Return of the Groβraum and the Proper Security Crisis of Rising Arctic Tension. Special Online Issue, 46 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (Special Issue), 47-68 (2025).

Abstract

This article adopts a spatial approach to understanding geopolitical events in the Arctic. It is sensitive to emerging securityscapes that cannot disentangle from broader global implications of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. A melting Arctic is reshaping the liner boundaries that define membership within its historically closed circumpolar polity; however, the international legal challenges to global Arctic governance, dangerously suspended due to a breakdown in Arctic governance relations with the Arctic’s dominant stakeholder—Russia— must also contest crudely defined actorless threats that persist in a climate of geopolitical stalemate and rising tensions. These actorless threats form the proper crisis that challenge regional and global security.