Table Of Content“A fascinating book that gives the reader both analytical and
experience-based personal perspectives on the long lines of Norway’s
northern foreign policy.”
—Elana Wilson Rowe, senior research fellow, Norwegian Institute of
International Affairs (NUPI), Norway
This pivot describes the ups and downs of Norwegian High North
politics since the end of the Cold War. It considers how political
interest in the Arctic has been growing rapidly in the international
community as states stake their claim to areas of the continental shelf
in the Arctic Ocean, and focuses on Russia’s actions, as the Arctic
state with the longest shoreline and the only one outside NATO. The
author argues that among the Western countries, Norway has the
most extensive experience in tackling Russia in the Arctic, and the
A
neighbourhood with the Russian Bear invariably shapes foreign policy,
r
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notably in matters of security, and how foreign policy concerns are
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intertwined with economic motives, be that hopes of access to the big c
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Russian market or to the oil and gas fields on the Russian Arctic shelf. H
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To achieve the combined goal of security and business, the Norwegian igp
hh
Government has regularly orchestrated “Arctic waves” to direct the
No ARCTIC
attention of local, national and international politicians and businesses r
oi
a
to the alleged opportunities of the North. In this book, the author r
ta
takes us through “the Great Barents Awakening” of the 1990s, “the hn EUPHORIA AND
Pd
Great High North Enchantment” of the early 2000s and recent years’
o I
“Arctic wave” in Norwegian foreign policy. ln INTERNATIONAL
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Geir Hønneland is Director of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway. sn HIGH NORTH
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He received his PhD in political science from the University of Oslo t
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o
in 2000, and full professorship competence in 2004. He also holds a n POLITICS
position as Adjunct Professor at the University of Tromsø, where he a
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teaches Arctic and Russian politics.
Geir Hønneland
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ISBN 978-981-10-6031-1 e
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Arctic Euphoria and International High
North Politics
Geir Hønneland
Arctic Euphoria and
International High
North Politics
Geir Hønneland
Fridtjof Nansen Institute
Oslo, Norway
ISBN 978-981-10-6031-1 ISBN 978-981-10-6032-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-6032-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949463
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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reface
“Norway on a High in the North”—this is what my colleague and friend
Leif Christian Jensen called his Ph.D. thesis on Norwegian High North
politics in the years following the turn of the millennium. What a won-
derful title! “Arctic Euphoria” is my modest attempt to pin down the
slightly longer lines in Norwegian policies towards the country’s north-
ern regions and areas at similar latitudes beyond its borders as well.
Throughout my career of nearly 25 years, I’ve experienced “the Great
Barents Awakening” of the early and mid-1990s, “the Great High North
Enchantment” that followed a good decade later, and recent years’
“Arctic wave”. It’s tapered off, but it’s been a wild ride. What comes up
must go down—this is one of the main lessons I’ve learnt. But equally
important when we speak about Northern Norway and its place in the
world: what goes down must invariably come up again. And every time it
happens, it’s as if it happens for the first time.
“Let it be said”, one of the Oslo-based founding fathers of the
Barents Euro-Arctic Region told me a few years ago, “if Sogn and
Fjordane [the Norwegian county with the highest density of fishery mil-
lionaires, located on the western coast] had been on our border with
Russia, and not Finnmark [which actually is on the border with Russia],
there wouldn’t have been any Barents Region.” He wasn’t talking about
the geographical Barents region, which is pretty stationary, but of the
political Barents regional project, which is more open to manipulation.
His message was that Norwegian High North politics cannot be under-
stood as foreign policy alone. In this case, according to this particular
v
vi PREFACE
founding father, the Barents Region, a major priority in post-Cold War
Norwegian foreign policy, wasn’t much about foreign policy at all.
My own starting point had been the opposite. Naively, as it appears,
I told a group of students in Norway’s northernmost country Finnmark
in the mid-2000s, just as the Great High North Enchantment was on its
rise, that the newly appointed minister Jonas Gahr Støre’s High North
initiative was about foreign policy—he was minister of foreign affairs,
after all. “What?” was the response from the auditorium, “are you saying
we’ve been fooled? We thought it was about us!”
Every Arctic nation has its own reasons for “being Arctic”. Sometimes
“Arctic politics” is smaller than Arctic politics itself, aimed, for instance,
at domestic needs of a, strictly speaking, non-Arctic nature. Sometimes
“Arctic politics” is larger than Arctic politics itself, furthering wider,
non-Arctic foreign policy aims. These lines are written overlooking the
Shanghai skyline—my days in the southern Chinese metropole are filled
with Arctic events. At the conference on Polar Law and Politics that I’m
here for, I’ll meet “the usual suspects” from the Nordic countries—it’s
our third visit to China in just two months. Twenty years ago, we met
in Kirkenes and Murmansk. Today, we meet in Tromsø, Reykjavik and
Shanghai. Latitude notwithstanding: the Arctic is all around.
In Norway, High North politics is a delicate issue; so is the way we
speak about it. The public debate has an obligatory fact-based veneer,
but below the surface, strong emotions are at play. At times, the most
important thing has been to show which side you’re on—either you
were with us or against us. Fake news was presented before “fake news”
was invented—sometimes truth just couldn’t stand in the way of a good
cause. It’s been a challenging landscape for a social scientist to navigate—
that is, unless you decide to jump on the bandwagon. In the political
endeavour to build a region, scientific justification is always in demand.
*
My writings are an organic matter—parts of this book build on things
I’ve published before, but they appear now in revised form and in a new
context. Early drafts of Chaps. 2–4 were originally written in Norwegian
and translated into English by Chris Saunders. Elana Wilson Rowe pro-
vided the native English speaker’s—and the experienced researcher’s—
eye on some of the central concepts of the book. Its substance matter
has developed in continuous dialogue with colleagues and friends at the
Fridtjof Nansen Institute. Thanks to Senior Commissioning Editor Sara
PREFACE vii
Crowley-Vigneau at Palgrave’s Shanghai office, for her continued support
and enthusiasm for the project, and to the anonymous peer reviewer for
constructive comments that have indeed helped improve the final text.
Needless to say: this is one story about Norway on a high in the
North, not the story. Now it’s in your hands.
Shanghai, China Geir Hønneland
c
ontents
1 Norway’s High North Policies 1
2 The Great Barents Awakening 25
3 The Russian Factor 43
4 The Great High North Enchantment 61
5 The Arctic Wave 83
Index 101
ix
L M
ist of aPs
Map 1.1 The Barents Sea region 2
Map 1.2 Jurisdiction of the Barents Sea 5
Map 1.3 The Barents Euro-Arctic Region 8
xi
CHAPTER 1
Norway’s High North Policies
Abstract The High North is the number one priority in Norwegian
foreign politics. The country’s High North strategies have tradition-
ally centred on its relationship with other states in the Barents Sea area,
Russia in particular. During the Cold War, security interests dominated,
while after the dissolution of the Soviet Union institutionalized coopera-
tion with Russia became the hallmark of Norwegian High North politics.
From the mid-2000s, the division between foreign and domestic policies
gradually dissolved, while more recently the circumpolar dimension has
grown in importance. Balancing the domestic, regional, and circumpo-
lar levels is a challenge in Norwegian High North politics, but this also
gives an opportunity to cultivate different dimensions of these policies
depending on the international political situation.
Keywords Norwegian Arctic politics · Norwegian High North politics
Barents region
As Norway is located on the Arctic rim of the European mainland,
Arctic affairs are an integral part of the country’s foreign policy. The
strength of the Arctic component of Norwegian foreign policy has var-
ied over time, as has its profile and formal designation. In general, the
term “Arctic” was until recently seldom used in Norwegian foreign pol-
icy discourse, and then often referring to something farther off in either
time (like polar explorations before the Second World War) or space
© The Author(s) 2017 1
G. Hønneland, Arctic Euphoria and International
High North Politics, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-6032-8_1
Description:This pivot describes the ups and downs of Norwegian High North politics since the end of the Cold War. It considers how political interest in the Arctic has been growing rapidly in the international community as states stake their claim to areas of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, and focu
