Hard Ice, Soft Politics : EU:s och USA:s utrikespolitik i den arktiska regionen

• Main Author: Sandevärn, Johan
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för samhällsvetenskaper, SV 2010
• Subjects: Arctic region EU hard power international relations joseph s nye jr political science power robert kagan soft power US; Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies); Statsvetenskap (exklusive studier av offentlig förvaltning och globaliseringsstudier); Arctic; Kagan’; Arktis*
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-6825

The polar ice in the Arctic is melting resulting in new opportunities for the Arctic states to extracting vital resources and to find new shorter transport routes. Two of the largest actors who both presently have published polices towards the Arctic region is the EU and the US. This work firstly aims to offer a descriptive view of the EU and the US’ polices towards the Arctic region. Secondly, investigate the documents quantitatively and qualitatively to show weather the EU and US policies are featured by ‘hard power’ or ‘soft power’ by the research of Joseph S. Nye Jr. to find out if Robert Kagan’s hypotheses that the EU mainly use ‘soft power’ and that the US mainly use ‘hard power’. The findings showed that Kagan in this case was right about the EU and the use of ‘soft power’ but that the US mainly uses ‘soft power’ politics in their Arctic policy.