page_title: Murmansk Initiative
section_title: Naval restrictions in Arctic Seas
hierarchical_section_title: Murmansk Initiative / Overview / Naval restrictions in Arctic Seas
caption_attribution_description: USS Skate (SSN-578) in arctic circle. per danfs.
context_page_description: The Murmansk Initiative was a series of wide-range foreign policy proposals concerning the Arctic region made in a speech by the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Mikhail Gorbachev - on October 1, 1987 in Murmansk, Soviet Union, considered to be a trademark of his foreign policy.
  The initiative tied together economic, environmental, and security issues in the Arctic. Gorbachev's aim was to transform the Arctic Circle from being a military theater to an international zone of peace among the Arctic powers. The initiative was launched as an invitation for disarmament of nuclear weapons and establishment of an East-West dialogue around the Arctic.
  The Murmansk speech's goals paralleled Gorbachev's ambitions in previous speeches, like the one in Vladivostok dealing with Asia-Pacific relations and a later speech in Belgrade dealing with problems pertaining to security in the Mediterranean Region.
  The Murmansk Initiative was considered a major turning point in the Arctic policy of the Soviet Union and represented the application of Gorbachev's "new political thinking" in Northern Europe.
context_section_description: Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to start relevant consultations on naval restrictions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. He proposed to hold a meeting in Leningrad to discuss the prohibition of naval activities in mutually agreed zones of international straits and intensive shipping routes in the Arctic. The aim of these discussions was to limit the size and frequency of naval exercises in the European Arctic and to totally ban naval activity in mutually agreed zones, but Gorbachev did not specify the exact location of the zones. It is possible that these initiatives were a response to the US Navy’s Forward Maritime Strategy and its increased submarine presence in the Arctic, allowing the United States to have a sizable advantage in the Arctic in the case of an all out war. There had been no large-scale Soviet exercises since 1985 due to budget constraints, so the proposal would have primarily impacted NATO allies. Thus, the proposal was passed off by the Western countries, believing these naval restrictions would have given the Soviets a unilateral advantage.
caption: The USS Skate (SSN-578), one of the US Navy's nuclear submarines used in the Arctic during the early 1980s
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