Russia in the Arctic : – A case study of Russias use of hard and soft power during 2007 to 2017

The Arctic is except being one of the Worlds’ most remote regions also experiencing the heavy impacts of climate change. This means an opportunity for the Arctic nations – access to a brand new ocean. The melting region is from a military perspective of strategic importance, as well as it provides new shipping routes and holds up to 30% of the worlds undiscovered natural resources being worth billions of dollars. One nation having taken a keen notice to this is Russia, it has claimed land in the Arctic several times and in 2007 it planted its flag on the seabed of the North pole declaring the Arctic belongs to them. This lays out the purpose of this report – to investigate how the Russian use of soft and hard power in the Arctic has changed during the years of 2007 to 2017. In order to examine this, Kristensen and Sakstrup at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhage along with several others, suggest analysing Russias military and diplomatic behaviour. The results finds that the Russian use of soft power in terms of diplomacy and cooperation with the other arctic states was mainly present, and increased in the years 2007 to 2014 prior to the Ukraine crisis, while again being present after a long haul in 2017. The use of hard power in terms of military might and presence has during the same period of time steadily increased.