Cold War legacies in Russia’s Svalbard policy - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 20

act' is acknowledged as legitimate by a (significant) 'audience', the issue in
question has become successfully 'securitized'. The issue has then been moved
out of the sphere of 'normal politics' and into the sphere of 'emergency poli-
tics', where it can be dealt with in an urgent manner and with fewer formal
and informal restraints. By uttering 'security', a state representative moves
a particular development into a particular area and thereby claims a special
right to use whatever means are necessary to block it (Wæver 1995:55).
The outcome of security 'speech acts' is determined by 'internal' (lin-
guistic-grammatical) as well as 'external' (social) conditions, which either
facilitate or impede the completion of the act (Buzan et al . 1998:32) . 3 Both
conditions are necessary, but not sufficient, to bring about successful secu-
ritization of a potentially threatening development. Often, the outcome of
'securitizing moves' hinges on factors associated with the alleged threat, such
as its perceived specificity, proximity in time and space and 'whether or not
perceptions of the threat are amplified by historical circumstances' (Buzan
1991:134).
This study will devote special attention to the latter dimension. Russia's
Svalbard policy in the post-Cold War period features a number of similari-
ties with the Soviet Union's Svalbard policy in the Cold War period. Many
of the issues that have figured centrally on Russia's Arctic (military, soci-
etal and economic) security agenda in the 1990s and 2000s have historical
analogies in Soviet Svalbard policy. These include Svalbard's demilitarized
status, Norway's treatment of the Russian population on the archipelago
and Russia's mining and fishing rights in the region. Judging from the con-
temporary Russian political debate with regard to the Svalbard archipelago
( Barents Observer 2007), and previous articles in Russian defence and security
periodicals (Motsak 2000; Smolovskiy 2000, 2006), the perceived threats to
Russia's current interests in the region include the danger that: (1) the archi-
pelago may be used for military purposes by Norway, the United States and/
or NATO, (2) future Russian mining operations on the archipelago will be
obstructed by Norwegian environmental legislation and (3) Russian fisher-
men will be pushed out of the FPZ by the Norwegian Coast Guard. Therefore,
the working hypothesis of this study is that contemporary Russian threat
perceptions and security policies with regard to the Svalbard region, perhaps
more than elsewhere in the European Arctic, are shaped, or at least heavily
influenced, by perceptions and policies formed in the Cold War period.
In order to understand how and why these particular issues were 'securitized'
in Russia, and to explore more generally the role of 'historical circumstances'
as a 'facilitating condition' for securitization, a case study approach is applied.
The selection of cases for this study is based on an overall assessment of the
Russian Svalbard debate in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the content of
Svalbard-related diplomatic exchanges between Russia and Norway during
the same period. The three threats singled out above cover different dimen-
sions of the concept of security: the first case (the establishment and use of