ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the military as well as the non-military dimensions of the modern history of the Arctic until the end of the Cold War. It presents a broad overview of developments up to the early twentieth century. The chapter explains the role the Arctic has played in some of the twentieth century's international conflicts and military confrontations, also until the end of the Cold War. It discusses non-military aspects of the use of the Arctic space in the same period, not only Arctic land but Arctic seas highlighting the redesign of the northern space as a consequence extension by coastal states of areas under their jurisdiction as sea. In the European Arctic, the enormous expanses to the north of the Russian-controlled Eurasian continent could only be reached and exploited by Russia or with Russia's consent, in defining factor of Arctic geopolitics and in contemporary Arctic affairs.
