Negative security: a uni-actor approach?

Negative security is often associated with the dominant perceptions of security prevalent within realism in the field of IR, often called ‘traditional security’.Footnote ²⁰ Negative security employs an epistemology of fear, focused on the identification of threats and the use of violence, which in turn informs the understanding and practice of security. An epistemology of fear grounds itself in attempts to know and objectify death, to make it concrete, so that threats and enemies can be identified.Footnote ²¹ It is the security of survival.Footnote ²² ‘Knowing’ death, however, is universalised in negative security, as is the approach to conquer or postpone death. The identification of danger and enemies (that which will cause death because we now ‘know’ it concretely), serves to legitimise or justify the use of force. It locates practice in violence, and as a consequence reduces the possibilities for recognising multiple actors because we do not want multiple actors employing violence, hence the monopoly of force that is located in the state.

Thus negative security has been dominated by a ‘uni-actor’ approach, whereby the term ‘security’ ought to be a limited, one-actor, state-centric concept as it invokes the deployment of the most extreme measures (usually the military) to address issues of immediate and existential danger. To call this a ‘uni-actor’ approach is in fact a misnomer – within the ‘one actor’ that is the state, there are contending actors that vie for position, including different policymakers and the military itself – they do not always reflect one and the same position.Footnote ²³ However, in ‘traditional’ conceptions of security, multiple actors within the state are nevertheless erased and represented as one. The result is a narrow or limited understanding of security that privileges one specific understanding of the state. This version of security has at least three consequences:

1. 1 it attempts to make the concept manageable and precise, but at the expense of context

2. 2 it assumes a predominantly linear, one-way relationship between the security actor and a passive security referent

3. 3 it disables discussions about the limited role of the state in its ability to create security (particularly relevant for fragile and/or failed states).

An ahistoricised, decontextualised negative perception of security has dominated the twentieth century and more particularly the Cold War.Footnote ²⁴ Its pre-eminence has remained due to a certain logic connected to the definition – the state itself is expected to provide security to other actors, such as individuals and communities, what one could call ‘trickle down’ security.Footnote ²⁵ The potential uniqueness of community values and interests for security become subsumed within the universalised state. Security is decontextualised by defining it from the position of the abstract ‘state’, whereby characteristics for the state unit are normatively and prescriptively determined, including what the state fears and does not.Footnote ²⁶ Issues of security thus become concerned with the ‘phenomenon of war’, and the ‘threat, use and control of military force’.Footnote ²⁷

Even after the end of the Cold War, advances in security studies that attempted to break beyond the narrow bounds of this abstract conception of security have found it very difficult to move beyond. As Rita Floyd notes, the critical security approach developed by the Copenhagen School (securitisation) has not moved beyond a negative security perception, demonstrating that negative security is not restricted to a traditional security approach alone.Footnote ²⁸

The human security debate has been particularly interesting in this regard. Human security attempts to address the gap when the state does not nor cannot always ‘step up to the plate’ in its obligations for maintaining security for its ‘contents’ (people) – in other words, security is not ‘trickling down’ as the negative security concept would ideally assume. However, little satisfactory and concrete has been achieved, at least within the mainstream discussions about human security.Footnote ²⁹ Many human security advocates attempt the same thing as the ‘traditional’ security advocates, and that is to arrive at a universalistic, ahistoricised definition – a definition for all times and places.Footnote ³⁰ Thus one inevitably encounters the complaint that widening an already abstract and universalised definition renders the concept meaningless and analytically empty. Widening a definition of security that is to be operationalised by only one actor causes big problems. This also prevents some human security advocates from moving any further beyond their own rhetoric.Footnote ³¹

A response to the conundrum of generating a meaningless concept is to restrict it. As McSweeney notes, proponents of a narrow version of human security focus on ‘freedom from fear’ as their guiding principle, in other words, they operate very much in the domain of negative security, epistemologically rooted in conceptions of fear, danger, and death. As also noted by Peter Burgess: ‘Human security is more often defined negatively in terms of threats, risks or violations than for what it might mean in positive terms’.Footnote ³² This human security perspective is reflected in state-based approaches found in the Responsibility to Protect documents,Footnote ³³ or the Human Security Report, for example.Footnote ³⁴ This view of human security renders the individual referent as passive, and the state as active, using whatever means necessary including military to ensure human security.Footnote ³⁵ This is not to say that state intervention on behalf of human security is somehow ‘bad’, it is sometimes necessary.Footnote ³⁶ Thus, negative security cannot be solely equated with traditional security. It embraces perspectives to be found in critical security studies like the Copenhagen School, as well as in human security studies. By the same token then, human security cannot be directly equated with positive security.

Even though it is possible to expand our understanding of negative security, on its own it neither enhances our understanding of security nor ‘solves’ a number of core security issues. A significant problem with negative security is that a focus on fear and threats to the state ignores discussions about in/security amongst other actors and how they operate outside of fear and force, or respond to the fear and force of the state. When the state invokes security-producing measures to protect the state, these same measures may or do have a deleterious affect on other actors, like individuals and communities, who may feel inclined to respond to ensure their own security.

Negative security does not adequately enhance our understanding of in/security within differing contexts, where the employment of force may not play a role in creating security but rather humanitarian aid, community activism (environmental, gender, identity, etc.), or economic stimulation may play a far more significant role. Because of the dominance of the state in negative security, it also renders passive any possible agents of security outside of the state.Footnote ³⁷ This is a crucial omission to an understanding of security perspectives and security creation from non-dominant (in this case non-state) actors.Footnote ³⁸

At the same time there exists not only an intuitive logic that suggests that security is much more than that which is embodied in a negative security approach, but also an increasing array of literature that argues for a less restricted concept, not least found in critical security studies, gender and security studies, and human security literature.Footnote ³⁹ The original meanings of security suggest something that is more comforting and enabling rather than rooted in fear: ‘security – from the Latin securitas – refers to tranquility and freedom from care, or what Cicero termed the absence of anxiety upon which the fulfilled life depends’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Security is relevant to feelings of safety and stability, routines, or rather, security of expectations, whereby we can count on certain things for our future, that which we most value, upon which we can build capacity.Footnote ⁴¹ Thus, there exists a parallel discussion to negative security that security and or the process of security is somehow a desirable ‘thing’ or good, and that it is relevant not just to the state but to different units, not least individuals.Footnote ⁴²

It is becoming increasingly clear, not least by the experiences of the penultimate tool of security (the military) that negative security alone does not reflect the needs in reality. Depending on context, practices and values, increased insecurity is the result of ignoring other actors instead of recognising their roles in the security dynamic.

Positive security – towards a multi-actor approach

Positive security demonstrates that security is not solely about fear or the use of force. Positive security, following McSweeney, is an understanding of security that is based on an epistemology of enabling.Footnote ⁴³ It creates ‘secure spaces, building capacities and capabilities, and enabling’,Footnote ⁴⁴ it is about ‘producing’ security,Footnote ⁴⁵ and it is ‘the maintenance of just, core values’.Footnote ⁴⁶ A central foundation for enabling or the creation of security is trust. McSweeney discusses the role of trust briefly, acknowledging the linkage between ontological security and trust whereby trust is relational and generated by daily routine.Footnote ⁴⁷ It ranges from trust established between children and their ‘parental figures’Footnote ⁴⁸ to the collective trust populations have to society and to each other. ‘Everyday’ security assumes the existence of trust created through good governance, respect for the law, cooperation, and an open society. Nils Bubandt also notes the importance of the ‘creation and maintenance of social bonds’ as central to security.Footnote ⁴⁹ Positive security research additionally asks how, for whom, and by whom security is produced, exposing the values and contexts behind practices of security. An epistemology of enabling opens the field of practice beyond violent means, thereby exposing not only many more actors but also a diversity of practice. It prioritises non-state actors, attempting to ‘know’ security that affects of individuals everyday.

Positive security has much in common with some of the human security literature that recognises individuals and communities as security actors. These actors endeavour to seek security, not just in relation to avoiding threats, but also to building their capacities. Because individuals and communities are allowed into the security acting sphere, these practices of security are often considerably different than that of states, where the use of force is the central tool of security. Many of the practices to avoid threats and build capacities are non-violent in character, including measures ranging from humanitarian and development aid, to economic, education, environmental, and other social network supports.Footnote ⁵⁰ Even when the state disappoints, individuals and communities often resort to non-violent practices to ensure security, building upon whatever resources they might have at their disposal at the time. In this respect, where the practices of negative security are predominantly associated with force, the practices of positive security are dominated by non-violent means.

Enabling can be externally induced (NGOs assisting local populations) as well as already exist (amongst locals themselves, for example) in different contexts. This applies to individuals and communities that must find ways to establish security directly after a natural disaster (flood, earthquake) before external assistance arrives, to women moving out of situations of abuse, to indigenous peoples protecting their traditions and values in relation to changes in climate and surrounding society. However, as Bubandt argues, the parameters of security are necessarily context dependent, as there are ‘different ways of imagining and institutionally maintaining political communities’.Footnote ⁵¹

Actors in focus: relations between positive and negative security

Security does not depend on only one actor in particular, but on relations between actors. The relations between actors of security take place within a security dynamic, and through these relations we see conflict/cooperation between actors, power between them, and the potential for inclusion or reconciliation of various security perspectives within a specific context. This potentially ‘democratises’ the practice of security, which in and of itself has an emancipatory effect, allowing previously marginalised voices to be heard throughout the process. However, this process does not reject a state-based, or negative, security perspective, but includes all actors articulating and practicing security as positive or negative.

Positive security attempts to make these relations clear and visible, in particular in relation to negative security, which has dominated and ‘hidden’ other actors. It challenges the notion that discussions about actors in security are only about ‘referents’, rendering passive the role of actors other than the state. A clear distinction is made between those actors who have the ‘legitimacy’ to declare a security threat, and those actors who are subject to the threat (the referent). Securitisation theory, for example, renders the referent as a passive object in the securitisation process.Footnote ⁶¹ Further, although Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde discuss actors (the military, policymakers, firms, etc.) within the various sectors of security they present, they do not link or make visible the connections between these actors through a model or a process that recognises that they, depending on the context, affect each others’ perceptions of security and practices of security. When speaking about environmental security for example, these authors note the roles of various actors involved, including environmental activists, as well as state, elite policymakers. At the same time, the authors assign ‘roles’ to these actors that naturalises, normalises and disguises the power relations between actors, and assumes a state-based prioritisation of values to which all actors are submitted. A multi-actor approach focuses attention to the legitimacy of multiple actors in a specific context, instead of assuming an all-encompassing legitimacy for one actor in all contexts, as negative security has tended to do.

A common response to allowing for more actors, and more contexts, is that this widens the concept of security so much that it means everything. That is not the intention here. The context determines the nature of our understanding of security, and in each context, different actors may be relevant. Environmental security often draws on different actors (environmental policymakers, researchers, media, environmental NGOs, etc.) than does national security perspectives (drawing on military, foreign and defence policymakers, media, humanitarian NGOs, etc.). The security questions are different, the treatments will likely be different, but they nevertheless debate the core priorities and values that we wish to retain for the future.

This means that women, minorities, communities, research establishments, NGOs, and activists all have the potential to be legitimate security actors depending on the context. In fact, it is not even a question that these other actors have the ‘potential’ to be security actors, as they are indeed practicing security in so many different contexts. Negative security however has been unable or unwilling to see these practices, or acknowledge the importance of these practices to the nature of security in general.Footnote ⁶² Security is thus a process that is multi-actor based, created and maintained both through formal institutions as well through informal (or rather, largely unrecognised) networks of varying scales.Footnote ⁶³ Despite the possible prioritisation of certain values amongst more powerful actors (such as certain policymakers), these values might nevertheless lack resonance with potentially impacted community actors and have little or nothing to do with their preferred approach to producing security.

The current climate security debate exemplifies this very well.Footnote ⁶⁴ Researchers and analysts in this context are a direct part of the securitisation process, and their ability to play into this process has nothing to do with whether they are a state or not or a government elite, but in their legitimacy within their professional field. As such, the model designed here attempts to incorporate the insights from work that has already recognised the benefits and necessity of ‘listening’ and understanding security ‘from below’, or from non-state actors.

Multi-actor security modelFootnote ⁶⁵

A critical model of security needs to take into account therefore not just the assumptions of elites (dominant) in identifying in/security challenges (either for the state, for individuals, or for both), but also other impacted or impacting actors (non-dominant). In the following framework, various actors, from communities/individuals to researchers to policymakers and military actors and business/industry express perceptions of threats and assess their capacity to cope with them or address these threats. The named categories are not isolated from each other but are both implicitly and explicitly linked. The state is included as policymakers and military (whereas the Welsh School, and a more exclusively ‘human security’ approach may be seen to exclude or reject the state position).Footnote ⁶⁶ This does not mean that the military and policymakers are the leading actors of providing or identifying security, or need to intervene at all levels of identified human in/security, however they can act as important conduits for the facilitation of knowledge between communities and actors, as well as respond to human in/securities when communities need to be heard or can no longer effectively respond to threats.Footnote ⁶⁷ Thus, the model reflects both negative and positive security perspectives. But now they lie in an open forum where the perspectives can confront one another, instead the one dominating the other. I have tried to illustrate this by use of two figures.

Figure 1 illustrates the negative security, uni-actor approach, merging state policymakers and military (as a tool of the state) as the one state actor. Policymakers dictate the identification of threats and respond with a defence of the state, usually using the military at some stage if the state is acutely threatened. There is little to no room for expressions of threats by other actors in non-state contexts, also excluding any possibility for state actors to better understand and/or complement or support actions of security taken by other, non-state actors. Instead, state security perspectives interact only with each other in a ring of exclusivity.

Figure 1.

Negative, uni-actor (state) security approach

Figure two conceptualises a security framework that allows other actors to participate – not excluding the state but acknowledging the realities of security today whereby non-state actors are very active in both creating security and insecurity alike.Footnote ⁶⁸ A larger focus is placed on non-elite actors. The marginalisation of other than state actors has been recognised as being ill-conducive to the creation and/or maintenance of security, a recognition that remarkably finds some of its strongest advocates within the traditional framework – the military.Footnote ⁶⁹ Today's military and humanitarian interventions are, to have a hope of supporting security practices in host countries, more and more dependent upon multiple actors participating in the creating and sustaining of security through fostering development and governance (in other words, economic, political, personal, community, health, food, and environmental security). Even a traditional security tool is currently very preoccupied with finding out how to best facilitate cooperation with other actors to ensure the creation of a safe and secure environment.Footnote ⁷⁰

Figure 2.

A multi-actor based model

This multi-actor security model attempts to reflect the influences locally, nationally, and internationally whereby the categories include local or international representatives. The model privileges human/individual security (we need to know more about ‘average’ people!) but necessarily includes state and global security interests to create an image of security that is more accurate and complete than that which we obtain if we only look to one actor of security (that is, the state). The ‘categories’ of actors are rough and broad, representing very diverse groups. The ‘who’ of these categories depends on the context (from conflict in Afghanistan to climate change in the Arctic).

Multi-actor security for civil-military operations

This multi-actor security approach argues for a change in the way that we understand security, insofar as we ought to understand it according to context, multiple actors, and their practices. That we ‘ought’ to understand security in this way is not just a normative wish, but a reflection of the empirical realities facing security practitioners, from the military actor, to the climate change scientist. In the next two sections I will present the example of military operations as well as perceptions of security in the Arctic to demonstrate the ways in which the multi-actor security framework represents dialogues and dynamics of security in very different contexts.

The military have generally operated in the sphere of negative security. Security understood as the military protecting the state against threats is often a key argument against widening as it possibly implies unrealistic expectations on the state and the military to ‘solve’ all issues of security. Keeping security to a simple and elegant relationship between a state and its military is very difficult to maintain however, particularly today where militaries are deployed into complex operations where multiple actors are active. Today the state is competing for attention as a key actor in conflict, reconstruction, and stabilisation.

Responding to crisis situations, whether they stem from humanitarian, man-made or natural causes, exceeds the coping capacity of any single agent or institution.Footnote ⁷⁶ Since the 1990s military and civilian actors have been responding to global disasters or conflicts, leading to multi-actor interaction. The military function for civil military interaction (called CIMIC) lies at the nexus between reflecting, facilitating and at the same time challenging an operationalisation of a multiple-actor security agenda. Many militaries still articulate a negative conception of security but practice a multi-actor approach, largely out of necessity, but without the realisation of what this implies for our understanding of security. The function of civil-military interaction is an explicit acknowledgement that security cannot be established through force (read violence) alone, and that other participants and non-kinetic (non-force) activities are equally crucial if security is to be established. As such, it is a central empirical basis from which security studies can continue to learn and develop, as well as provide critical, relevant feedback and advice to policy that pertains to militaries, but also to other multi-actor security contexts.

Broadly speaking, civil military interaction refers to those relations either between military and civilian institutions (such as non-governmental organisations or NGOs, or governments and their departments, etc.) and local populations. This is applicable to both the relations between militaries and the citizenry within the same state, or those relations between a ‘foreign’ military and a ‘local, host population’ and various civilian institutions, usually in international peace operations or complex emergencies. Of interest here is the interaction between foreign militaries, humanitarian agencies, and the local populations for whom they are ideally meant to provide security. Michael Pugh defines this aspect of civil-military relations broadly, stating that it consists of ‘relations between external military forces and internal civilian authorities or society; between internal regular or irregular forces and external civilian agencies; and between the external military and civilian components of interventions’.Footnote ⁷⁷ This relationship is not uncontroversial, where there are many different national and foreign militaries working together with many national civilian organisations and populations in complex conflict zones.

Thus civil-military interaction exposes multiple actors who are all vying for a voice in creating security, either for the state, or for local communities, or for more specific interests (specialised NGOs for example). These actors do not all agree on what is needed, they do not share assumptions, values or epistemological foundations which inform their practices. Militaries practice security in large part through violence and force (kinetic operations), and do so on the basis of a negative security perception, but at the same time, as the function of civil-military interaction demonstrates, more than force is needed to create security. Aid, in the form of humanitarian support, development, infrastructure, and governance are all necessary components towards providing a dependable security. Ideally the military will not engage in these other security practices, but they nevertheless need to be aware of them, ensure that their operations will not jeopardise other security practices, or at least coordinate efforts with these other elements of security if the kinetic operation is to have any effect at all.Footnote ⁷⁸

This takes us into the three-stage, multi-actor security process, where practices of security are based on different epistemological foundations and reflect different values, and can come in conflict with one another. Concerns have been raised regarding, not least, military incursions upon areas that have been traditionally civil domain and ‘divisions of labour’ between militaries and civilian organisations, the use of ‘humanitarianism to justify military action, the presence of militaries and attacks on civilian organizations, identification of combatants and non-combatants, information sharing between civilian organizations and military, armed escorts of civilians, and so forth’.Footnote ⁷⁹ Additional concerns include the balance between local ownership of security production and the imposition of external forces and/or military forces, the ability of external forces to support local efforts in meaningful and productive ways, and the extent to which external forces further disrupt patterns of social cohesion within and between local communities and civilian organisations in times of crisis.Footnote ⁸⁰

The core challenge is that multiple actors are affected by the security practices of others, and not all actors act ‘naturally’ in concert. But they must pay attention to each other and negotiate a security process that can address most concerns. This is easier said than done. In the case of Afghanistan for example, the international efforts there to support the national Afghan government are in part based upon a structure of civil-military interaction called the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). This structure consists of a combination of civilian (often ministerial) and military. This approach implicitly (if not explicitly) assumes the necessity of humanitarian, development, and governance aid towards creating security, and is thus designed to ensure that as many of the necessary players of security are involved. Even then, success is tenuous, and it is clear from the different approaches taken by each PRT in Afghanistan that there are many different assumptions behind how the balance between civil and military efforts is to be operationalised, and whose values and epistemological foundations will inform the dominant security practices. Nevertheless, there is still a strong assumption that this balance, however it is achieved, is necessary in ‘asymmetric’ or ‘irregular warfare’ (state vs. non-state actors).Footnote ⁸¹ This is particularly relevant to states with weak or missing governance structures that cannot take a lead role in security.

Without the consent of the local population, without their trust, and their stamp of approval that demonstrates the legitimacy of the desired security picture, security will not be attained. This is precisely the struggle we see on the ground in Afghanistan now. Inroads by the Taliban do not occur solely on the basis of their sheer military and violent strength – it also depends on the support they are able to muster, by whatever means possible (similar to the ‘hearts and minds’ employed by militaries), within the local population. This is also very clear with regard to the role of women as security actors. In a context where women have little access to public spaces and official sources of power (although this varies according to region), they must nevertheless find ways to support their families and communities. Despite obvious personal dangers, more women than ever before stood for election nationally, they are taking the risks to support girls going to school, and find ways to contribute economically through improving skills.Footnote ⁸² On a broad, national level, the power of women is still very low, but it is not always the case within families, and within the household. The recently introduced phenomenon of ‘FETs’ or female-engagement teams demonstrates an increasing acknowledgement that information and power lie behind the closed doors where women are, and that these same women are a source of outreach for the powerful militaries in their attempts to contribute to stabilisation.Footnote ⁸³

Developments in the military show that knowing security from only the negative security perspective does not suffice. Security necessitates drawing our attention towards multiple actors. Contributions of the various actors are diverse and not always consensus-based. Conflict arises between the actors, and the power relations between them will say a great deal about what sort of security picture may result, making it all the more important to expose these relations and evaluate them for what they are, if not try to influence them towards a more human security-based, just picture.

Multi-actor security and climate change in the Arctic

But let us shift contexts. We now move our focus to a very different setting, the Arctic, which has often been relegated to the periphery in world politics, meaningful only as a region of security during the Cold War.Footnote ⁸⁴ Security considerations in the Arctic have been traditionally dominated by geopolitical perspectives that further informed national security agendas focused on territorial integrity of the state through political and military means. Insofar as the traditional security approach affected the Arctic, it was as an early warning zone for incoming missiles (between the USA and the Soviet Union), or as in the case of Iceland and Greenland, ‘stepping stones’ of security between Europe and North America.Footnote ⁸⁵ In fact, if the Arctic had any meaning to security at all during the Cold War, it was as a military ‘theatre’ for the USA and Soviet Union and their nuclear arsenals, as well as nuclear targets.Footnote ⁸⁶

Thus, ‘security’ has long been relevant here. However, particularly since the end of the Cold War, military participation has been far less overt. The focus has been on cooperation, building trust and security frameworks are considered undesirable, representing a militarisation of the region.Footnote ⁸⁷ This is because when security is articulated, it is still very much a negative, uni-actor approach. Human security, taken also from a uni-actor, negative perspective, has not been considered relevant here as governance structures are considered to be generally strong, attending to the basic human needs of Arctic citizens (although not for all).Footnote ⁸⁸ A negative security perspective increases the fear of militarising the region unnecessarily, while at the same time eliminates the ability of other actors to express their concerns and values in the languages of security.

The Arctic is politically complex, governed between eight sovereign states with complex, multi-ethnic populations (Russia, Canada, USA, Norway, Sweden, Denmark (Greenland), Finland and Iceland), five of which have coastlines on the Arctic Ocean (not Iceland, Sweden, or Finland). Almost all of the eight states that govern the Arctic are partially or mostly located outside of the Arctic region and have their political centres far to the south of the region. This centre-periphery relationship within the different Arctic nations has not been insignificant politically, as the region has either been exceptionally ignored (centre-dominant politics) or been suddenly subject to considerable attention (Norway's recent Strategy for the High North, for example).

One might argue that in the Arctic, there is a case for maintaining a negative security approach, whereby the only need to talk about security is in the context of state preservation or the protection of Arctic state borders. Otherwise, due to strong governmental structures, security (human security) for individuals and communities are addressed by the state. But in this context, we also see it is necessary to have a multi-actor security approach, not least to mitigate against militarisation and hypersecuritisation whereby security consists of a hunt for an ‘enemy’ against which the state needs protection.Footnote ⁸⁹

The Arctic region almost by definition, or rather, lack of definition, demands a multi-actor security perspective. Its geography is shifting, consisting mostly of water as it is predominantly an ocean with a changing ice structure, surrounded by eight states. This is not a typical definition of a region, which is traditionally determined by state boundaries. In fact, because the Arctic is not defined by state boundaries, there is little agreement on what the boundaries of the Arctic actually are.Footnote ⁹⁰ Regional security in this context is not defined by tidy national borders, and by some definitions, does not even exist.Footnote ⁹¹ In some respects, allegiances between Arctic communities are stronger across the borders than with communities within the constructs of the states these communities are beholden to.Footnote ⁹²

This region, given the lack of clarity surrounding its boundaries, might necessarily be subject to a more demanding narrow, negative security approach that concentrated on the perceived vulnerability of this lack of clarity. However, this is not the case, despite the wealth that exists in the region (oil and gas, and fisheries). Security is provided by multi-actor mechanisms, like UNCLOS and the Arctic Council, whereby the latter includes representation of all eight Arctic nations, as well as indigenous representation. Unclear boundaries have been a ‘fact of life’ in the North, including between Norway and Russia for more than forty years, even during the Cold War.Footnote ⁹³ Trust, through various forms of cooperation, influence nations that ‘naturally’ should have had significant conflict with each other.

Thus, while the eight Arctic states have considerably divergent internal politics, even when it comes to their ‘piece’ of the Arctic, they have at least agreed to some important governance mechanisms between them that focus on the Arctic. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) functions as a basic policy and governance structure for the Arctic, with all states having signed onto the convention, and all but one having ratified it (the United States). UNCLOS is an important tool of trust operating at the state level. In 1996 the Arctic Council was established under the Ottawa Declaration, including the eight Arctic states as members, but also including Permanent Participants consisting of indigenous representatives. The Arctic Council is designed to promote ‘cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, with the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic’.Footnote ⁹⁴ The construction of the Arctic Council demonstrates an awareness of the importance of more than just a state-centric view about the Arctic, and that community interests need to be heard. The Arctic Council is particularly interesting as it is mandated to not address matters of security. This is security understood negatively however. The Council's focus on environmental issues, sustainability, and the protection of communities in the North demonstrate that in fact this body operates in many ways in the sphere of positive security. This is demonstrated not only by the state and non-state actor members and observers (including NGOs), but also by key mechanisms of the Council, the ‘Working Groups’, and scientific and technical expert groups that are mandated to inform the Council on monitoring the Arctic, contaminant issues, conservation, and protection of flora, fauna, marine wildlife, sustainable development, as well as rescue operations. By no means perfect (open dialogue can still be restricted as evidenced by struggles over issues on oil and gas development), but nevertheless functioning and continuously developing, the mechanisms of the Arctic Council allow for non-state voices to meet state voices through meetings/discussions and reporting, which further are intended to inform policymaking throughout the region. However, more work needs to be done here. States represent the more powerful voices, although indigenous peoples have full and active participation on the Council. Russia continues to have an ambivalent relationship to the Arctic Council, wary of engaging any issue of strategic importance.Footnote ⁹⁵ At the same time, the strength of cooperation engendered by this and other institutions in the Arctic cannot be ignored, as it has created a trust between actors whereby expected ‘realist’ behaviour of the Russian state is replaced by a ‘legally correct and diplomatically impeccable approach’,Footnote ⁹⁶ while at the same time Canadian scholars recommend the Arctic Council as a venue for rather ‘traditional’ security concerns, that of territorial disputes.Footnote ⁹⁷

This is also reflected in the processes towards self-governance that are taking place in the Arctic, from indigenous parliaments (the Saami Parliament), to devolution of power to specific territories or regions (Nunavut in Canada) and land claims. The strength of non-state actors in the region is exemplified by a number of negotiations with indigenous peoples regarding energy and land use.Footnote ⁹⁸

While states still bristle about sovereignty issues (Canada's claim on the Northwest Passage as internal waters, Russia planting a flag on the Arctic Ocean bottom in August 2007, or the controversies surrounding the jurisdiction around Svalbard and the fisheries zone), we see multi-actor security issues coming more to the fore in the form of oil and gas potential in the region. Energy security (reliable sources of energy at reasonable and stable prices) is the new name of the game, where states are still active players, but now large, multinational oil companies are visibly playing. Statoil, Gazprom, ExxonMobil and Imperial Oil, to name a few, all have vested interests in developing oil and gas resources in the Arctic, and work closely with governments not least to extol the virtues of drilling both on and offshore in the region. It is to this region that the USA is increasingly looking as a source of oil to reduce its dependency upon the Middle East, seeing the dispute between Norway and Russian as a ‘security issue’.Footnote ⁹⁹ However, Russia and Norway have recently demonstrated that even the controversial demarcation of territorial waters which has a significant impact on the two countries’ access to the estimated vast oil reserves, is not constrained by a narrow geopolitical perspective.

However, not only governments and oil companies are part of the energy security picture, as Arctic communities themselves have stakes in the ways in which these resources are being developed, either by benefitting from oil and gas development economically, or by voicing concerns from an environmental and societal security perspective.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ These voices must also be heard in relation to the energy and environmental security discourses reflected at elite (state) levels. Both former governor Sarah Palin (her now famous ‘Drill baby, drill’ still ringing in the ears), and former Alberta premier Ed Stelmach's promotion of oil and gas development (not least the controversial oil sands in Northern Alberta, in Canada's sub-Arctic) set their sites on North American energy security as well as the American and Canadian economies. Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg recently exclaimed that extraction of Norwegian oil and gas resources was necessary towards acting responsible in light of climate change. The melting ice has exposed the multiple players in the field (states, companies, environmental organisations, individuals, and communities) as the linkages and tensions between energy, environmental, economic, societal, and human security become more clear.

By invoking a multi-actor security perspective, the security politics of the Arctic region are made accessible to Arctic communities, not just elites reigning from the south. It recognises the efforts of local communities attempting to secure their own values and priorities, either in concert with or despite of pressures from other actors (central governments, industry, etc.). Security in this context does not necessarily present a picture of consensus, as these different actors will be practicing security according to their own priorities. However, making visible these practices, acknowledging the legitimacy of different actors in different settings, noting that a uni-actor approach is difficult just due to the nature of the region, means that the multiple agendas and concerns can be better heard as responses to energy and military security rhetoric, and can work towards maintaining a trend of cooperation in the region, despite the ambiguities of borders and natural resource claims that could otherwise heighten tensions.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Security in the Arctic is very much dependent upon different mechanisms of cooperation that instil trust between actors.