UNITED STATES DEFENSE POLICY IN MAINTAINING THE ARCTIC NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST (2014-2016)

Abstract

As time pass by the Arctic region become more and more valuable, it has become a geopolitical center that taken the attentions of many state actors that exist in the area. This lead to many states or country perceiving the Arctic region as a strategic environment, which means that the Arctic region now possess important aspect that become a national security interest for the countries that exist in the region. The country that become the main focus of this thesis writing will be the United States of America, this writing will focus on the Arctic defense policy of the United States. Focusing on a country’s defense policy means that the importance of the threat perception of a country, in this writing the United States threat perceptions come from the actions of the Russian Federation in the Arctic region. The Russian Federation has aggressively increase their presence in the Arctic region going as far as claiming important trade routes in the Arctic region, by aggressively deploying their military in the Arctic region. In response to this the United States feels threatened by the military of Russia over the Arctic as the U.S. sees that Russia has become a threat to the national security interest of the United States and also their sovereignty. In order to assess the threat the United States believe that increasing their maritime domain awareness and military deployment in the Arctic region in order to balance themselves with the Russians. This include the deployments of almost all the U.S. military branches which includes the U.S Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, and Army.