An Arctic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone – In Search of a Security Architecture for the Arctic ...

• Main Author: MacDonald, Alexander
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Arts 2021
• Subjects: Arctic, nuclear-weapon-free zone, disarmament, non-proliferation, confidence building measures, intermediary arms control measures; Political Science; FOS Political science; Arctic; Axworthy
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/38937; https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/113515

This study seeks to determine why proposals for Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zones (ANWFZ) have thus far failed to come to fruition. In reviewing and analyzing the ANWFZ proposals made by Rich and Vinograndov, Newcombe, Wilkes and Axworthy, which span a time frame of 1964 to 2012, three variables are isolated that account for these proposals’ failures. First, it is shown that proposals have failed to include serious considerations of strategic stability. In failing to fully appreciate or consider the strategic realities of the Arctic region, proposals have remained both improbable and undesirable to governments and strategic commentators. Second, and a consequence of the first, proposals have failed to consider or propose confidence-building measures (CBMs) or intermediary arms control measures which would help to create the conditions necessary to negotiate Arctic denuclearization. Third, proposals have failed to make the best arguments for how and why an ANWFZ should be established by neglecting relevant ...