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By Ernie Regehr
CIPS Policy Brief, November 2024

At a glance…

• While the Arctic has been a region of low tension and high cooperation, the threat environment has been changing. However, threat warnings and projections of coming battles say more about dangerous conditions in Europe than the Arctic.
• One measure of Arctic militarization is the presence of dozens of continuously staffed military or dual use sites spread throughout the region. However, Russia is the only state with nuclear weapons based in the Arctic.
• These military facilities (conventional and nuclear) have been in the Arctic for a long time, and if we are now back to a period of high tension, it is not these facilities that are the cause. The Arctic is not the originator of conflict, it is an arena.
• The ways in which Russian and NATO forces operate in the Arctic now can and do exacerbate strategic tensions.
• There is a need to distinguish between conventional anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions and those that target nuclear deterrent forces. Threats to deterrent forces create major disincentives to cooperate on any new round of nuclear arms reductions.
• A logical, if modest, policy response would be to seek a mutual agreement or arrangement to curtail ASW operations against second strike deterrent forces in designated areas.
• Russia’s high north nuclear forces will not be dismantled or significantly reduced independently of an overall shift in the global strategic confrontation.

Ernie Regehr is Senior Fellow in Defence and Arctic Security with The Simons Foundation Canada. He was the Co-Founder and, for thirty years, Executive Director of Project Ploughshares, a Canadian based peace research institute with a focus on disarmament efforts and international security. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Ernie was the invited speaker at a CIPS event on October 24th, 2024. You can watch his full remarks here: