| Summary: | Dissertação para obtenção de grau de Mestre em Estratégia The present study considers the geographic changes in the Arctic caused by climate change in the 21st Century that enables higher access to maritime navigation in the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and Northwest Passage (NWP) and higher access to the exploitation of potential energy resources. It is in this context of higher accessibility to the sea, that we have focused our thesis on freedom of navigation in the NSR from strategic and geopolitical perspectives. Thus, our general goal focuses on considering and understanding the role of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a coercion mechanism to be disposed and employed by the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, considering the Russian naval power projection capacity (analyzing the Northern Fleet and the Russian Coast Guard). From the geopolitical perspective, the Arctic slowly loses its defense characteristics. In light of global warming, the Arctic poses challenges, but at the same time opportunities for Russia. With a more accessible Arctic, Russia seeks not only to develop its seapower, but also ensure sovereignty and territorial integrity. We conclude that, clearly, the Arctic constitutes a strategic region that Russia considers to be crucial for the economic development, wishing to develop and protect it from outsiders. This thesis is a single case study that has adopted deductive reasoning based on the theoretical framework of the General Theory of Strategy written by António Silva Ribeiro, from where we have deduced hypotheses about the Law of the Sea’s efficiency in ensuring freedom of navigation in the NSR. This thesis has concluded that the limitations in the Law of the Sea are being used by the Russian Ministry of Transport to create a different legal regime for the NSR, which restricts freedom of navigation. The Law of the Sea can be seen as a coercion mechanism when international law rules are combined with the naval power (or naval strength) of a coastal ...
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