LAUSR

In 2007, a privately sponsored expedition supported by the Russian government planted a small, titanium flag bearing Russian colors on the seabed directly beneath the North Pole. In the years since, interest in the Arctic has exploded. By the end of the oughts, books by explorers, journalists, and seasoned academics were filling shelves. These works fed and fed off a hyperbolic international media. Carrying provocative titles such as The Arctic Gold Rush (2009), After the Ice (2009), The Future History of the Arctic (2010), and The Scramble for the Arctic (2010), these books drew further international attention to the complex interplay of environmental, technological, economic, and cultural forces that their authors believed would inevitably draw the Arctic into the currents of globalisation and geopolitical contest that dominate twenty-first century international relations. Contesting the Arctic sits within a different body of more considered “second generation” academic literature on Arctic geopolitics. This second generation has emerged more recently, and aligns closely, for example, with the “New Polar Geopolitics” articulated by the polar geographers Richard Powell and Klaus Dodds. Much of the primary research underpinning the second generation literature has been carried out in the years following the planting of the Russian flag. This literature has consequently been shaped by a very different kind of scramble involving governments, businesses, and academics attempting to restore a sense of calm to debates about the Arctic. It is this effort to restore a sense of calm about the Arctic that takes center stage in Contesting the Arctic. Using evidence from more than 150 interviews— including retired and current members of national and regional governmental agencies, militaries, and parliaments; industry association representatives and corporate officials; researchers and research institution administrators; leaders and activists with indigenous peoples’ groups; and officials with environmental and other nongovernmental organizations—the authors interrogate the ways in which the governing elites of the so-called Arctic Five (United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark) have acted to reassure each other, and the rest of the world, that despite rapid and profound changes to environmental, social, and economic conditions in the region, the status quo in the high latitudes— read: the primacy of the Arctic states and the Westphalian system of territorial sovereignty—remains intact.