ARA · Arctic Regime Adaptation to Great Power Competition: The Security Dimension

The security agenda of modern and foreseeable Arctic politics substantially depends on the interactions between the U.S., Russia, and China. The ambition of this project is to figure out how to improve the Arctic regime to make it a more effective instrument for solving security problems amid the global change of power balance. The innovative methodology includes a combination of traditional methods of comparative political analysis, institutional analysis, and critical discourse analysis, along with a novel approach of corpus linguistics. With the first research step, I will study formal components of three states’ participation: I will assess the position of the U.S., Russia, and China in Arctic institutions, three states’ ability to influence the rule-making, and the decision-making processes. However, this comparative study will focus on aspects of the existing regime that orchestrate the three states' behavior or adapt to it, instead of common practice to evaluate great powers as the independent actors. Such an amended approach will bring a completely new light on understanding the dynamics of the Arctic regime transition. The second step will provide an estimation of informal components: I will study for the first time the official discourse of the three actors on the Arctic regime with a special focus on security using the corpus-linguistics approach. Thus, I will clarify the perception of the U.S., Russia, and China as partners or rivals in the Arctic and assess the impact of their political rhetoric on principles of cooperation – if they consider the Arctic as a zone of peace or a zone of confrontation. The third step will provide a new level of understanding of the Arctic regime's potential for mitigating contradictions in the security field while pointing out relevant instruments and solutions. The project will fast track my academic career from the junior research fellow position to the full professor and prepare me to apply for ERC Starting Grant.