Description
This paper develops the concept of entangled threat perception to explain how security meanings in the Arctic are increasingly produced through association rather than aggression. Building on constructivist and post-structuralist scholarship, it argues that in the post-2022 Arctic, threat is no longer anchored in who actors are or where they are located, but in who they are with. The analysis advances a post-identitarian and post-territorial framework in geopolitics, showing how alignments generate audience effects that transform cooperation into perceived threat. Methodologically, the article adopts an interpretive, relational approach combining discourse analysis and comparative case logic. It examines how official statements, media coverage, and policy documents across multiple languages (English, Norwegian, Turkish, and French) narrate and reinterpret alignments. Through triangulated discourse tracing, it maps how the same cooperative acts acquire divergent meanings depending on their spatial context and symbolic constellation. Empirically, the study compares three cases; the proposed BRICS- Russia research station in Svalbard, U.S.–Nordic bilateral defence agreements, and ReArm Europe initiative to illustrate how symbolic visibility and relational positioning drive securitization even in the absence of material escalation. The argument contributes to both Arctic studies and critical security theory by conceptualising relational proximity as the key mechanism through which security meanings are constructed and by positioning the Arctic as a laboratory for post-territorial geopolitics.
