The melting Arctic is revealing resources once inaccessible, from shipping lanes to energy reserves. As always, there are great powers ready to secure advantage where governance lags behind opportunity.
For decades, Arctic governance rested on the premise that cooperation could be insulated from great power rivalry. This assumption shaped institutions, treaties, and the norms that held the region together. But assumptions are not enforcement mechanisms. When resources emerge faster than rules adapt, borderlands become spaces where legal rights meet strategic presence—and where the gap between the two quietly grows wider.
This is not a story of imminent conflict or treaty violation. It is a story of governance gaps that become visible in borderlands before they appear elsewhere, and of what happens when legal frameworks meet strategic realities they were never designed to manage.
The Architecture of Arctic Cooperation
Arctic cooperation was born from the thaw of the Cold War, but it originated within the USSR. In his speech at Murmansk in 1987, USSR Premier Mikhail Gorbachev stated: “The Soviet Union is in favour of a radical lowering of the level of military confrontation in the region. Let the North of the globe, the Arctic, become a zone of peace. Let the North Pole be a pole of peace.”
This vision took root in the 1990s when Arctic states sought frameworks for environmental protection and resource management that could operate independently from broader security questions. The premise was not that rivalry would disappear, but that it could be mitigated through institutional restraint and issue-specific cooperation.
This philosophy was institutionalized through the establishment of the Arctic Council, an international and intergovernmental forum that has been central to shaping norms and facilitating cooperation in the Arctic since 1996. Notably, the Arctic Council was never created as a legally binding institution. It lacks treaty status, enforcement authority, and the capacity to adopt or influence binding regulations. Cooperation through the Council is intended to function through consensus, restraint, and shared goodwill, rather than legal authority.
For two decades, this model held. By separating functional cooperation from security concerns, the Council created space for collaboration on environmental causes, scientific research, and emergency response. Flexibility was an asset; consensus allowed participation without requiring alignment on resource or sovereignty issues.
But this framework rested on the assumption that states would continue to value cooperation over positioning. A system of restraint works when all actors accept its limits. When they don’t, norms become instruments of opportunity. In the Arctic, governance depends on norms rather than enforcement, allowing states to claim legal compliance while pursuing strategic advantage. The Arctic is no longer a remote periphery but a central stage for geopolitical competition. Svalbard, with its unusual legal structure and strategic position, reveals how that competition operates when treaty frameworks provide the rules of the game.
The Svalbard Treaty
Svalbard, located midway between Norway and the North Pole, has never truly belonged to one power alone. Since the 17th century, the archipelago has been a space of competing claims and shared resource extraction—whalers from multiple nations working its waters, mining companies from different states operating mines side by side. When the Svalbard Treaty was signed in 1920, it formalized this pattern. Norway gained legal sovereignty, but only on the condition that all signatory states of the treaty were guaranteed “liberty of access” to the land and its resources. The result wasn’t a resolution of competing claims, but their institutionalization—a legal basis for foreign nations to continue extracting Svalbard’s wealth.
Article I of the treaty grants Norway “full and absolute sovereignty” over Svalbard, but the treaty’s remaining provisions constrain how that sovereignty can be exercised. Article III guarantees all signatory states access to the land and right to economic operations “on a footing of absolute equality,” while Article VII mandates that Norway provide “complete equality” regarding property and mineral rights. Article IX prohibits Norway from permitting the establishment of “any naval base” or constructing “any fortification,” stipulating that the territories “may never be used for warlike purposes.”
Yet the treaty leaves critical terms undefined. What constitutes “absolute equality” when economic operations require Norwegian regulatory approval? What counts as “warlike purposes” when civilian infrastructure can serve dual functions? Norway holds “full and absolute sovereignty,” but cannot limit foreign access, favor the interests of its own nationals, or militarize its own territory. Sovereignty becomes limited by treaty obligations defined clearly enough to govern, but vaguely enough to be interpreted in divergent and self-serving ways. Power on the archipelago is built by claiming rights the text neither explicitly grants nor clearly denies.
Russia’s Interpretive Power
Arctic operations today will define its geopolitics for decades to come. Russia understands this. Every action in Svalbard—from maintaining the Russian settlement of Barentsburg despite minimal economic returns, to contesting Norwegian satellite infrastructure through the treaty—is calculated positioning disguised as legal compliance. Russia does not challenge Norwegian sovereignty, but claims the rights guaranteed by the treaty. In doing so, it reveals how law designed for good-faith cooperation can evolve into a tool for competitive advantage.
Barentsburg makes this strategy visible. Russia’s state-owned mining company, Arktikugol, has operated the Barentsburg mining settlement since 1932, maintaining a permanent Russian population even as coal extraction has become economically marginal. State control is explicit: following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Barentsburg workers critical of the war were instructed by Arktikugol to stay silent. Patriotic displays in Barentsburg intensified in parallel: Victory Day parades featuring military vehicles, Soviet flags raised in locations with high visibility, each serving dual purposes: antagonizing Norway while building domestic narratives of Russian presence. The settlement serves a strategic function: continuous presence strengthens claims in a framework that lacks mechanisms to resolve disputes over interpretation.
When Norway attempts to regulate, Russia invokes the Svalbard Treaty’s equality provisions to contest Norwegian authority. In August 2025, on the treaty’s centennial, Russia accused Norway of “introduc[ing] new restrictions for Russia in performing economic and scientific activities in Svalbard”, framing environmental legislation as “incompatible” with Svalbard’s development and designed to limit Russian operations. Russia specifically contested permit requirements for scientific work and restrictions on movement as violations of Article III’s “equal liberty of access.” Russia also claimed that Western sanctions applied to Svalbard constitute a “discriminatory anti-Russia sanctions regime” that prevent full implementation of treaty rights.
Russia has simultaneously accused Norway of militarizing Svalbard in breach of Article IX’s prohibition on “warlike purposes.” In the same August 2025 statement, Russian officials cited Norwegian military aircraft using Longyearbyen civil airport, Norwegian naval visits, and SvalSat’s use by NATO allies as evidence of military presence disguised as civilian activity.
Russia frames this as Norway “building up its military presence” and “increasing its involvement into the orbit of NATO’s military political planning” in direct violation of the treaty’s demilitarization clause. Norway countered that such activities are “compatible with long-standing practice” and do not constitute “warlike purposes.” Both claims rest on interpretation. This exchange reveals the treaty’s core vulnerability. When critical terms lack definition, competing interpretations cannot be reconciled. Both invoke the treaty, neither can be authoritatively refuted. Ambiguity isn’t a bug in the system, it’s inherent in the system itself.
Russia positions itself as defending the treaty against Norwegian violations, claiming its presence will continue “developing and expanding in full compliance with the 1920 Treaty.” The selectivity is deliberate. The notion that a state currently waging an illegal war of conquest in Ukraine frames itself as the defender of treaty law in the Arctic would be absurd if it weren’t so calculated. Why resort to flagrant violations of international law when you can weaponize it instead?
Russia’s strategy can be summarized as bilateralization: portraying Svalbard disputes as matters between Norway and Russia under the treaty while preventing Norway from invoking NATO or multilateral bodies for support. This approach serves to frame, restrict, and ultimately erode Norway’s already limited ability to fully exercise sovereignty despite its official status. The treaty provides no enforcement mechanism or third-party adjudication, meaning Russia doesn’t need to win any legal arguments—only assert them. Each contestation creates ambiguity where Norway seeks clarity, establishing leverage Norway cannot regulate without triggering accusations of discrimination. The actor willing to test boundaries holds the advantage in a framework that depends on mutual restraint but provides no recourse when restraint dissolves.
A Norwegian Dilemma
Norway faces a dilemma the treaty cannot resolve—and no good options. Push back, and Russia invokes discrimination. Stay silent, and presence continues to build precedent. Militarize, and Norway violates the very treaty it seeks to uphold. Norway holds sovereignty it cannot fully exercise, constrained by obligations it cannot unilaterally revise. The bind is legal, not political: the same treaty granting Norway authority limits how that authority can be applied.
Norway also interprets the treaty loosely. Military aircraft in civilian airports, satellite infrastructure serving NATO, justified through their own reading of Article IX. Yet there is a fundamental difference between treaty interpretations. It isn’t that Norway fully respects the treaty while Russia exploits it. Rather, Norway—as Svalbard’s legal sovereign—bears consequences for interpretation that Russia does not. Norway seeks legitimacy and allied support while Russia is comfortable presenting itself as revisionist. Norway wants to preserve the treaty system itself, Russia wants only to preserve access. As one actor needs the framework to maintain credibility and another simply uses it for advantage, the difference in stakes becomes the difference in power.
This bind reveals a challenge that extends beyond Norway. US and NATO Arctic strategy emphasizes deterrence and rules-based order, but Svalbard fits neither framework cleanly. You cannot deter actors claiming treaty compliance. You cannot enforce rules that are vague by design. Liberal order assumes law constrains behavior when norms are shared, that actors interpret in good faith, that restraint is mutual, that legal frameworks reflect underlying agreement about their purpose. Svalbard reveals what happens when that assumption fails. Treaties persist, institutions remain, but the trust that made ambiguity tolerable has dissolved. Rules-based order has no answer to adversaries who follow rules without sharing their spirit, who invoke law as a tool rather than accepting it as a guardrail.
Beyond Svalbard
This Arctic dynamic extends beyond Svalbard. As Arctic ice recedes, the Northern Sea Route (NSR)—which connects Europe to Asia through Russia’s northern coast—has become increasingly navigable, turning what was once a seasonal passage into a potential year-round shipping infrastructure. Russia claims regulatory authority over the route, arguing that it lies within its territorial waters and requires permits for passage, while the US and others assert transit rights under international law. No mechanism adjudicates the dispute.
Instead, Russia and China reflect the pattern of presence as power observable in Svalbard. Through infrastructure investment and joint patrols, they collaborate to establish control through precedent while legal ambiguity persists. Extended continental shelf claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) create similar ambiguities in seabed boundaries. Subsea infrastructure, like cables and pipelines, occupy legal gray zones where strategic control and treaty rights intersect. In each case, legal clarity exists on paper while enforcement and interpretation remain contested. Borderlands reveal strain in governance systems before it becomes visible elsewhere.
When Trust Thins
Svalbard remains peaceful. The treaty still governs. Cooperation still happens—in emergency response, in scientific research, in the logistics of coexistence. But stability now rests on assumptions no longer shared. Norway is unable to fully exercise its sovereignty. Russia maintains pressure framed as compliance. Both operate within a legal framework neither trusts the other to respect in good faith. The ice melts, the law persists, enforcement remains absent. Governance designed for restraint has no method to manage actors that claim compliance while abandoning core principles. Svalbard shows what order looks like when trust dissolves but treaties endure, and the gap between them quietly widens.
