An Arctic public opinion survey, published by the Canadian research program Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program ahead of this week’s Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Iqaluit, Canada, asked 10,000 people in eight Arctic nations about their opinion on issues like cooperation with Russia, the threat of military conflict in the north, and the role of the Arctic Council, BarentsObserver.com news service reported.
Despite concern about security tensions in the Arctic, support for a “firm line” when dealing with dispute resolution is only endorsed by a minority of respondents in all countries and that support for a harder approach has gone down over the past five years.
Only five percent of Russians believe that their country should withdraw from international cooperation in the Arctic.
This view is supported in most of the Arctic Council nations where only a minority is supportive of excluding Russia from co-operative Arctic forums.
Sweden and Iceland (44% and 43%, respectively) were most likely to agree that Russia should “withdraw from international cooperation arrangements like the Arctic Council in light of recent developments in Ukraine.”
Many in Russia, Iceland and Finland believe the threat of military conflict in the Arctic has increased in the past year, a view shared by a significant amount of citizens of other countries with Arctic territory.
Respondents in the survey were largely in favor of expanding the mandate of the Arctic Council to also include military security.
With the exception of Alaska, the majority of people say the US and Russia should remove their nuclear weapons from the Arctic and that the Arctic should be a nuclear weapons-free zone like Antarctica.
The number of people wanting the Arctic to be nuclear weapons-free has gone up in all countries since the previous survey in 2010.
The survey was conducted in the United States, Canada, Russia, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
