An Arctic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone – In Search of a Security Architecture for the Arctic
Date
2021-06-11
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Abstract
This study seeks to determine why proposals for Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zones (ANWFZ) have thus far failed to come to fruition. In reviewing and analyzing the ANWFZ proposals made by Rich and Vinograndov, Newcombe, Wilkes and Axworthy, which span a time frame of 1964 to 2012, three variables are isolated that account for these proposals’ failures. First, it is shown that proposals have failed to include serious considerations of strategic stability. In failing to fully appreciate or consider the strategic realities of the Arctic region, proposals have remained both improbable and undesirable to governments and strategic commentators. Second, and a consequence of the first, proposals have failed to consider or propose confidence-building measures (CBMs) or intermediary arms control measures which would help to create the conditions necessary to negotiate Arctic denuclearization. Third, proposals have failed to make the best arguments for how and why an ANWFZ should be established by neglecting relevant historic-legal precedents. The isolation of these three variables leads to two key contributions. First, all relevant historic-legal precedents are reviewed in relation to four key obstacles to ANWFZ realization (the inclusion of partial territory, negative security assurances, members of a collective security alliance joining a NWFZ, and the prohibition of the transit of nuclear weapons through the high seas of a NWFZ). The second contribution is the elaboration of a ‘menu’ of Arctic-specific CBMs and arms control measures. The formulation of this menu was guided by the key contention that the foundation of confidence is communication and information sharing. That is, arms control measures, to even be negotiated, must first be preceded by confidence-building measures. Arms control measures require trust, both in the negotiation and execution phase, established dialogue forums and confidence building measures provide just that. These contributions were made in an effort to fill the strategic void which the analysis of this study determined ANWFZ proposals have suffered from. It is an effort to operationalize the discovered factors of failure and to begin the work of putting the proposals in direct dialogue with related commentaries and larger discourses on Arctic security.
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Arctic, nuclear-weapon-free zone, disarmament, non-proliferation, confidence building measures, intermediary arms control measures
Citation
MacDonald, A. (2021). An Arctic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone – In Search of a Security Architecture for the Arctic (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.