Russian Expert and Official Geopolitical Narratives on the Arctic: Decoding Topical and Paradigmatic DNA1

• Author: Jakub M. Godzimirski, Alexander Sergunin
• Position: Research Professor
• Pages: 169-193

© 2020 Jakub Godzimirski & Alexander Sergunin. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Cre-

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Citation: Jakub Godzimirski & Alexander Sergunin. “Russian Expert and Official Geopolitical Narratives on the

Arctic: Decoding Topical and Paradigmatic DNA’’ Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 11, 2020, pp. 22–46.

http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v11.1350

Arctic Review on Law and Politics

Vol. 11, 2020, pp. 22–46

22

*Correspondence to: Jakub Godzimirski, email: jmg@nupi.no

Peer-reviewed article

Russian Expert and Ofcial Geopolitical

Narratives on the Arctic: Decoding

Topical and Paradigmatic DNA1

Jakub Godzimirski*

Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Norway

Alexander Sergunin

St Petersburg State University and Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Russia

Abstract

This article examines current Russian expert and ofcial narratives on the Arctic, situating them

in the broader context of the debate on Russia’s role in the international system. Combining a

critical geopolitics approach to the study of international relations with content analysis tools, we

map how structural geopolitical changes in the wider region have shaped narratives on the Arctic

in Russia today. Two types of Russian narratives on the Arctic are explored—the one put forward

by members of the Russian expert community, and the one that emerges from ofcial documents

and statements by members of the Russian policymaking community. With the expert narratives,

we pay particular attention to the Arctic topics featured and how they are informed by various

mainstream approaches to the study of international relations (IR). In examining policy practi-

tioners’ narrative approaches, we trace the overlaps and differences between these and the expert

narratives. Current expert and ofcial Russian narratives on the Arctic appear to be inuenced

mostly by neorealist and neoliberal ideas in IR, without substantial modications after the 2014

conict, thus showing relatively high ideational continuity.

Keywords: Russia; the Arctic; critical geopolitics; expert narratives; official narratives

Responsible Editor: Helge Blakkisrud, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs,

Norway

Received: August 2018; Accepted: February 2020; Published: April 2020

Russian Expert and Official Geopolitical Narratives on the Arctic

23

1 Introduction1

In recent years, the Arctic has been moving higher on Russia’s international and

national agenda. There are at least four major structural factors that can explain

this. First, given the increasing role played by Arctic natural resources in Moscow’s

strategic designs, the region has become pivotal to Russian strategic security and

economic interests, with the debate on the importance of the Northern Sea Route

(NSR) among the hottest topics. Second, after a period of strategic collapse in the

1990s, Russia has strengthened its capabilities and embarked on a bolder approach

in its security and foreign policy—also in the Arctic. This was signaled symbolically

by the 2007 Russian ag-planting on the seabed near the North Pole by the polar

explorer-cum-politician Artur Chilingarov, and militarily by Moscow resuming its air

and sea patrolling of the Arctic and North Atlantic that same year, albeit at a lower

level than in the Cold War era. Third, the Arctic is increasingly seen as a “retrieved”

territory now that climate change has made visible impacts on geographical fea-

tures of the region, and the shrinking ice cap may be creating new opportunities for

development, transportation, and resource extraction. Fourth, this “re-opening” of

the Arctic caused by climate change is paralleled by another structural change—the

relative decline of the West and the rise of the rest of the world, with China in par-

ticular showing greater interest in the Arctic, including closer economic and security

cooperation with Russia.2

These structural changes have compelled various actors, including Russia, to

reformulate their understandings of the region. According to one recent study, cli-

mate change is “not only reshaping the physical geographies of the North but also

its commercial, political and scientic importance.”3 This makes the Arctic a unique

testing ground for investigating the relationship between state policy, power struc-

tures, and geographical change.

The “retrieved” Arctic is often seen as a space where states and nations, driven by

strategic considerations and economic expectations, “naturally vie for power over ter-

ritory and resources”4—as in Africa in the 19th century. This trend—the “scramble for

the Arctic”5—is evident in Russian as well as Western media coverage of the region.6

However, closer scrutiny of how Arctic politics actually play out shows that, even after

the outbreak of the Ukraine conict in 2014, Russia has sought to maintain coopera-

tive relations with the other Arctic actors—all of whom represent the West.

Drawing on a critical geopolitics approach, we 1) map key topical and paradigmatic

concepts in Russian expert and ofcial narratives on the Arctic through quantitative

and qualitative examination of a set of Russian statements on the Arctic; 2) exam-

ine conceptual tensions within Russian expert and ofcial Arctic policy narratives

prior to and after the 2014 crisis; 3) gauge possible impacts of this crisis on how the

Arctic is presented in these narratives. Whereas classical geopolitics focuses on how

geography can inuence politics, critical geopolitics aims to show “how geographical

claims and assumptions function in political debates and political practice.”7 In this