Cleaning-up the Arctic's Cold War Legacy

Abstract

In September 1996, the defence ministers of Norway, Russia and the United States signed a Declaration on Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC). Formally devised as a forum for communication on military-environmental interactions, AMEC is in practice a mechanism for enhancing Russia's capacity to manage spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from its Northern Fleet. This paper describes AMEC's development, aims, organization and activities, and discusses the environmental and political circumstances that led Norway to propose its creation. The paper examines important linkages with US strategic arms reduction and non-proliferation objectives, and argues that AMEC's early signs of success stem directly from its linkage with the US Cooperative Threat Reduction program. While this linkage provides AMEC with important benefits, it also exposes AMEC to a degree of risk within US and Russian domestic politics.