A new northern security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 45

or trends, of international relations and geopolitics in the circumpolar North:
increased circumpolar cooperation by indigenous peoples' organizations and
sub-national governments; region-building with nations as major actors; and
the relationship between the Arctic and the outside world, including tradi-
tional security policy, since the North is still highly strategic to the USA and
Russia (Heininen 2004a). Since then, another significant environmental, geo-
political and geoeconomic change with growing global interests has occurred
to the region (see Heininen 2010b).
Looking back at the state of security and its development in the second
half of the twentieth century until now, three, or even four, stages and inter-
pretations of security can be identified (see also Heininen 2010a). First, the
militarization of the circumpolar North in the first half of the twentieth
century included two world wars with activities and influences in the entire
North such as the convoys by the Allies to Murmansk to bring supplies for
the Soviet Union in World War II. This stage emphasizes the importance of
traditional security. The second stage, from the 1960s until the end of the
1980s, can be called the 'military theatre' of two superpowers, the Soviet
Union and the USA. This stage included the deployment of nuclear-weapon
systems into the region, and collective security in North America and the
western part of North Europe through the 'security community' of NATO.
At this stage, traditional geopolitics, especially the technology models of
geopolitics, dominated the utilization of natural resources. National borders
became barriers, which meant that most of international cooperation in the
North was frozen. The third stage is the so-called transition period due to the
end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This stage could be,
however, interpreted to have already begun by the end of the 1980s, inspired
by the Murmansk Speech of the Soviet President Gorbachev (1987). This is
due to the fact that the speech's initiatives declared the Soviet North open for
international cooperation. Indeed, international and multilateral cooperation
in economic, scientific and environmental protection in the Arctic started
at the end of the 1980s and flourished by the beginning of the twenty-first
century. This stage also meant de-militarization and the rationalization of the
military, i.e. 'from quantity into quality', and thus it can be described by the
slogan 'cooperation instead of confrontation'. From the point of view of com-
prehensive security as well as that of human security, the third stage is both
relevant and very interesting. For example, based on the above-mentioned
nuclear problem of the Barents Sea area, it is possible to conclude that there
was a change in the narrow definition of traditional security in the 1990s, by
the states of the region, dealing with threats and risks of nuclear waste and
accidents, and, more broadly, with respect to the relationship between the
military and the environment (Heininen 2010a). First, this deals with how
state actors and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have changed their
attitudes toward environmental degradation by the military or, perhaps more
accurately, how they have taken the issue of environmental protection more