The Arctic stays rules-driven even as the world gets rougher and warmer, Norway says

On Oslo’s waterfront, Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide opened the annual Arctic Security Conference with a clear through line: keep the Arctic anchored in law and institutions even as geopolitics harden and the climate changes faster than anyone planned. He framed security in the North as the overlap of two hard trends and asked the room to talk facts, not slogans.

“We continue to see the High North as our number one strategic priority in our foreign policy,” he told the audience. “Arctic security is in the intersection between geopolitics and security and the climatic changes and the fast pace of change in the Arctic.”

Eide pushed back on frontier myths to make his rules-first point. The Arctic, despite what many seem to think, isn’t a free far all ripe for a gold rush, he said, it’s a governed law-based space.

“One of the myths that is good to debunk is the idea that this is a kind of a Klondike open for all,” he said. “Every known resource is either on the territory of, in the territorial waters of, or in the economic zone of one of the Arctic states and what the legal disputes that used to be there are generally solved.”

That legal footing is why he argues the region can stay calm even when politics elsewhere heat up. However, he didn’t duck the military map. Geography could pull the Arctic into any wider war on day one, which is why he stressed awareness and practical deconfliction.

“While a major conflict will not start in the Arctic, the Arctic would quickly be drawn into a global conflict.”

Even with political ties frayed, institutions are the ballast and he pointed to technical cooperation that still works and to Norway’s effort to keep the main forum alive.

“We were still able to maintain the Arctic Council as an organization, as a forum.”

Increasingly, the region has attracted the attention of non-Arctic nations and Eide claims that outside interest is welcome, so long as newcomers sign up to the same rules and principles that keep the region predictable.

“It’s better to have these people join our club than to create another club without us.”

He claims that the Nordic security map has shifted too and in Oslo’s view it shifts the balance toward stability in the North.

“Norway is much more secure with Sweden and Finland as NATO members.”

With Finland and Sweden joining in 2023 and 2024 respectively, the entire Scandinavian peninsula is now NATO territory. That removes a gray-zone seam across northern Scandinavia and gives Norway friendly land corridors to reinforce Troms/Finnmark without relying only on sea and air.

Climate ran through his remarks as a driver, not a backdrop, sharpening his case for rules and restraint.

“The Arctic Ocean is also the refrigerator of the planet and those patterns might be weakened and that will have global effects,” he said.

His opener set the tone for the day: keep the High North first, keep it rules-based and lets dispel the stubbornly persistent myths.

Watch Eide’s opening remarks and the conference below: