Sammendrag
This policy brief examines changing Russian and Norwegian
approaches to each other in the period 2012–2016,
and discusses how the “New Cold War” spread to the
North. This is an intriguing question, since both parties
had initially stated that, despite the overall worsening of
Russia–West relations following the crises in Ukraine, the
North should be protected as a space for peaceful interaction.
To address this question, watching and tracking
the changing patterns of Russian exercises and military
modernization is not enough; understanding the rise in
tensions requires studying the effects of the interactions
underway between the parties in this region.
Three interaction effects need to be taken into consideration
in explaining why the tense relations following the
conflict in Ukraine spread to the low-tension Northern
theatre. In this, we the interactive dynamics that ensues
when two parties start to view each other as threats, interpreting
new moves by the other as expressions of hostile
intent. Further, we explain the observed New Cold War
“contamination” with reference to domestic policy agendas
and practices of decision-making. On both the Norwegian
and the Russian sides, the new military posturing in the
North, now interpreted as part of a growing conflict, has
emerged partly as a side-effect of implementing what actually
were longstanding national goals.
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