Security in the High North – Are we prepared?

The English translation is based on a transcript
of a recording of the Minister’s address 

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

It is a huge pleasure to be at a security policy conference that has gathered so many interested and committed participants.

It is particularly fitting that this security policy conference is being held in Bodø – given the topic we will be discussing.

It is only about six weeks since I was last in Bodø – then for a historic event: the first ever joint meeting of defence and foreign ministers in the Nordic countries. I attended the meeting as Minister of Defence. Soon afterwards I became Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Bodø was a natural choice for that meeting, firstly because this is Norway’s defence capital. The Norwegian Joint Headquarters is located here. But Bodø will also be home to a air operative centre and the leadership of our air force. Very many of the key operative decisions for Norway’s Armed Forces are taken here.

Secondly, as was pointed out in the local newspaper Nordland – a paper I always read with great interest – Bodø is the main centre for emergency preparedness and response for North Norway.

Thirdly, Bodø is also an important centre of knowledge.

I have said on several occasions now that knowledge, value creation, security and preparedness will be at the core of the next stage of our High North efforts.

For all these reasons I am very pleased to be here. And I am very pleased that Bodø municipality, Norland County Council and the University of Nordland are also involved, as well as the High North Center, for which we have proposed a basic allocation in the budget proposal for 2013.

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Because knowledge is crucial. It is the cornerstone of our High North policy – which encompasses both foreign and domestic policy.

This is the main topic of my address. But I also want to stress that a sensible security and foreign policy is precisely what makes our domestic policy possible.

A great deal of what we have achieved in recent years, recent decades, in terms of improving relations in the High North is not – as some think – because we have replaced “classic security policy” with something else. On the contrary, it is because classic security policy has been successful.

Because the point of good old-fashioned traditional security policy is to clarify and manage relations between countries, so that they can live peacefully alongside each other.

And this is what we have done. And this is still part of our broad High North policy.

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I think maybe I should begin there.

I know this has been said before, but I can’t stress this enough: international law is the first line of defence for protecting our interests in the north. And I’m not just talking about North Norway, but the whole country’s interests in the High North – in the Arctic, a region of major opportunities as well as major challenges that extends to the North Sea in the west and to our large neighbour Russia in the east. Our first line of defence is the rule of international law – a UN-led world order.

The way we have benefited from the Law of the Sea illustrates more clearly than anything else how important an international legal order is for us.

It is a fact that our main livelihoods in Norway are based on activities under the sea (oil and gas), in the sea (fish), or on the surface of the sea (shipping). So, clearly, for a major coastal nation – we usually call ourselves a small nation but we are in fact a major coastal nation, with a very long coastline – it is in our interests that the seas are well governed. And that is what the Law of the Sea ensures.

International norms can only be established in agreement with other countries. For example, Norway participated actively in the development of the Law of the Sea. But this is not enough; international norms must also be upheld, reaffirmed and defended. We need both lawyers and admirals.

In other words, we need to develop a set of rules and we need to implement those rules. This applies both to what we do and to what we refrain from doing, so that we can show that we mean what we say, and that we work together with other countries to put these rules into practice.

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This is why it is important for our High North efforts that the Armed Forces have a presence in the region. This is often misunderstood, as people tend to think that you’re either “for peace” or “for defence”. But I – like many others – am for defence precisely because I am for peace. We believe that having a strong and predictable military presence enables us to protect our interests and respond appropriately to other countries that are doing just that – through their defence, their foreign policy, their diplomacy, their security policy, and their trade policy.

I strongly support what Rolf  Tamnes said in the panel debate – that the Law of the Sea is well established as a legal framework in the north. This is because it is respected by all the countries around the Arctic Ocean.

As you know, there is one country that has not ratified the Law of the Sea, namely the US. The US has chosen to take a rather “unusual” approach: it intends to fulfil all its obligations under the Law of the Sea, but not demand the rights it affords. That’s obviously their choice. We see, in any case, that they have repeatedly reaffirmed that the principles of the Law of the Sea must be adhered to. And we are glad of that.

For the rest of us – Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway – the Law of the Sea has long been our departure point.

When the treaty on maritime delimitation between Norway and Russia was concluded – after 40 years of negotiations – both the Russian and the Norwegian negotiators based their arguments on the Law of the Sea. However, lawyers can sometimes disagree, in both national and international law. Purely “by chance”, the Norwegian lawyers’ interpretation favoured Norwegian interests, while the Russian lawyers reached a more Russia-friendly interpretation.

Nevertheless, they finally reached a common understanding, partly on the basis of the way other countries had resolved maritime delimitation disputes in the years since the adoption of the Law of the Sea. Over the years, a strong body of law has been developed, which was also drawn on.

Our agreement with Russia is, in itself, an example of the application of international law in practice, and is thus an addition to the growing body of law that underpins the Law of the Sea.

I am fully aware that it is very much in Norway’s interests to respect the principles of international law, and that this is one of the reasons why we do so. But I am also convinced that all the countries in the High North, including Russia, have a strong interest in respecting these principles. If there is any country in the world that should be interested in the Law of the Sea providing the basic legal framework, it is Russia. For one thing Russia has an extremely long coastline, for another it too is seeing that countries in other parts of the world are showing an interest in the Arctic region. Here I believe we have real common interests both with Russia and with our other partners in the north.

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In 2005, when the present coalition government came to power and drew up its first policy platform, the High North was identified as Norway’s most important strategic foreign policy priority for the years ahead. That was the original wording, which I had the pleasure of helping to formulate following a fruitful discussion.

The question at the time was not whether or not this was important, but whether we should say outright that it was the most important strategic priority area or just say – as is often the case – that it was one of many important things, with 83 other things on the same list.

But the conclusion was that this was the single most important area, and that this was going to be at the heart of our policy.

This decision was not unanimously welcomed. Now we get the impression that everyone agreed, but that was not in fact the case. Many questions were raised from different quarters. Why such a strong focus on this one area? Do you know what you are doing? Wouldn’t it be better to draw less attention to this region? What will the Russians say?

But we believe that it was the right thing to do, and looking back I am convinced that it was the right decision.

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We have also wanted to prevent the creation of a “security policy vacuum”. There was another excellent article in Nordland – which I seem to be plugging rather a lot today – by Per Erik Solli, who rightly points out that security policy in the High North has changed. You should read it – I agree with everything he says.

What we worry about today is different from what we worried about 20 years ago.

But the main thing I want to say today is that you must not think that our current approach has replaced traditional security policy. It has come about precisely because traditional security policy has worked so well. Traditional security policy, i.e. our NATO membership – deterrence as well as reassurance – which was vital during the Cold War, as well as our response to the changes in our neighbouring countries following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the way we adapted our perspective, all this was a success.

We can now build further on the basis of our traditional security policy, and it is important to understand developments in this light.

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Let me say a little more about our relations with Russia.

I think I could go so far as to say that our relations with our neighbour Russia have never been better. Our two countries enjoy very good neighbourly relations.

We don’t agree about everything. Indeed it is well known that we disagree about several things. But our relations are managed through a broad range of forums, commissions and forms of cooperation. These include, for example, cooperation with the Russian Federal Security Service and between the border guards, and contacts between the Norwegian Joint Headquarters and its Russian counterpart, between the two navies, the two police forces, the two fisheries authorities, etc. This cooperation is wide-ranging, and is working.

For example, as a result of our joint management regime we have one of the world’s best preserved and richest fish stocks. This is obviously a good thing. There is no doubt that it is in our immediate interests to maintain good neighbourly relations with such a large and important neighbour.

Right now, a Norwegian–Russian business seminar is being held in Norway – the last one was held in Moscow – and I hear that attendance from both sides of the border is record high. So there is a lot going on, and this is good.

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But at the same time, we are seeing developments in Russia that we must speak up about. A few days ago, I attended the 35th anniversary of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee was established in 1977, inspired by the Helsinki Treaty of 1975. But the first Helsinki Committee was established in Moscow in 1976 by Lyudmila Alekseyeva and a number of other brave men and women. Ms Alekseyeva was at the anniversary celebration. She is now 85, but let me put it like this: she has more than enough to do.

There are still challenges in Russia – in terms of the development of democracy, human rights, freedom of the media, respect for minorities and respect for the values that most European countries attach great importance to.

So it is true to say that we have good neighbourly relations and it also true to say that there are issues that we wish to raise. Dealing with both these facts in the best possible and clearest way is a central feature of Norwegian foreign policy.

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I would also like to say a few words about emergency preparedness and response and security – beyond the purely military perspective. This is an area that I have worked a great deal on; it also is one of the Government’s top priorities, and a key topic in the Norwegian public debate.

On the basis of my own experience, I very much agree with Admiral Bruun-Hanssen that cooperation between military and civilian authorities in this area is excellent – particularly in North Norway. In many ways, the most interesting forms of cooperation are to be found in the north, and the rest of the country could learn from this.

Starting with the northernmost and easternmost area, we have the border guards – Norwegian soldiers doing their military service. These soldiers carry a card from the local Chief of Police in their breast pockets that gives them limited police authority within clearly defined areas. So, in that particular setting they are police officers, and they are given police training.

This is pretty unusual elsewhere in Europe. But this is how we have done things for a long time now. And it works.

The Coast Guard operates along the whole coast, but is particularly active in the north. It is a military resource. It is funded and operated by the Ministry of Defence, but it carries out a range of services for the police, the prosecuting authorities, the fishery inspection services and other civilian authorities. This type of cooperation makes sense in a country with a long coast, large land areas and few people. We may be a rich country, but coordinating resources to make the best use of them is obviously a good idea.

The rescue helicopter service is operated by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, and mainly carries out rescue operations. However, these helicopters are flown by military pilots, who are part of the Armed Forces, and have now been given additional tasks in crisis management. And I could go on, for there are many more examples of cooperation between military and civilian authorities. We have come a long way.

I think I am right in saying, Admiral, that the Norwegian Joint Headquarters has some form of interaction with the civilian authorities every day and almost every night. The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre too is frequently in contact with the military authorities. This is because many of the resources that the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre wants to draw on are military ones, and are owned by the Armed Forces.

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So it is quite wrong to say that we haven’t understood that we need to cooperate. But have I said that we have done enough? No, I have not!

My point is not that what we have achieved so far is good enough, that everything is as it should be, that we have done everything that can be done and there is no need for further thought, planning or investment. But that we are already quite far ahead in terms of coordinating efforts.

In connection with the meeting of defence and foreign ministers I mentioned at the beginning of this address, we took our Nordic colleagues to the Joint Headquarters and the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, where we were given thorough briefings, including on BarentsWatch, another important initiative in this area.

Carl Bildt, the Swedish Foreign Minister said – both to us and to several newspapers – that he didn’t think Sweden had come anywhere near as far as Norway in terms of cooperation of this kind. So it would be wrong to say that we are beginning from scratch. But it would not be wrong to say that we need to improve, do more, and think more about all these issues.

The point of departure for the whole High North strategy – right from the start in 2005 – was that the state of affairs was not so bad, and this is still the case. However, we are looking into a future where there will be a great deal more going on in the north with many new actors and more fisheries activity, more oil and gas extraction, more shipping, and eventually more shipping routes. All in all, a substantial increase in activity that we are not prepared for.

There is no disparity between the level of activity today and the present level of preparedness. There is, however, a disparity between the level of activity we expect to see tomorrow and the present level of preparedness, a disparity we can only address if we improve our emergency response capacity.

This applies across the board, from monitoring and communication efforts to physical capacity such as vessels, helicopters, oil spill preparedness and response equipment, ice breakers, etc.

This is why we still need a national effort to improve our capacity in all these areas.

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I said at the beginning that it took a while before people outside Norway understood what we were talking about. But this is no longer the case. We were also keen to attract greater international interest in the High North – that has also happened, but it has taken a few of years.

From 2006 to about 2008 the tendency among a large number of academics – and some politicians – in other countries was to say, “There’s something going on in the north. It’s a new Klondyke, a fight over resources. There are no rules in place. It will end in chaos and war.” And we had to remind them that, no, that was not actually what we were saying.

Our message was that there were many important and challenging developments, but that it was perfectly possible to deal with them. Because we have the necessary institutions and mechanisms to do so. The Arctic Council was already in existence and has since been strengthened. The first legally binding agreements are also in place. The first of these, interestingly enough, was on search and rescue; now we are developing an agreement on marine oil pollution preparedness and response.

We have global forums that are just as relevant here as elsewhere. We have institutions that can resolve questions about shipping standards, shipping routes, etc. We don’t need to create anything new. We can use what we already have.

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The Arctic is, after all, an ocean. I don’t need to tell people in Norway that, but it is still necessary to remind people in Brussels and other places of this fact. Antarctica, on the other hand, is a land mass covered in ice. The Arctic is water that has turned into ice because it is so cold; it is a sea area that has frozen.

The Arctic and Antarctica are two quite different things. Not only are they very far away from each other; they are also quite different.

Using Antarctica as a model to understand the Arctic will not get anyone very far. It will give people the wrong ideas about what the issues are, and it is our job to help them to see more clearly how we need to go forward. This work is ongoing. I won’t say it’s a struggle, but every day my excellent colleagues in the Ministry have to help people understand these fundamental issues.

The Ilulissat Declaration that was signed in Greenland in 2008 reaffirmed that the Law of the Sea applies to the Arctic. This was important. In essence it was stating the obvious: that this is a sea area and the Law of the Sea applies to it. But the fact that it was set out in plain words was of political importance. This marked the beginning of the end of a period where everyone talked about potential conflicts.

We have been able to clarify a number of outstanding maritime delimitation issues, including the outer limits of our continental shelf, because international law works. And we make use of international law.

Our High North policy in the sea areas entails the application of international law on a daily basis. The Arctic Council has become a leading international arena for Arctic issues. A permanent secretariat will be established in Tromsø in 2013. This cooperation is dynamic.

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Turning now to dry land, we have successfully increased the focus on people-to-people contact in the north. For example an agreement on local border traffic is in place, the number of border crossings has increased, and visa procedures have been simplified. This is something we are working on together with Finland and vis-à-vis Russia. It is an exciting and important area, and one that we will continue to work on.

It is 20 years since the Kirkenes Declaration, which formed the basis for the Barents cooperation, was signed. We have taken the initiative for a new meeting in Kirkenes – 20 years later – to celebrate all that has been achieved and to draw up a new declaration with a view to the future.

As early as in 1993, just after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, Thorvald Stoltenberg was perceptive enough to realise that the East–West issue, which was changing, becoming more diffuse, had to be addressed not only along the Oslo–Moscow axis, but also in a regional context.

I remember a few years later, people started asking – as they always do – about the funding and all the promises. This always happens as soon as a new foreign policy initiative is launched. But the Barents cooperation has been a huge success. It has provided the basis for our regional cooperation.

I have seen that when disagreement arises between capitals, the work being done at regional level can help to alleviate tensions. This is a good thing, and it is important to bear this in mind.

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Over now to the geopolitical theme that is the main subject of this conference.

The fact is that we are not the only ones who are “discovering” the north. Nor is it just Russia – or the US. The rest of the world is discovering it too.

This is reflected in the growing interest in observer status in the Arctic Council. Norway is one of the Member States that welcomes the inclusion of other actors. We believe that the Arctic Council can only be strengthened if more countries regard it as the obvious forum for Arctic matters.

Views on this issue differ somewhat, and we will see what happens next year. China, of course, but also Japan, South Korea, and even Singapore, where the climate can hardly be described as “Arctic”, are showing interest. Many of these countries see long-term strategic opportunities, not least the prospect of a 40 % shorter sea route. And there are also natural resources and other opportunities in the north that we have to consider.

So I believe we have a solid framework in place, but it has to be managed. Sound management entails safeguarding rights and interests in a sensible way on a day-to-day basis. This is not something that can be done once and for all. It is an ongoing job. Security policy work is always an ongoing process.

How this policy is pursued will change according to different circumstances and different times.

We are seeing this a good deal in the north. Changes here are also giving rise to new employment opportunities in this part of the country. These are exciting prospects, and a great deal has happened already. There is a lot of talk about the huge potential that exists in the area of oil and gas developments but it is important not to lose sight of the developments onshore – in terms of mineral resources. Operating mines has suddenly become worthwhile in Norway again. Who would have thought that possible a few years ago?

When you think about the price of raw materials, the level of demand and the like, it is clear that we have significant resources. The silica to be found in Nordland is one example, but there are many other exciting opportunities.

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There are also major opportunities for fisheries. We are, after all, in the county that has the highest fish farming production in Norway, with exports all over the world. Nordland is also home to top class marine research activities. We have a good understanding of the migration patterns of fish, fish stocks, and management policy – a management policy that has proved effective over very many years. This is in contrast to the management policies of certain others, which have been found not to work.

What is really important for us in Norway now – perhaps particularly for those engaged in activities in the north – is to see that there are direct links between extensive knowledge, strong academic institutions and technology-intensive enterprises, and the potential for value creation.

Regional efforts, private-sector engagement and strong educational institutions are all essential. The state too has an important role to play.

But it is extremely important that people understand that this is not just a question of how much money is allocated to the north. I believe that focus is outdated. North Norway has gone past that stage. There is huge potential for value creation in this part of the country, and it is the framework conditions that are the most important factor.

I am glad that the budget proposal includes the highest allocation for the High North so far – a couple of billion kroner. But I would nevertheless like to emphasise that the most important thing is the vision, the opportunities, the framework, the huge potential that exists up here.

I believe that in the context of a changing geopolitical reality, our corner of the world is one of the most stable. Our relations with our neighbours are good. Just compare the reality here – cooperation, progress, institution-building – with the situation in the South China Sea, where the opposite is the case. This shows that, although the Law of the Sea applies to all seas, it only works if it is respected.

That is why I say that we need many types of resources. It is not true that the lawyers can go home once an agreement is signed. Agreements have to be managed through daily efforts. And that is what I believe we are doing here.

And now I am looking forward to hearing more good ideas on how we can do even better.

Thank you.