Russia in Global Affairs

For citation, please use:
Strelnikova, I.A., Chistikov, M.N., and Chistikova, A.A., 2025. Will the Arctic Cooperation System Accommodate Global Geopolitical Changes? Russia in Global Affairs, 23(2), pp. 23–37. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-2-23-37

The events of the past ten years have drastically changed the international political landscape: the inadequacy of the West’s liberal world order has become obvious, while the international importance of the East and the South has increased immensely. These changes have impacted all regional subsystems, including, most paradoxically, the Arctic. At first, the Ukraine crisis, which broke out in 2014, barely affected the Arctic: all its international cooperation institutions remained intact, and Western and Russian activity in the Arctic Council even intensified immediately after the start of the crisis (Chater, 2016; Sakharov, 2015). Although the Western reaction to Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) hit the Arctic system much harder (see below), cooperation continued in key areas like joint management of marine biological resources (Joint Fish, 2023), coast guard operations (Rosen, 2023; NRK, 2023), and search and rescue at sea (AARI, 2023). Russo-Western cooperation was damaged the least in the Arctic.

Nor has the political and economic growth of the global East and South led to their acquisition of a much greater role in Arctic affairs, which instead remains limited to observer status in the Arctic Council, joint research programs with the Arctic countries, and investments in oil and gas projects. Until 2022, even Russian public discourse considered all non-Arctic countries to be junior partners in the Arctic context (MFA, 2015). However, they are keenly interested in a greater role there, primarily due to its resources and logistical potential. In 2019, answering a question about growing extra-regional interest in the Arctic’s development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “Indeed, many countries are showing interest in this region. Arctic Council members are not allergic to non-Arctic states’ cooperation in the implementation of a number of projects in the North, in high latitudes. But there are no plans to increase the number of Arctic Council members. Nobody has put forward such ideas. Everyone interested can get observer status. It has already been granted to 13 countries. We see no grounds to deny this status to countries that are truly ready to participate pragmatically in the Council’s work without politicization and with full respect for the basic decisions made by the Arctic Five” (MFA, 2019).

Exception to the Rule?

Before exploring the stated topic, it is necessary to specify the terms used herein. An international regime is “a set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations” (Keohane, 1982, p. 57). Closely related to the international regime, are the notions of social institution and international agreement. According to many researchers, the international regime is a social institution. Keohane writes that there is “the general conception of regimes as social institutions” (Ibid, p. 57); Young (1980) states that “all international regimes are social institutions, even though there is great variation among them.” So, these concepts can be considered interchangeable in relation to international regimes. International agreements, a special case of which is an international treaty, “are ad hoc, often ‘one-shot’ arrangements” (Krasner, 1982). International regimes may arise from international agreements/treaties but may lapse if states de facto stop adhering to the rules and regulations prescribed in the agreement.

The Arctic system was an integral part of the liberal world order. The Arctic Council and Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC)—key regional institutions—were created and most actively developed during the “unipolar moment.” The 1993 Kirkenes Declaration, founding the BEAC, declared it a continuation of ongoing European integration and part of the new post-Cold-War architecture of international cooperation, and welcomed Russia’s internal political reforms.

Arctic cooperation is widely seen as sheltered from global geopolitics, yielding the concept of Arctic exceptionalism, which rests on the involvement of indigenous and scientific communities in Arctic governance (Crawford, 2021)[1] and from the network of institutions (Exner-Pirot and Murray, 2017) intertwined in “complex interdependence” (Byers, 2020).[2]

Although Arctic exceptionalism was supported in 2014,[3] it eventually failed in 2022. The reason for the failure of the “Arctic exceptionalism” concept lies in its champions’ disregard of an important factor determining international relations development, namely the difference between the so-called revisionist powers and the status quo powers. Timofei Bordachev (2023) maintains that the main motive behind the revisionist powers’ policies is “the desire to adapt the rules embodying the legitimacy of the world order to their changing interests.” The confrontation between the revisionist powers, which include almost all of the BRICS countries, and the powers striving to maintain the status quo, that is, the West, is conducive to conflicts.

One might expect Russia, a revisionist power, to pursue changes in the Arctic order, and expect the West to defend that order. Instead, it was the West that most actively worked to abolish cooperation.

In 2014, Western countries reduced security cooperation with Russia and stopped inviting it to the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable and to the Northern Forum of General Staff (Narvestad, 2015). In 2014-2022, Russia repeatedly called for resuming dialogue between the Arctic countries’ militaries (Arctic Council, 2017; MFA, 2019), and its official strategy focused on the development of its own Arctic regions (Konyshev et al., 2017). Arctic cooperation at the time was mainly undermined by anti-Russian sanctions (Young, 2016; Bertelsen, 2020).

On the other hand, other forms of cooperation were intensified, as if to make up for this damage. The Arctic Economic Council, proposed by Canada and created in the fall of 2014, was joined by Russian private companies (Exner-Pirot, 2016). Russia also became full member of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, initiated by the United States and established in 2015 (Arctic Portal, 2015). In the same year, the Arctic coastal states signed the Oslo Declaration on the prohibition of unregulated fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean (WTO, 2015).

In 2022, the West again led the dismantling of cooperation. On 3 and 4 March 2022, Western countries suspended interaction with Russia in the Arctic Council (USDS, 2022) and BEAC (BEAC, 2022). Russia tried to carry on its duties as chair of the Arctic Council (Zhuravel and Timoshenko, 2023) and officially withdrew from the BEAC only when Finland refused to transfer chairmanship to Moscow as scheduled.

Russia was not interested in reforming Arctic institutions because, until 2022, it held an important position in them. This reflected the reality that half of Arctic land, and half of the Arctic’s population, are Russian. Regardless of the state of Russia’s economy or international politics, Russia’s role in the Arctic is key.

Russia’s significance for the Arctic also entails the Arctic’s significance for Russia.

The Arctic generates approximately 10% of Russian GDP, 20% of Russian exports (Karaganov, 2021), 80% of Russian gas, and 90% of Russian nickel and cobalt, as well as other resources of key significance for the Russian and global economies (Likhacheva and Stepanov, 2021). The enormous importance of the Arctic for Russia made it a prime target for the West: it seized the opportunity to “punish” Russia for revisionist behavior, seeking to uphold the international status quo at the expense of the Arctic status quo.

Timo Koivurova and Akiho Shibata (2023) note that binding-treaty-based Arctic institutions have proven more stable than soft-law-based regimes. The reason is that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which relates only to the first group of regimes, permits the termination of an international agreement with regard to one of its parties only if such party has violated some provisions of the agreement. Russia did not violate any Arctic norms, for which reason the Western countries had no formal grounds to terminate interaction with it within these institutions.

At the same time, the Arctic Council and BEAC based on ‘soft law’ turned out to be seriously deformed by the Western countries’ actions. For example, Western countries decided to suspend cooperation with Russia in the Arctic Council and the BEAC. Although some activities within the Arctic Council resumed in 2023-2024, seven Western countries refused to resume full cooperation (Arctic Council, 2023). And even before Russia left the BEAC, Western officials had started speaking about a renaissance of cooperation within the BEAC framework without Russia (Edvardsen, 2023).

Koivurova and Shibata examine the reasons for the stability of some regimes and the vulnerability of others, proceeding from purely legal considerations and emphasizing the importance of the Vienna Convention for international treaties. In our view, the Western Arctic countries opted to leave some key regimes intact in order to preserve the general system of international relations.

Western dismantling of Arctic cooperation has created two contradictions.

Firstly, Western countries already have numerous channels for cooperation amongst themselves, outside the Arctic Council and the BEAC; those institutions were designed specifically for dialogue with Russia, and are thus rendered pointless if Russia is squeezed out of them.

Secondly, by dismantling the Arctic order in defense of the liberal world order, the West has actually only accelerated the collapse of the latter.

The South: Keeping a Low Profile

Historically, the Arctic countries formed a club with exclusive right to govern the region, based on two factors:

Firstly, the specific history of the Arctic’s exploration and development have formed a special attitude towards it among the peoples and leaders of the Arctic countries. Unlike outer space, Antarctica, or the world’s oceans, the Arctic and the North have become an important part of the cultures, national identities, and national myths of Russia, Canada, and the Nordic countries.

Secondly, the Arctic has an extremely vulnerable and fragile ecosystem, and any man-made environmental disasters could take a heavy toll on the local population and nature. As a result, the Arctic countries were skeptical of outsiders unaware of the complexity of local problems.

Club-type institutions, such as the Arctic Council, the BEAC or the Arctic Five, did not endow their members with any special status, they have made the international community view them as indisputable “masters” of the region, and non-Arctic countries could hope only for observer status. Granting such a status required members’ consensus, and before 2014, the Arctic countries might even align with one another rather than with members of their own blocs. For example, Canada once joined Russia in opposing observer status for the EU (Kirgizov-Barsky, 2021).

The first steps to engage non-Arctic countries in regional affairs were taken long before 2022, but not at the governmental level. For example, Russian and Chinese companies began mining minerals together in the Russian Arctic in 2013 (Leksyutina and Zhou, 2022), and Russian universities and research centers cooperate with scientists and experts from China and other non-Arctic countries (Gutenev et al., 2023a; Gutenev et al., 2023b).

However, in 2022, the Arctic powers could no longer stand together, and the bloc solidarity of Western countries began to outweigh their purely Arctic interests. The Arctic club collapsed, seeming to create favorable conditions for extra-regional countries interested in enlarging their role in the Arctic.

Yet there is no sign of their increased activity in the region’s institutions, as those institutions’ legitimacy and usefulness have collapsed due to Russia’s exclusion. For example, in the fall of 2022, amidst discussions of unilaterally transferring chairmanship of the Arctic Council to Norway, China warned it would not recognize the institution if Russia were excluded from it (The High North News, 2022).

Moreover, the East and South, increasingly dissatisfied with the West’s liberal world order, which does not permit them to realize their development goals, are themselves becoming increasingly revisionist and thus aligned with Russia.

The key role in this development is played by BRICS that is increasingly seen as an alternative to the liberal world order.

Global dynamics are drawing leading BRICS members—Russia, India, and China—together, making them natural partners in the Arctic. These countries seek to strengthen their positions in the region and have a similar vision of global processes. The events of the last few years and the countries’ current plans with regard to the Arctic confirm this assumption. Specifically, BRICS countries are planning to open a joint scientific center in Svalbard (Interfax, 2024); Russia and China are strengthening cooperation in sea management (RIA Novosti, 2023); Russia and India are strengthening cooperation on the Northern Sea Route (Korabel, 2023; Arguments and Facts, 2023). Russia’s 2023 Foreign Policy Concept calls for cooperation in the Arctic with friendly extra-regional countries. Nevertheless, China and India are not motivated by an anti-Western ideology and remain open to cooperation with the West when it is in their national interests. Both China and India remain present at major Western expert conferences on the Arctic, such as the Arctic Circle Forums (Pedersen and Steinveg, 2024); in 2023, India and the U.S. held joint military exercises in Alaska (Bye, 2023).

Thus, amid the Ukraine crisis, the leading countries of the East and the South eschew participation in Russia-excluding Arctic institutions, and are increasing their own cooperation with Russia in the region, while also maintaining cooperation with the West.

*  *  *

The ongoing transformation of the world order is irreversible: international institutions will change or collapse, but the role and importance of the countries of the East and the South will grow. The last few years have shown that the Arctic is no exception to the general rule as it is also subject to turbulent changes in the system of international relations.

The Arctic system that existed before 2022 is gone forever. If any institutions continue to function with Russia’s participation, they will presumably change by reducing the rigidness of institutionalization and narrowing the agenda.

Certain changes have already occurred even in the treaty-based Arctic regimes.

The atmosphere of cooperation has been damaged at the International Maritime Organization, which devised the Polar Code (Koivurova and Shibata, 2023). Political bias, such as boycotting or avoiding engagement with Russian representatives, has forced Russia to withdraw from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which recommends quotas for fishing in the North Atlantic (The Fishing Daily, 2024). The Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears continues to operate, and its members even hold video consultations, but some of its work has been curtailed; for example, data on human-bear conflict is no longer exchanged. While the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation formally survives, cooperation between Russian and other Arctic states’ scientists has largely ended (Rees and Büntgen, 2024).

These trends are likely to continue under the Trump Administration, especially given its climate/environmental policy. During his first term, in 2019, Trump refused to sign the Arctic Council’s declaration, since it mentioned the Paris Agreement, and Mike Pompeo harshly criticized China and Russia at the Council’s ministerial meeting in Rovaniemi (Arctic Council, 2019). International cooperation is likely to become even more fragmented now, especially given the new U.S. administration’s position on environmental and climate issues.

As for Trump’s latest statements regarding the incorporation of Canada and Greenland, U.S. Arctic policy is currently transforming more in terms of rhetoric than practical implementation, and this rhetoric is unlikely to be followed by real action. Robert Keohane (2005) writes: “It is difficult for a hegemon to use military power directly to attain its economic policy objectives with its military partners and allies. Allies cannot be threatened with force without beginning to question the alliance.” Robert Gilpin notes that it is important for a hegemon not to weaken but to strengthen its allies who make the entire alliance stronger: “With the outbreak of the Cold War, the United States undertook a number of important initiatives to strengthen the war-torn economies of its allies, to forge a powerful anti-Soviet alliance, and subsequently, to fasten these allied economies firmly to the United States” (Gilpin, 2001).

The role of the East and the South in the Arctic will likely continue to increase, as it has since before 2022, partly facilitated by the Arctic club’s disintegration. To a certain extent, in the Arctic, Russia benefitted from the previous world order, which endowed it with special status as an Arctic power.

Now Russia may face challenges from new actors, which in choosing better Arctic strategies for themselves may not necessarily align with Russia.

For example, Nima Khorrami (2024) maintains that “instead of aligning with Russia, India should consider forging an approach with other like-minded non-regional states such as Japan and South Korea … The trio should then advocate within the Arctic Council for enhanced observer participation to rectify current disparities and promote a more inclusive and equitable Council, fostering a balanced Arctic perspective. To this end, the underlying goal must be … to convince the Nordic states, as well as the United States and Canada, to more rapidly open up their Arctic regions to commercial activities thereby providing a real alternative to Russia’s Arctic.” But Russia may also have the chance to reorganize the region to better reflect Russia’s interests and regional importance, including through cooperation with other non-Arctic countries.

While Russia should not reject cooperation with the Western powers of the Arctic—whether on climate change, environmental pollution, or destructive fishing practices—the ball is in their court.

The article was prepared as part of the research project “Cooperation between Russia and Non-Arctic Countries in the Development of the Russian Arctic: Potential and Challenges in the Context of the Transformation of International Institutions” carried out with support from the Russian Science Foundation (https://rscf.ru/project/24-28-00278/).