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winters, permafrost and the absence of trees, “polar days” and “polar
nights”, and certain visual and sound effects beyond the Arctic Circle.
They also share the historical experience of constituting “...segments of
nation states whose political centers of gravity lie, for the most part, far to
the south.”^9 At the same time, Arctic provinces are extremely heterogeneous:
in relief, climate, and distribution of natural resources; population and
industrial composition; military configuration; the level of institutional
integration; and technological advancement. Such heterogeneity implies
different levels of proneness to potential intraregional conflict in different
areas belonging to the same region.
Theory and Methodology
Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and Ming China became great powers and
maintained their position by exercising control over key centers of
resources and the routes linking them. When their control weakened, or
when they controlled routes that were no longer strategic, these great
powers lost their position of primacy. The question (...) is whether these
historical cases offer lessons that are still relevant.^10Jakub Grygiel’s argument is straightforward: control over resources
and communication links has always been, and still is, a primary strategic
objective for any rational actor in international relations that seeks power.
Keeping in mind that nearly all scholarly publications on Arctic
geopolitics and geostrategy in the last ten years raise the question of
exploitation of the region’s oil and natural gas and/or the opening of the
region’s maritime sea routes, coupled with surge of public interest in the
Arctic reaction to global warming (which makes both issues more relevant
in terms of efficiency), we believe that Grygiel’s argument works well in
the Arctic case.
We compare the human presence in the studied region to the one in
other regions (a sub-national level of analysis is expected to benefit from
intrastate, as well as interstate comparisons). By human presence we mean
a set of interconnected and objective human-related characteristics
expressed in terms of selected indicators, namely: demography specifics,
intensity of economic production, military advancement, and density of
regional integration networks. Then, in line with Grygiel’s argument, we
evaluate the potential of exploitation of the Arctic’s natural resources and
development of regional communication links (“effective potential”) from
(^9) Einarsson et al., Arctic Human Development Report, 18.
(^10) Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change, 164.