The Emerging Politics of Antarctica

Anne- Marie Brady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415531399
• eBook ISBN: 9781135136949
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the post-Cold War challenges facing Antarctic governance. It seeks to understand the interests of new players in Antarctic affairs such as China, India, Korea and Malaysia, and how other key players such as Russia and the USA or claimant states such as New Zealand or France are coping in the new global order.

Antarctica is the world's fifth largest continent and its territories are claimed by seven different states. Since 1961 Antarctica has been managed under the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), a regime which, according to its critics, by the terms of its membership effectively excludes most of the nations of the world.

This book examines the post-Cold War challenges facing Antarctic governance, and is organized thematically into three sections:

• Part 1 considers the role of Antarctic politics in the current post-Cold War, post-colonial era and the impact this new political environment is having on the ATS.
• Part 2 looks at the competing foreign policy objectives of a representative range of countries with Antarctic activities.
• Part 3 examines issues that have the potential to destabilise the order of the Antarctic Treaty System, such as unrestricted tourism and new advances in science and technology.

The Emerging Politics of Antarctica will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, polar studies and foreign policy studies.

Part I

Antarctic politics in the current world order

1 The Antarctic Treaty System

Challenges, coordination, and congruity

Haward Marcus

Introduction

The Antarctic is a place of superlatives related to its physical environment — the coldest, highest, driest continent — but its governing arrangements are also in their own way impressive. The Antarctic Treaty¹ is a remarkable instrument, providing a framework of peaceful collaboration and scientific endeavour as well as demilitarising an entire continent. It also provides a formula to address territorial claims and interests. The treaty and its key subordinate and complementary instruments form the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS).² Interaction within and without the ‘system’ centres on and has affected power relations, conflict, and questions of resource allocation.³ Such interactions have led to external challenges to and internally generated critiques of the ATS. They have also raised issues of coordination within the ATS and the extent to which values within the system provide or reflect current international norms.

This chapter considers the politics of Antarctica through the examination of the development and evolution of the ATS, utilising definitions that consider politics as centring on the articulation of, and management of conflicts over, interests. Interests are never uncontested, nor are they always clearly articulated or separable. I have chosen to explore the politics of Antarctica by identifying and examining challenges, both internal and external, to the ATS; considering the ways in which interests, ideas, and actions are coordinated; and exploring the level of congruity between the ATS and other instruments, institutions, and regimes. This framework, and drawing on the insights made by other contributors to this volume, provides a means to assess the performance of the ATS in the politics of Antarctica.

The politics of Antarctica

Politics is clearly a contested concept. Otto von Bismark famously likened the political process to the making of sausages: “the less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night”.⁴ The inference is one should not look too closely nor enquire too deeply into the political process. While there is much to commend in a focus on outputs, focusing on the process of decision-making is a key to understanding politics. Bernard Crick saw politics “as the activity by which differing interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share in power [and] where politics proves successful in ensuring reasonable stability and order”.⁵ A working definition of politics includes considering power relations, conflict management, and resource allocation,⁶ or, as Harold Lasswell noted, “who gets what, when and how”.⁷ Politics is managing conflicts or mediating differences over policy preferences or interests. Discussion, debate, and differences of opinion are the signs of a healthy system. Progress is made when ideas are debated, new approaches put forward and tested, even if the initial action or initiative is met with resistance or opposition.

As noted also in other contributions to this volume, politics in the form of disputes and differences over territorial claims and sovereignty in Antarctica (geopolitics⁸) was an impetus for the Antarctic Conference that led to the negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty. These differences and disputes — what was termed the “Antarctic Problem”⁹ — provided the first major challenge for Antarctic states.¹⁰ It not only involved overlapping territorial claims and disputed sovereignty in the Antarctic Peninsula (“the ABC dispute” between Argentina, Britain, Chile)¹¹ but reflected broader differences between claimant and non-claimant states. A solution to the Antarctic Problem also needed to accommodate the interests of the cold war superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, both active in the 1957–58 International Geophysical Year (IGY).¹²

Science and international collaboration — the international polar years

Increased impetus for Antarctic exploration and scientific research occurred in the period following the end of the Second World War. This period, dominated by cold war tension between two superpowers — the United States of America and the Soviet Union — did not exclude Antarctica. The USA's expeditions High Jump 1946–47 and Deep Freeze 1955–56 reinvigorated Antarctic science and debates over Antarctica's geopolitics in the post-war period. Increased interest in Antarctica led, as Elzinga¹³ records, to the development of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). SCAR¹⁴ was constituted in 1958.

The IGY in 1957–58 followed earlier “International Polar Years”, the first in 1882–83,¹⁵ and the second established fifty years later in 1932–33, with the third in 2007–09.¹⁶ The first International Polar Year (IPY) occurred after seven years of development. This first IPY saw 12 expeditions to the Arctic and three to Antarctica, involving 12 countries. The second IPY, established 50 years later in 1932–33, involved 44 countries and encouraged the development of further international collaboration on polar science, although this collaboration was halted during the Second World War, with a concomitant reduction in Antarctic activity.¹⁷

Developments in science and technology, and the transfer of technology developed during the cataclysm of the Second World War into peaceful purposes encouraged international collaboration on polar science. Proposals for a further multi-national polar science programme to take advantage of favourable solar conditions, focusing on an emerging area of space research, led to the establishment of the IGY, with a 25-rather than 50-year interval from the second IPY. The focus of polar research was conditioned, too, by concerns over the consequences of emergent areas of space research, the “missile gap” and concerns over the relative strengths of science and technology in the West as opposed to the Soviet Union.¹⁸

The success of the IGY also ensured that the primary value of scientific research was reiterated during the Antarctic conference and embedded in the Antarctic Treaty, with science seen as “the currency” of the ATS.¹⁹ While science was promoted, geopolitics was not forgotten in the IGY; the Soviet Union established research stations in each of the claimant states' territories during the International Geophysical Year in 1957–58, while the United States established the Amundsen–Scott station at the south geographic pole, effectively within each claimant's territorial claim.²⁰

The broadening and deepening of multi-national scientific collaboration continued, with the third IPY occurring in 2007–09. The 2007–09 IPY was established through the International Polar Year Joint Committee of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). The IPY focused on research on the atmosphere, ice, land, oceans, people, and space, within six broad themes,²¹ involving 63 nations, 400 projects, and approximately 50,000 scientists working in both polar regions.²² The 2007–09 IPY emphasised education and outreach, linking the IPY science to education programmes. While the 2007–09 IPY may not have had the same geopolitical context as IGY – the era of Sputnik and the beginning of the global space race – it nonetheless continued the pattern of major scientific collaboration in Antarctica that had been initiated by the IGY.

From science to diplomacy – the Antarctic Treaty

The successful international collaboration during the IGY gave great impetus to the negotiation of the Antarctic treaty, yet the form of the treaty, or its membership, were not a given as a result of the successes of the IGY. The agreement not to pursue territorial claims during the IGY, what was termed the “Standstill Proposal”,²³ was to be important in the subsequent treaty conference. Most significantly the IGY included the establishment of major scientific research programmes, stations, and facilities in the Antarctic by both the USA and USSR. The involvement of the Soviet Union in the IGY was significant but its participation in the Antarctic Conference raised some concerns, with Australia's Foreign Minister playing a major role in ensuring Soviet participation in the conference and support for the Treaty.²⁴

The parties to the Antarctic conference had to grapple with the Antarctic Problem. The standstill proposal enabled the collaboration and linkages between claimant states²⁵ and others essential to the success of the IGY to occur, yet other options were being proposed prior to the Antarctic conference.²⁶ Prior to the negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty in 1958–59 New Zealand Prime Minister Nash did indicate he favoured internationalisation of the Antarctic, a position at odds with other claimants and the USA, and indeed at odds with sections of his government. The Chilean standstill initiative provided a modus vivendi to resolve the differences between claimants and others, and the base of Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty, widely accepted as the lynchpin of the treaty and the ATS.

The Antarctic Treaty was signed in 195...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Routledge advances in international relations and global politics
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Antarctic politics in the current world order
• Part II Antarctica and competing foreign policy objectives
• Part III Burning issues on the Antarctic ice
• Index