Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 444

Arctic Yearbook 2014 444 Peacetime Location ca. 36 % ca. 0,8 %** Deployments ca. 66 % ca. 36 % ca. 0,8 %** Military Exercises/Manoeuvres Arctic Region ca. 2 %* ca. 66 % ca. 36 % ca. 0,8 %** * the sovereign territories of Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden within Europe ** only the Arctic land territories of Norway Table 2: Coverage of the Arctic by existing CSBM regimes in the OSCE framework. Included Categories of Military Equipment and Measures of Verification Additionally, a potential CSBM regime in the Arctic should also aim to better cover the military branch of naval forces, especially since these forces already now, but even more so in the future, will play an even stronger role in the area (Lind 2014; Wezeman 2014; Bergh 2014) and are currently not sufficiently covered by existing regimes of CSBMs (Schmidt 2013: 16). In order to credibly reduce the amount of private information on naval forces, a possible CSBM regime in the Arctic should thus also aim to provide location-specific information for naval forces outside their peacetime location as long as they currently operate in the area.2 Otherwise roughly 64% of the region consisting of international waters and Exclusive Economic Zones would remain uncovered by a possible future CSBM regime. If such location-specific information on naval forces operating in the area would be provided, the treaty on Open Skies, in which state parties agree to accept (passive quota) and are able to carry out (active quota) aerial observation flights over the sovereign territories of all other state parties (OS 2002: 5), would probably appear as the first choice of their verification (Spitzer 2009: 11; Josefsson 2014). While currently not able to credibly verify naval forces on the high seas, a prior briefing of the observed party on the current naval presence and activities in the area, as well as the further designation of respective OS airfields in the countries’ northern territories would make the treaty on OS appear a strong potential tool of verification (Josefsson 2014). While Open Skies already covers the land territories of all Arctic states, but is not able to verify detailed information on state’s military equipment (ibid.), a possibility of on-site inspections following the general concept of the Vienna Document would most likely further contribute to an increased level of transparency and trust in all states’ defensive presence of military forces. Figure 6: A Russian nuclear submarine vessel in its home port While in general of a more thorough (RIA Novosti. Vittaly Ankov). nature, inspections as carried out under Confidence- & Security-Building Measures in the Arctic