Introduction: Arctic International Relations in a Widened Security Perspective

This special issue of Politik aims to widen the debate on Arctic security relations through a more comprehensive dialogue inclusive of the many different types of security, their interactions, and their challenges by using the theoretical approach of the Copenhagen School. A better understanding of security dynamics in the circumpolar North today demands a critical analysis of those changes through a multidisciplinary and multi-modal lens. Each chapter in this special issue provides one layer of that multimodal lens of Arctic security that, together, weave a complex web of change. This special issue therefore continues to move the discourse of polar security beyond – but not excluding – the conventional debates of military capabilities and state sovereignty towards a more comprehensive definition of security, including its interacting environmental, economic, political, health and cultural dimensions.