http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee 282 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 10 / 2017 In conclusion, as the French writer Amiral Besnault has pointed out: “given the uncertainties of the future, a combination of economic needs, new opportunities, unresolved sovereignties and a spill-over from conflicts elsewhere, continuously made the Arctic an area for strategic concern”12. ARCTIC STATES: INTERESTS AT STAKE AND COOPERATION FACTORS As pointed out earlier, while relations between a numbers of the superpowers are tense in the rest of the world, they cooperate peacefully in the Arctic. There are five coastal States Russian Federation, United States of America, Canada, Norway and Denmark (through Greenland). These States are commonly known as “the Arctic Five” (hereinafter the A-5). All of the A-5 have made sovereignty claims to the Arctic on the basis of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea13 (hereinafter UNCLOS). The Arctic Council (hereinafter the AC) consists of the A-5 and three other - non-coastal - States: Sweden, Finland and Iceland, “the Arctic Eight” (hereinafter the A-8). In addition, six organisations representing Arctic Indigenous Peoples have permanent participant status, but these will not be covered in our work. As we will see later on, this distinction is important because not all stakeholders are involved in the different cooperation initiatives. As mentioned earlier, the region holds numerous potential commercial interests and valuable natural resources for all these countries. All Arctic States have imposed economic sanctions on Russia and, except for Finland and Sweden, they are all members of NATO. Having described the tense situation between the Russian Federation and the Western Bloc, the question we will now attempt to answer is: Why do States with tense relations in the rest of the world cooperate in the Arctic region? Interests at stake When we speak of the Arctic, we are referring to the smallest of the world’s five oceans, with an ice-covered area of just over 14 million square kilometres and more than 45,000 kilometres of coastline. Díez de Velasco points out that the region is unique because the climate conditions make physical occupation of the territory unviable and because of the sovereignty claims made by certain neighbouring States. All of this means that the Arctic poses complex and delicate problems from a political, 12 BESNAULT, Amiral, Geostrategie de l’Arctique, Paris, Economica, 1992; in Øyvind Østerud and Geir Hønneland, Geopolitics and International Governance in the Arctic, p.173. 13 UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Montego Bay, 10 December 1982.
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