The Arctic: Geopolitical Change in a Rapidly Warming Arena

While the physical conditions of the Arctic are subject of rapid climate change, the geopolitical situation in High North is also changing rapidly. What was widely perceived as the region of so-called peaceful and harmonic “Arctic exceptionalism” turns out to be a normal, strategically contested arena of great power politics as any other region on earth. First of all the Russian Federation followed by the United States and the PRC are the three dominant players in the High North, whose interests, actions, and power plays are going to shape the fate of the Arctic for the next decades to come.