The deterioration of Arctic cooperation following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine exposed the limits of traditional diplomacy and created a need for alternative channels of communication. This paper examines the contribution of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy’s High North Talks (HNT), a Track II dialogue initiative established to maintain exchanges among Arctic stakeholders during a period of diplomatic paralysis. The study assesses the extent to which the HNT has advanced Arctic security and identifies the principal challenges that are likely to shape the region’s future. The paper argues that informal diplomacy can help reduce tensions by preserving communication, fostering mutual understanding, and developing confidence-building measures even when formal political relations remain strained. Through dialogue on governance, security, and science, the HNT has generated policy proposals, explored military confidence-building mechanisms, and promoted cooperation on environmental and scientific issues. At the same time, Arctic security is increasingly influenced by broader geopolitical developments, including weakened arms control arrangements, nuclear risks, Greenland-related tensions, hybrid threats, shipping-route competition, and resource governance challenges. The paper concludes that while Track II diplomacy cannot resolve major strategic disputes, it remains an important tool for confidence-building, risk reduction, and preventing escalation in an increasingly contested Arctic.
On 29 June 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi instructed the Headquarters for Ocean Policy to begin revising Japan’s Arctic Policy, Japan’s first comprehensive Arctic policy document (2015). Drawing on official documents and scholarly literature, this article traces the evolution of Japan’s Arctic policy since it obtained observer status in the Arctic Council in 2013, focusing on security, and asks why the revision was launched in 2026 and how the changing geopolitics of the Arctic have shaped it. The article argues that the revision results from the convergence of domestic factors – economic expectations regarding resources and shipping routes, the commissioning of Japan’s first icebreaking Arctic research vessel Mirai II, and growing interest within the Diet and the policy community – with international factors, including Russia’s militarization of the Arctic following its invasion of Ukraine, China’s deepening Arctic engagement and Sino-Russian cooperation, the US heightened strategic attention to the North American Arctic, NATO’s northern enlargement, and the functional transformation of the Arctic Council. It concludes that Japan should strengthen its contribution to a rules-based maritime order, pursue multilayered Arctic diplomacy with like-minded partners, and use science diplomacy strategically, while carefully balancing alliance-oriented security responses against its non-confrontational role in Arctic scientific cooperation.
Non-harming (ahiṃsā) is central to Buddhism, which is widely associated with conflict prevention and the cultivation of peace. Buddhist traditions of statecraft nevertheless recognize that rulers are responsible for protecting their populations from internal disorder and external aggression. They do not therefore tend to support absolute pacifism or unilateral disarmament. Rather, they point towards a pragmatic middle path of harm minimization that includes maintaining credible military deterrence to prevent war and, as a last resort, defend the state. Nuclear weapons test this accommodation to its limits. Their deterrent effect depends upon the threat of catastrophic and largely indiscriminate retaliation, while their possession creates risks of accident, miscalculation, sabotage, unauthorized use and escalation. They are therefore difficult to reconcile with Buddhist commitments to compassion, restraint and non-harming, even when considered strategically necessary. This article argues that Buddhist ethics may nevertheless leave room for nuclear deterrence where states face serious or existential threats and lack credible alternatives. Such deterrence must be embedded within policies of diplomacy, military restraint, defense alliances, multilateral arms-control and development of discriminate defensive technologies that progressively reduce reliance on nuclear threats. Its acceptance is therefore provisional, and requires continual reassessment as security conditions change.
