The Research Of Arctic Geopolitical Strategic Status

Geopolitics is the intersection of extension researches between politics and geography, it expands the spatial scope of political research, deepening value connotation Since geopolitics research began to rise in the late19th century, because the openness which it gets as an interdisciplinary, many geopolitical thinkers has flashed bright sparks of thinking when they thought the relationship between geography and politics, and having enriched the think tank of geopolitics. Among them, there is no lack of many geopolitical thinkers who has geopolitical thinking about arctic. The "arctic heat" in recent years is not only the "heat" in terms of climate, resource and environment, it also declares the geopolitical "heat" of arctic:on one hand, the geopolitical pattern in arctic turns into more complicated, Geopolitical competition over arctic among all parties become fiercer; on the other hand, Whether it is for a single nation, region or globe, the geopolitical strategic status of arctic is constantly rising. And the rising trend has been proven by thinkers in the development process of history of geopolitical thoughts. The main task of this paper is to restore and sort out main geopolitical thinkers’understanding change about the geopolitical strategic status of arctic through the way of review and reduction in literature, and making cause analysis from various perspectives, and to clearly show how the arctic zoom from a frozen "barren land" to geopolitical "hot spot".As early as in ancient time, Human had begun the arctic geographical cognition, but most of them were simple geographical descriptions and imaginations. After the new sailing routes opened up, with the development of the arctic exploration in the big discovery age, the arctic had gradually got rid of the position of geographical "dead zone", people turned to comprehensive research and prediction on arctic little by little. It included some consideration about the geopolitical strategic status of arctic in the geopolitical thinking public. Geopolitical strategic status is a strategic status which a country or region gets in a bigger scope (region, globe) on the base of all kinds of strategic resources from special geopolitical relation. Through sorting out the arctic cognitions by main thinkers in the development process of geopolitical thinking history, this paper found that the arctic region has acted a process from "geographical supporting role" to "geographical leading actor" under the geopolitical thinker’s pens. Its geopolitical strategic status has presented three states:from the beginning of "Wasteland-Edge" region, to "Split-Affiliated" region, and to "Center-Pivot" region at last. In this process, the arctic has undertaken a role of "geographical fulcrum" in constructing geopolitical thinking cores several times, and showed up many characters. And then, the paper carefully analyzed the reasons of the geopolitical strategic status rising in the history of geopolitical thinking from the perspectives of technology, international situation, map projections, law institution and environment change, and proving the openness of geopolitical research. On the one hand, it enlightens that we should treat geopolitics from a development foresight, while excavating the values of traditional classics, we ought to enrich the research perspective of geopolitics; on the other hand, it requires us to look reality that the arctic geopolitical strategic status gradually raises in the face, and to promote china’s "creative involvement" for the arctic from a number of angles.