Red Arctic: Russian Strategy Under Putin, by Elizabeth Buchanan, Brookings Institution Press, 224 pages.
Vladimir Putin’s approach to the Arctic has long been a source of worry and conjecture. In Red Arctic: Russian Strategy Under Putin, Elizabeth Buchanan, non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute and 1st Sea Lord FVEY fellow, contends that Russia is not a growing geopolitical threat in the north but instead seeks cooperation with the other members of the Arctic Five: the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Norway.
Russia’s Arctic strategy is frequently misunderstood because the Arctic is frequently seen as a region like any other region. Buchanan contends that this is untrue, writing, “Moscow’s cooperative approach to the Arctic, and indeed the absence of conflict in Russia’s Arctic agenda itself, deviates from the way in which Russia views energy and uses it as a weapon elsewhere.” A source from the Russian government shared this opinion, saying, “Georgia, Ukraine, and the Arctic are all very separate areas of conduct…we have shown adherence to UNCLOS in the Arctic and will continue to do so.” Russia has had a cooperative past in the Arctic, too. Gorbachev advocated for the establishment of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a nuclear-free zone, limitations on naval military operations, cooperative resource development, coordinated scientific research, and environmental cooperation, among other things. Any attempt to apply Moscow’s muscular foreign policy in the Middle East or Eastern Europe to the Arctic region is therefore likely to produce strategic fog.
