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Box 1.1 Martin Frobisher
Figure 1.1 Martin Frobisher
English adventurer Frobisher led three Arctic expeditions in the 1570s, backed by Queen Elizabeth, hoping to return with gold and charts for a new sea route over the north of Canada to cut the costs of trading with Asia. The expeditions failed to locate the âNorthwest Passageâ and ran into trouble after running into local Inuit, having expected the area to be uninhabited. Frobisher's ships did, though, return with huge amounts of ore ready to be smelted into gold. However, the apparent riches were illusory with the rock turning out to contain only iron pyrites or âfool's goldâ.
Frobisher, nonetheless, went on to have a remarkable life, travelling to the West Indies with Francis Drake where he did strike gold and serving as a key commander in the legendary defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English fleet in 1588. An adventurer to the end he was persuaded out of retirement by Walter Raleigh to fight the Spanish again in 1594 but was mortally wounded in doing so.
(Smith et al. 2009: 41â42; Bindoff 1982: 258)
Over 400 years later, the story of the Arctic is, in many ways, the same. Businesses and governments still pursue the possibilities offered by a Northwest Passage and prospect for new riches, whilst often forgetting that a local Inuit population have long inhabited the region and have a right to be consulted and involved in any such undertakings. This contemporary story of reconciling international and indigenous interests in the Arctic is told in this book.
Introduction
By means of introducing this contemporary story, this chapter will set the scene by examining what the Arctic actually is, how indigenous people and outside interests have come to manifest themselves in the region and how we can understand this in the context of International Relations (IR) theories rarely applied to this part of the world, traditionally viewed as on the margins of international political interest.
What is the Arctic?
The Arctic is an unusual region in many respects. It is a vast expanse of land, sea and ice spanning three continents and all time zones but ruled by remote control through capitals far to the south. Quite how vast the region is, how many people live there and which countries exercise sovereignty over it, though, is not easy to say, since there are several competing definitions of how far from the North Pole the Arctic actually extends.
Geographic
The Arctic can be defined geographically in reference to the Arctic Ocean and the lands that surround it, in the same way as it is possible to construct regions based on the Mediterranean, Black, Baltic seas and others. Under this rationale there are five Arctic states: Russia,
Figure 1.2 Map of the Arctic: a political projection
Source: Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin
Canada, Norway, Denmark (through its colony Greenland) and the United States. Unlike the aforementioned regions, though, the fact that most of the northern ocean is frozen over has limited the development of the same kind of international human community based on trade and the co-management of maritime resources. Despite some talk of an âArctic Mediterraneanâ in the emerging geopolitics literature of the 1940s, as it became apparent that the focus of power in the world was moving away from Western Europe (Stefansson 1943), the Cold War put paid to any prospect of this coming to pass with the two new superpowers, despite their proximity, seeing the region only in terms of strategic competition rather than economic cooperation. Traditional commercial links between Alaskan and Siberian Inuit across the Bering were even curtailed by the Soviets as an âice curtainâ descended in the High North. The end of the Cold War and the retreat of the ice sheets has reawakened the âArctic Mediterraneanâ dream and the âArctic 5â (or âA5â) are now discussing how best to share the potential spoils once locked inaccessibly under the ice. International regions, even when defined on the basis of a geographical entity, are always socially as well as geographically constructed. The outer boundaries of an ocean are not always clear cut and the precise line of demarcation between the Arctic and Atlantic is debateable. How far inland the âsense of region-alityâ extends amongst settlements is also always a moot point. Iceland's exclusion by this definition may seem anomalous since it has the nearest sovereign capital city to the North Pole and strikes most people as a more Arctic-oriented country than the United States or Denmark. Icelanders certainly see it this way and have staunchly resisted literal, littoral definitions of the Arctic by the âA5â.
Scientific
The best-known means of defining the Arctic is on the basis of including everything above the 66° 32 minutes north polar circle. This is a line of latitude demarking northern and southern zones of the Earth where, for at least one day per year, the sun does not set and does not rise. This has found favour because of its definitional precision and is politically more inclusive, adding three more Arctic states into an âA8â: Iceland, Finland and Sweden. Iceland, in fact, only just makes it on this criterion as the Arctic Circle lies above its mainland but does bisect the tiny island of Grimsey off its northern coast. This understanding of the Arctic is the basis of the work and membership of the most important international political body in the region: the Arctic Council. A limitation of this definition, though, is that it has little climatological meaning which, to most people's eyes, is the most defining characteristic of the Arctic. The Arctic Circle runs south of boreal forests in Sweden and north of many treeless landscapes and polar bear habitats in Canada. Canadians, hence, generally favour an even more extensive definition of the Arctic.
Canadian
Canada has traditionally considered the lower 60° line of latitude, rather than the polar circle, to demark the Arctic. The 60th parallel does quite neatly divide Canada geographically and politically into its southern metropolitan federal states and three thinly populated northern âterritoriesâ. This definition also has the neatness of mirroring the internationally acknowledged limits of Antarctica (since some of that continent protrudes north of the Antarctic Circle). However, this line also lacks climatological meaning outside of Antarctica and Canada. The 60° line applied to Europe would bring into the equation clearly temperate landscapes and would even make the UK an Arctic state, since it bisects the Shetlands.
Climatological #1: the tree line
A more visible and environmentally meaningful way to define the Arctic is to include everything north of the âtree lineââa line north of which there are no high-growing trees or bushes. This demarcation has clarity since boreal forests (the taiga) thrive in a band around most of northern Europe, Asia and America, above which is the clearly contrasting tundra marked by permafrost and only dwarf forms of vegetation. A drawback of this means of defining the Arctic is that it cannot, of course, be applied to the Ocean and seas. Iceland, again, misses out on the basis of this definition in spite of its glaciers.
Climatological #2: the 10°C July isotherm
A way of delimiting the Arctic on a climatological basis that can be applied on land or sea is to use a line based on long-term mean temperature. The 10°C isotherm in July, the warmest month, is similar to the tree line, thus producing a more comprehensive environmental region. However, there are some variations and most of Iceland is included in this construction of the Arctic.
Countries, hence, tend to prefer regional definitions that favour themselves. According to the Icelandic parliament:
The Arctic region should therefore be regarded as a single vast area in an ecological, political, economic and security-related sense, but not in a narrow geographical sense with the Arctic Circle, tree line or a temperature of 10 degrees centigrade in July as a reference point.
(Althingi 2011)
Figure 1.3 Map of rival definitions of the Arctic
An objective, definitive understanding of what is and is not the Arctic does not exist but contemporary practice has tended to settle on the scientific definition and this study will follow suit, even though demarking a region on the basis of daylight has no real political or geographical meaning.
Beyond seeking objectively to determine the extent of the Arctic, an ontological inquiry into the region must also take into account its subjective meaning to the wider world in political and popular imagination. The romantic âother worldlinessâ of the Arctic contributes to making it of interest even to those with no stake in the region. It is the home of Father Christmas to many of the world's children, the lair of reputedly the world's most deadly creature and the backdrop to many of history's bravest feats of exploration. With the onset of climate change, we now see the region also cast as the symbol of global catastrophe with the imagery of melting glaciers, homeless polar bears and the loss of a winter wonderland consciously employed to popularize the cause. Hence, the Arctic emerged as the unlikely backdrop to British party politics in 2006 with Prime Minister-to-be David Cameron seeking to prove his green credentials by staging publicity shots dog-sledding over a glacier in Spitsbergen.
Such symbolic meaning is coming to be better appreciated in the study of international politics as the discipline matures beyond assuming that all decision making boils down to an objective cost-benefit analysis. âWho gets whatâ is certainly an important dimension of the international politics of the Arctic but the symbolic and subjective meaning attached to the region also enters into political calculations. For Russians and Canadians in particular, the frozen north is part of their national identity. For much of the world, the visible decline of this great wilderness epitomizes wider human failings and a dysfunctional international political system, and has served to heighten interest in a previously neglected end of the Earth.
A history of the Arctic in international affairs
Four broad âfamiliesâ of indigenous people comprise the pre-modern population of the region: Paleo-Siberian, Eskimo/Aleut, the Sami and the Yakut. Paleo-Siberian peoples are believed to have inhabited the Russian Arctic as far back as 5,000 bc and their descendants, including the Nenets, Komi, Chukchi and others, still reside there alongside Russian settlers today. The Eskimo and Aleut, who form a second major indigenous ethnic grouping, are believed to have migrated from Siberia across the Bering to North America between 2,000 bc and 4,000 bc, where they reside today alongside US and Canadian settlers. The Eskimo are subdivided into two ethnic groupsâthe Inuit and Yupikâwho separated around 2,000 years ago (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005). In Canada and Greenland, the term Eskimo has come to be seen as passĂ© and superseded by the use of Inuit, but the two labels are not synonymous since the non-Inuit Yupik are found in Alaska and eastern Siberia. The Sami, the first settlers in Scandinavia, are Uralic peoples (and, hence, related to Finns and Magyars), and the Yakut are Turkic, descended from people who migrated north from Central Asia in the Middle Ages.
Figure 1.4 Map of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic
Arctic exploration from outside of the region declined from the 17th to 19th centuries, after Baffin's expeditions of 1615 and 1616, like Frobisher's, seemed to confirm that a Northwest Passage was a myth. Proof of the existence of the Northwest Passage was not confirmed until the separate expeditions of Franklin and McClure in the mid-19th century but, since this also helped establish that this sea route was frozen over, outside economic interest subsided. However, an international presence in the Arctic continued through a combination of the nationalist glory of discovery and international cooperation to advance the burgeoning science of meteorology. Roald Amundsen preceded his conquest of the South Pole with the first transit of the Northwest Passage in 1905, whilst, in between, a race for the North Pole was won (although disputed by some) by the American Robert Peary in 1909.
Sovereign claims over the lands of the Arctic have evolved since the time of Frobisher but have not always been strongly asserted until relatively recently.
Canada
The British laid claim to the Canadian Arctic archipelago and northern mainland from the 16th century in the wake of Frobisher's âdiscoveryâ of Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island. However, in effect, they left the area to the Inuit he had encountered on his voyages.
United States
As befits vulgar stereotyping, the United States bought their way into Arctic politics with the purchase of Alaska from Tsarist Russia for US$7.2 million in 1867. There was no obvious return on this investment until around a century later, when the state became a useful hub in the US standoff with its former landlords and, particularly, when oil was then struck in 1968.
Denmark
A Nordic presence on Greenland can be dated back to the Icelandic Viking Erik the Red who established a settlement in the 10th century. Links between this settler community and Norwegian traders and missionaries led to Greenland being formally colonized by Norway in 1261. The Vikings later left, leaving the giant island to the Inuit, but it nonetheless came to be claimed as a colony of Denmark in the 18th century as they had taken over Norway and come to establish trading and religious links there.
Norway
The Spitsbergen archipelago has no indigenous population, but, after its location by Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz in 1596, it was visited by ot...
