Marin diplomati i Arktis

Sammanfattning: The Arctic area is in a state of rapid change. New fairways open up as the ice melts, which – in turn – presents both opportunities and threats to the neighboring states. As the Arctic is of both economical and strategic interest, these states include both great powers like the U.S. and Russia but also small powers like Norway and Denmark. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how these states use their armed forces in claim of the Arctic and – more specifically – how Maritime Diplomacy is used in this situation. The thesis furthers attempts to address the question whether there are differences between the large states on the one hand, and the smaller ones on the other when using Maritime Diplomacy. The theoretical framework used in the thesis comes from several well known scholars and military theorists including Cable and Corbett which focus on maritime strategy. The analyses suggest that there are indeed significant differences between the studied states in terms of their use of Maritime Diplomacy. The thesis concludes that the four nations uses it’s maritime diplomacy tools in a coherent way. But there is a difference between great powers and smaller states since the smaller tend to use influence as a tool in greater extent. The thesis also shows that Russia as the only state that uses a coercive tool.