[…] Recently, the Norwegian government presented a new Svalbard white paper two years before its scheduled arrival. Geopolitics was referred to as one of the driving forces behind this acceleration of the white paper.
Yet, the specifics about the government’s geopolitical concerns are kept under wraps. As the Norwegian government keeps quiet about its Svalbard concerns, misconceptions and misunderstandings continue to arise in media and scholarly work.
Andreas Østhagen, Senior Researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, recently published a research article titled The Myths of Svalbard Geopolitics: An Arctic Case Study, in which he explores these misconceptions. In the article, Østhagen states, ”Common conceptions of ‘geopolitical rivalry’ being caused or even accelerated by sea ice melting are too simplistic.” […]
The most common misconception concerns Svalbard’s status as a ’shared space’ or its legal status as being ’ambiguous.’ Østhagen highlights that many researchers have questioned Norwegian sovereignty or characterized it as disputed, but that this is inaccurate. The researcher says that Norwegian laws and regulations apply to the archipelago and that not even the militaristic Russia could claim otherwise. He also emphasizes that NATO’s security guarantees apply to Svalbard.
”The notion that its sovereignty is in dispute, or that there exists a legal ‘ambiguity,’ might arise from a conflation of the dispute that concerns the Treaty’s relevance for activities beyond 12 nautical miles,” writes the FNI researcher. Läs artikel