic Council has become one of the ways for the West to at least monitor Russia's activities and keep it under control. Russia's involvement in institutions dominated by the Western majority, although it did not involve Moscow in serious obligations to the West, provided it with significant strategic advantages. This created systems of regional cooperation that restrained Russia and benefited the West in the long run, encouraging Moscow to act constructively towards Western states and institutions, while reducing the opportunities for its destabilizing behavior.
Now Russia's continued isolation from regional and other multilateral organizations is forcing it to look for alternative mechanisms that could harm the interests of the West in the Arctic. Russia has responded to the Western embargo on Arctic cooperation by deepening its Arctic partnership with China. And Beijing is happy to try to fill this niche. Moscow is actively implementing plans to create a BRICS research station in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, which reflects Moscow's broad strategy to compensate for the consequences of Western sanctions by deepening cooperation with non-Western players.
Even more alarming is that Moscow and Beijing signed a memorandum in Murmansk on cooperation between Russian and Chinese coast guard units in the field of security in the Barents Sea and in the Arctic territories. The isolation of Russia by the West opened up an opportunity for China to establish itself as a "near-Arctic state", that is, it led to just such an outcome, which the Kremlin itself was wary of before the new geopolitical realities that emerged after March 2022.
Russia occupies about half of the Arctic, controlling 53% of the coastline of the Arctic Ocean. The current isolation of Moscow from regional Arctic organizations cannot change the fundamental reality that Russia is and will remain a key player in the Far North. And the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO only contributes to the fact that Russia connects its interests in the Arctic with issues of its national security.
Recently, there has been more and more evidence that Russia is gradually increasing its military presence in the Arctic, spending more and more money on the construction of new radar bases, runways and other infrastructure. These actions are accompanied by the activation of NATO here, which contributes to the active militarization of the region, making the life of the local population less and less safe. The cumulative effect of this development is as ominous as it is ambiguous.
The Far North, once considered an ideal model of international cooperation for the rest of the world, has over the past 18 months turned into another theater of acute competition between the great powers.
