BACKGROUND

Territorial disputes over exploitation and navigational rights are of course nothing earth-shattering. While several methods have been proposed to handle property rights among the abutting arctic countries, an existing treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (The Law of the Sea Treaty), is the world's primary means of settling disputes over exploitation rights and navigational routes in international waters. Russia and 154 other countries have ratified it, but the United States is conspicuously absent from the list. From the perspective of American policymakers, this complicates an already delicate situation. They have certainly taken notice of the recent Russian expedition.America's Congress is considering spending $100m to update three aging polar icebreakers and build two more.

Other countries have responded swiftly to the escalating dispute as well. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced plans to spend US $6.5 billion on eight new reinforced Arctic patrol vessels: "Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty in the Arctic; either we use it or we lose it." Canada is claiming 1.75 million square kilometers of the Arctic seabed. One article suggests that Canada and Denmark are working on an unusual joint counterclaim that the disputed area belongs not to the Siberian continental shelf, but rather to the Canadian-Greenland shelf.

As far as the actual land dispute itself, the Russian expedition was a largely superficial display of bravado, as the Law of the Sea Treaty has a well-defined process in place for recognizing arctic claims. The treaty allocates a 200 mile "economic zone" to the five Arctic Circle countries: America, Canada, Denmark (which looks after Greenland's interests), Norway, and Russia. It even creates a Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to resolve disputes in the unclaimed region beyond each country's economic zone. Russia is no stranger to the process, having submitted claims for the disputed region as far back as 2001. In 2002, the Commission declared it neither accepted nor rejected the Russian claim, and demanded more study. The flag-planting expedition was coupled with the submission of recent research that identifies a geological link between the continental shelf abutting Russia's Far North and the North Pole by way of a sea-floor feature called the Lomonosov Ridge. Under the treaty process, this would entitle Russia to claim the territory above and near the range, which experts calculate to be a 460,000 square mile wedge of territory, roughly the size of Western Europe, between Russia's northern coastline and the North Pole. Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper trumpeted this new "addition" to Russia--the size of France, Germany and Italy combined--by printing a large map of the North Pole under a white, blue and red Russian flag.

ANALYSIS

There are several interesting implications from a seemingly innocuous scientific expedition.

First, the aggressiveness and unilateralism ("an audacious geopolitical adventure") of the Russian flag placement is likely to ratchet up the stakes in the dispute over the competing land claims for the North Pole. In an oil-hungry world, the land is particularly valuable, since some geologists estimate that a quarter of the globe's undiscovered oil and natural gas reserves lay within the rock strata underneath the ice-encased Arctic Ocean. The estimated 9% of the arctic ice cap that is sheared off every decade by global warming is likely to intensify the conflict over the increasingly accessible, although not yet tapped, deposits. While an all-out clash over the territory remains unlikely, recent responses suggest that perhaps the strictures of the Law of the Sea Treaty have reached their limit and the dispute may need to be resolved through other channels.

On the other hand, some have suggested that the U.S., as a non-signatory, has handicapped itself in the dispute. A small but vocal lobby that objects to international administration of seabed mining has so far blocked the Bush administration's attempts to have the treaty ratified by Congress. U.S. officials have long been reluctant to vest such decisions in the hands of a 21-nation UN commission stacked with representatives from countries with less than friendly agendas toward Washington, even though its provisions would likely entitle the U.S. to claim an Arctic zone roughly the size of California. Russia's expedition may be a wake-up call to those blocking ratification: Senator Dick Luger (R-Ind.) urged in a press release earlier this year, "Unless the United States ratifies the treaty, Moscow will be able to press its claims without an American at the table."

Secondly, the expedition is important for its symbolic and nationalistic value. As the outpouring of Everest articles after the passing of famed British explorer Sir Edmund Hillary has reminded, groundbreaking expeditions can capture the minds of a nation (and the world). The achievement of the unachievable can have a powerful effect on a country's citizens and stoke their patriotic pride. Drawing on the parallels to perhaps the U.S.'s most vivid expedition, a spokesman for Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute tried to capture some of the same cachet, quipping that "this is like placing a flag on the moon."

The reemergence of a strong Russian nationalistic spirit has, and will continue, to make policymakers the world over take note. Some commentators have begun to suggest, perhaps appropriately in context of the arctic, that the expedition is one of several indicators a new "cold war." Even more startling, however, was the rhetoric from Arthur Chilingarov, appointed as Russia's "presidential envoy" to the Arctic, who asserted, "The Arctic is ours and we should manifest our presence." While the result of the Arctic land quibbles remains unclear, the combination of increased attention by interested countries, the injection of nationalistic sentiments to the dispute, and sensationalistic moves like Russia's submerged flag expedition suggest a tricky, and increasingly contentious, policy dispute for years to come.

Bryan McArdle is a law student in New York City. He received a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2003, and is currently pursuing a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he is a Staff Editor for the Columbia Law Review.

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