The geopolitical environment impact of Arctic Passage on Eurasia: An analysis based on multi-factor geometric potential models

ABSTRACT

As the melting of Arctic ice accelerates, the Arctic Passage continues to grow. Geopolitical influence has increased the strategic value of the Passage, attracting the attention of countries around the world. The geopolitical environment of the Arctic Passage is not affected by single factors but is instead determined by the combined effects of multiple factors. This paper analyses the multi-dimensional geopolitical environment factors of the Arctic Passage, and extracts features to construct a multi-dimensional geopolitical environment index system, which takes the Northern Sea Route as an example to construct the Arctic Passage Geo-potential Model, and quantitatively analyse the geo-potential for different states in Eurasia with the development and utilization of the Arctic Passage. This paper combines clustering and similarity analysis to explore the geo-spatial pattern of the Northern Sea Route, and identifies two interest groups that are represented by Russia and the United States. We further analyse the preference of stakeholders in the jurisdiction of the Northern Sea Route. This exploration addresses a gap in the current discussion on the Arctic Passage’s geopolitical environment, which only considers a single factor, and it helps to explore new methods and ideas that will assist the quantitative evaluation and pattern analysis of the Arctic Passage’s geopolitical environment, especially in Eurasia. Meanwhile, it will provide a comprehensive reference for the development and utilization of the Arctic Passage about the geopolitical environment patterns.

KEYWORDS:

• Arctic Passage
• geopolitical environment
• geo-potential model
• Northern Sea Route
• cluster analysis
• similarity analysis

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Project (NO. 2016YFC1402701) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41876229). We would like to show our sincere gratitude to EditSprings, who helped us to polish the language. We also thank the World Bank, WGI and the Northern Sea Route Information Office for the open source data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/27658511.2024.2305983

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [2016YFC1402701].