ABSTRACT
This book has sought to explain why, and how, the debates about security in the Arctic not only need to be examined on many different levels – ranging from the individual to the regional and indeed the global – but also from a variety of different disciplines beyond ‘the usual suspects’, meaning political science and military studies. It is increasingly clear that a central departure point in any discussion about Arctic security is how “Arctic” is actually defined and understood. Though there is a geographical connection between territories and oceans in this region located in the northernmost part of the northern hemisphere, differences quickly begin to arise. The region as a whole is considered to be stereotypically very cold, but temperatures are often quite diverse; for example, parts of the European Arctic have extensive foliage, and may experience winters and summers similar to that of the lower-latitude, temperate zones in Canada. Other parts of the Arctic have scarce foliage and appear barren by comparison. From a demographic viewpoint, while the dominant populations in the North American Arctic (Canada and the United States, as well as Greenland) are Indigenous, the European and Russian Arctic regions have predominantly non-Indigenous populations. Also, urbanisation differs across the Arctic, from small villages and towns separated by enormous distances with few or no roads, to larger cities that may be within reasonable driving distances from each other. To what degree can we speak of the region as unified with regard to security perspectives?
