Climate change and rising oil prices have thrust the Arctic to the top of the foreign policy agenda and raised difficult issues of sovereignty, security and environmental protection. Improved access for shipping and resource development is leading to new international rules on safety, pollution prevention and emergency response. Around the Arctic, maritime boundary disputes are being negotiated and resolved, and new international institutions, such as the Arctic Council, are mediating deep-rooted tensions between Russia and NATO and between nation states and indigenous peoples. International Law and the Arctic explains these developments and reveals a strong trend towards international cooperation and law-making. It thus contradicts the widespread misconception that the Arctic is an unregulated zone of potential conflict.

This article contributes the insight that during an international crisis, a pre-existing state of complex interdependence can help to preserve cooperation. It derives the insight from a case study on the International Relations of the Arctic before and after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. The case study is examined through the lens of Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's concept of 'complex interdependence', as developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence-a concept which provides the analytical breadth necessary for a multifactorial situation of regional cooperation and conflict. It finds that Arctic international relations had achieved a state of complex interdependence by 2014, and that some important elements of interdependence then disappeared after the annexation of Crimea. But while most military and economic cooperation between Russia and Western states was suspended, many aspects of regional cooperation continued, including on search and rescue, fisheries, continental shelves, navigation and in the Arctic Council. The question is, why has Arctic cooperation continued in some issue areas while breaking down in others? Why have Russian-Western relations in that region been insulated, to some degree, from developments elsewhere? The concept of complex interdependence provides some answers.

The rapid development of mega-constellations risks multiple tragedies of the commons, including tragedies to ground-based astronomy, Earth orbit, and Earth’s upper atmosphere. Moreover, the connections between the Earth and space environments are inadequately taken into account by the adoption of a consumer electronic model applied to space assets. For example, we point out that satellite re-entries from the Starlink mega-constellation alone could deposit more aluminum into Earth’s upper atmosphere than what is done through meteoroids; they could thus become the dominant source of high-altitude alumina. Using simple models, we also show that untracked debris will lead to potentially dangerous on-orbit collisions on a regular basis due to the large number of satellites within mega-constellation orbital shells. The total cross-section of satellites in these constellations also greatly increases the risk of impacts due to meteoroids. De facto orbit occupation by single actors, inadequate regulatory frameworks, and the possibility of free-riding exacerbate these risks. International cooperation is urgently needed, along with a regulatory system that takes into account the effects of tens of thousands of satellites.

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By accepting some rules of customary international law states are necessarily accepting rules about how those rules are maintained, developed or changed.