Desecuritization as Displacement of Controversy: geopolitics, law and sovereign rights in the Arctic

Marc Jacobsen,Jeppe Strandsbjerg

doi:10.7146/politik.v20i3.97151

Abstract

By signing the Ilulissat Declaration of May 2008, the five littoral states of the Arctic Ocean pre-emptively desecuritized potential geopolitical controversies in the Arctic Ocean by confirming that international law and geo-science are the defining factors underlying the future delimitation. This happened in response to a rising securitization discourse fueled by commentators and the media in the wake of the 2007 Russian flag planting on the geographical North Pole seabed, which also triggered harder interstate rhetoric and dramatic headlines. This case, however, challenges some established conventions within securitization theory. It was state elites that initiated desecuritization and they did so by shifting issues in danger of being securitized from security to other techniques of government. Contrary to the democratic ethos of the theory, these shifts do not necessarily represent more democratic procedures. Instead, each of these techniques are populated by their own experts and technocrats operating according to logics of right (law) and accuracy (science). While shifting techniques of government might diminish the danger of securitized relations between states, the shift generates a displacement of controversy. Within international law we have seen controversy over its ontological foundations and within science we have seen controversy over standards of science. Each of these are amplified and take a particularly political significance when an issue is securitized via relocation to another technique. While the Ilulissat Declaration has been successful in minimizing the horizontal conflict potential between states it has simultaneously given way for vertical disputes between the signatory states on the one hand and the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic on the other.

Highlights

This article suggests that the Ilulissat Declaration of 2008 can be perceived as a preemptive desecuritization act in reaction to the growing concern for military conflict in the wake of the Russian flag planting on the North Pole in 2007
We suggest that desecuritization is not necessarily about moving a policy issue from security back to normal politics but, rather, desecuritization works by shifting a policy issue from one technique of government to another
Throughout the Cold War, the Arctic was securitized by the military sector as part of a possible US and USSR military conflict, which would in turn threaten most of the world

Summary

Introduction

This article suggests that the Ilulissat Declaration of 2008 can be perceived as a preemptive desecuritization act in reaction to the growing concern for military conflict in the wake of the Russian flag planting on the North Pole in 2007. Analyses of desecuritization posit state elites as those who securitize, and public voices – for lack of a better term – as those who seek to desecuritize And this is the most significant for this article, the success of the Ilulissat Declaration was built on its ability to shift the question of sovereign rights from a potentially securitized domain to another, very particular legal-technical regime codified by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The main purpose of this article is to show how such acts of desecuritization through shifting techniques of government may generate new lines of controversy While this shift has, been successful in minimizing the risk of horizontal conflict between states, it has simultaneously given way for vertical disputes between the signatory states on the one hand and the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic on the other who question the very ontological foundation of the sovereignty concept and the legitimacy behind the alleged right to delineate the Arctic. This again is followed by an analysis of the Ilulissat Declaration as a case of desecuritization, while laying out the displacement of controversy

Objectives

Conclusion