Hello and welcome. My name is Sophia Bash and you're listening to the CER podcast.

Hello, welcome to a special edition of the CER podcast. We're recording not in London or Brussels today,

but this episode we're recording in Levy, Finland, where we have just concluded

the CEAS Arctic Bridge Summit. I'm joined by Elizabeth Braw and Ethan Corbyn, two of our speakers

at the summit. Elizabeth is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Ethan is the

director of the Defense and Security Committee at the NATO Piedimentary Assembly.

We're going to talk about security and defense in the Arctic.

The Arctic is changing, temperatures are rising, the ice is melting,

and aside from the effects that that has on the people in the region and the climate worldwide,

it also means that the region's resources, its oil and gas,

is slowly being unlocked. Let me put two scenarios to you. The first one, the Arctic is the next

big theater of conflict. The race for resources and military control of a strategically

highly relevant region will lead to proliferation and tension between great powers with an interest

in the Arctic. Or the second scenario, the Arctic is unique. It is a region where international

law and multilateral cooperation, for example through the Arctic Council, are shaping relations

between countries and the challenges of the environment and the need for scientific research

means that the Arctic will not create but rather diffuse tensions between the East and the West.

Ethan, should we start with you?

Sure. That's an oblique scenario, but it's within a context that's understandable.

Listen, the Arctic isn't immune from the general rising amount of conflict that's happening between the East and the West.

What was previously an attempt at strategic cooperation in the wake of the Cold War has clearly shifted towards strategic competition between Russia and I guess we could say NATO, largely because Russia views that in the

larger European security, architecture, its interests are not adequately represented. So Russia

...