Cross-Border Cooperation as a Tool for De-securitisation of the European Arctic (a case of Barents Euro-Arctic Region)

During the last decade of the twentieth century much was said about the new security configuration in the World in general, and in the European Arctic (the High North) in particular. The dominant terms were those proposed by the Copenhagen school of thought, i.e. securitisation, de-securitisation and asecurity. Later on, as the first post-Cold War euphoria has passed over, a concept of re-securitisation, meaning that more and more issues of international cooperation are being cast in security terms, became a more fashionable term. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the cross-border cooperation on the sub-national level could serve as a tool for de-securitisation in the conditions of re-securitisation of the inter-state cooperative agenda. The case used, thus, is the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (BEAR) which was created in 1993 as an international organisation and a cross-border region (“Wider Calotte”) at once, and where the regional cooperation agenda, captured in de-securitised or asecured terms, influence the inter-state relations. In order to do that, we have to look upon the agenda and practices of two-tiered cooperation in the BEAR. At the inter-state level, the BEAR is a “week” international organisation, since it has no “own” will and competences apart from those of the member-states. Thus, the real cooperation runs at the level of cross-border relations of the member-counties in the framework of joint projects. Those projects, financially supported by different actors, lead to the development of people-to-people communications, and thus to the creation of common Barents identity. This is a way towards the creation of trans-national a-security community in the European Arctic. Thus, there is a need to develop cross-border cooperation, which will result in creation of the atmosphere of mutual trust, influencing the behaviour of the (nation)states, including Russia, where the need of political reforms is still obvious.