Amongst the palm trees: ruminations on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

Polar Record ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
International Geophysical Year ◽  
Palm Trees ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Antarctic Continent ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
International Geophysical

Surrounded by potted palm trees, the 12 delegations including the Soviet Union invited to participate by the United States government decided, over the course of six intense weeks, the legal, political and scientific future of the Antarctic continent and surrounding seas. Thanks in part to the neatly typed entries of Brian Roberts, the Foreign Office's polar advisor for many years; we have at least one source that vividly conveys (from the perspective of a British delegate of course) the febrile atmosphere surrounding the conference (see King and Savours 1995; Dodds 2008). Notwithstanding the achievements of the recently completed 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year and its extension the International Geophysical Co-operation (1959), there was no reason to presume that an Antarctic Treaty would be recognised as legitimate and sufficiently robust to accommodate all the parties concerned. Indeed, it is not uncommon to read in the reports prepared by the delegates for their domestic political leaders, a whole series of counter-factual possibilities if the negotiations failed to secure a modus vivendi for the polar region. We may not assume, therefore, that it was in any way inevitable that a treaty (lasting now for over fifty years) would have emerged when the delegates sat down to discuss the future of Antarctica in October 1959. The treaty was nearly not ratified in Argentina for example because of the anger felt by some political leaders about Article IV and what they considered the ‘giving away’ of Argentine sovereign rights.

Latin America and Antarctica

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Howkins
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
South American ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Antarctic Continent ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The Antarctic

Since the early 19th century, a number of Latin American countries have had active interests in the Antarctic continent. These interests began to accelerate in the early 20th century, and during the 1930s and 1940s, Argentina and Chile formalized sovereignty claims to the Antarctic Peninsula region. These claims overlapped not only with each other, but also with Great Britain’s claim to the “Falkland Islands Dependencies.” The two Latin American claims tended to be framed in the language of anti-imperialism, and for a while at least the idea of a “South American Antarctica” emerged to suggest a common front against the British Empire. Rivalry between Argentina and Chile, however, remained strong, and the alliance against imperialism never developed into a lasting agreement. In 1959, Argentina and Chile joined with ten other nations—including Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—in signing the Antarctic Treaty. This Treaty suspended sovereignty claims and created a “continent dedicated to peace and science.” Following the ratification of the Treaty in 1961, Argentina and Chile lessened their hostility to the imperial strategy of using scientific research as a justification for political claims, and came to be enthusiastic members of what some outsiders labeled an “exclusive club.” During the 1980s and early 1990s, four other Latin American nations—Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, and Ecuador—became full members of the Antarctic Treaty, attracted, in part, by the prospect of sharing in a potential minerals bonanza in the southern continent. This expected economic boom never came, however, and instead the Antarctic continent became one of the most protected environments anywhere on the planet by the terms of the 1991 Madrid Environmental Protocol.

Cold War Exiles and the CIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Home Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

Security Council

1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-230
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
States Government

The Security Council discussed this question at its 1022nd–1025th meetings, on October 23–25, 1962. It had before it a letter dated October 22, 1962, from the permanent representative of the United States, in which it was stated that the establishment of missile bases in Cuba constituted a grave threat to the peace and security of the world; a letter of the same date from the permanent representative of Cuba, claiming that the United States naval blockade of Cuba constituted an act of war; and a letter also dated October 22 from the deputy permanent representative of the Soviet Union, emphasizing that Soviet assistance to Cuba was exclusively designed to improve Cuba's defensive capacity and that the United States government had committed a provocative act and an unprecedented violation of international law in its blockade.

The Soviet Union and the Antarctic Regime

1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 834-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boleslaw A. Boczek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Social Science Literature ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic

Ever since the Antarctic regime began the third, crucial decade of its existence following the entry into effect of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961, interest in the frozen continent has escalated. This interest has spawned an immense social science literature, which analyzes the diverse legal, political and economic aspects of Antarctica and the surrounding oceans. The Antarctic regime has been universally and deservedly hailed both in the West and, especially, in the East as an unprecedented example of peaceful cooperation among states professing conflicting ideologies and, one might add, belonging to adversary alliances—as witnessed especially by the participation in the regime of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet much of the pertinent scholarly writing devotes primary or exclusive attention to the position of the United States within this regime; except for incidental references in some works, not one study has appeared anywhere that deals with the position of the Soviet Union on major substantive issues arising within the context of the Antarctic regime. This study will attempt to fill this gap by comprehensively examining the topic of Soviet participation in the affairs of the southern continent.

The U.S. State Department's Opposition to Zionist Aspirations during the Early Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herf
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truman Administration ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Public Records ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
The U.S

Abstract In the latter half of the 1940s, senior U.S. national security officials opposed Zionist aspirations for an independent state and sought to keep the Truman administration from actively facilitating that effort. Even though President Harry Truman himself expressed strong public backing for the new state of Israel, the reality, as recognized at the time by Israel's leaders and by prominent U.S. liberal political leaders and journalists, was that the United States was less firm, less consistent, and less consequential in supporting the establishment of the state of Israel than were the Soviet Union and the Communist states of Eastern Europe, especially Czechoslovakia and Poland. The situation that existed in 1947--1948, with significant U.S. government opposition and Soviet-bloc support for Israel, is evident from declassified files of the U.S. State Department and public records of the United Nations (UN).

Witness and Celebrate

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
States Government ◽  
Story Writing ◽  
Lunar Missions

Chapter five surveys the poems and musical experiments that both distracted Bradbury from story writing and renewed his creativity in the early 1970s. Television and film composer Lalo Schifrin put Bradbury’s Madrigals for the Space Age to music just as Bradbury’s accelerating output of poems led to the first of three volumes of verse with his trade publisher Alfred A. Knopf. His defiant articles on the termination of the Apollo lunar missions culminated in his December 1972 Playboy article, “From Stonehenge to Tranquility Base,” a title image meant to convey the all-too-brief period of human history devoted to reaching the heavens. Chapter five concludes with unsuccessful attempts by the United States government to negotiate a cultural exchange for Bradbury with the Soviet Union.

Soviet Antarctic plans after the International Geophysical Year: changes in policy

Polar Record ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Gan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ussr Council ◽  
International Geophysical Year ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Antarctic Research ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
International Geophysical

ABSTRACTThe final months of the International Geophysical Year of 1957–1958 were a period when the political and scientific future of the Antarctic was being shaped, with many of the participating countries reassessing their policies regarding the South Polar region. This paper explores the thinking of both political and scientific figures in the USSR that helped mould Soviet Antarctic policy during this time and demonstrates that the two perspectives did not necessarily coincide. The political perspective is exemplified by the deputy chairman of the USSR council of ministers and member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Aleksei Kosygin, and the scientific perspective by the deputy director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Mikhail Somov. The fact that there was interplay between both viewpoints when planning the Soviet post IGY Antarctic programmes shows that political considerations did not always prevail over the scientific, with national prestige being an area in which their interests overlapped. Ultimately, Somov was instrumental in reducing to some extent the effects of the Soviet government's attempts to curtail Soviet Antarctic research operations when it was reassessing its policy in the light of new international initiatives regarding future collaboration in the Antarctic.

The Perils of Intervention

Worldview ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
Nicholas O. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Third World ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
States Government ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Ideal

It is a truth, if not universally acknowledged at least widely accepted, that the United States Government would like its Third World allies and client states to be stable, progressive, democratic, and domestically popular. While the U.S. feels it must protect these allies and clients from direct Soviet aggression, ideally they would manage their internal problems themselves.Unfortunately, the ideal is the exception in the Third World. Many of America's allies and clients face a disloyal opposition at home, and often one that seeks or attracts assistance from the Soviet Union or its surrogates. With few exceptions, these governments are neither democratic nor want to be: For every Costa Rica there is an El Salvador or a Guatemala; for every Singapore there is a South Korea or a Philippines.

Antarctic winter scientific stations to the International Polar Year, 2007–2009

Polar Record ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Headland
Keyword(s):  
International Polar Year ◽  
International Geophysical Year ◽  
International Polar ◽  
Antarctic Continent ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
Scientific Station ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
International Geophysical

ABSTRACTThe earliest winter scientific station established in the Antarctic was in 1883 as part of the first International Polar Year (IPY) programme. Subsequently, to the IPY of 2007–2009, scientific stations have been deployed on 139 sites (103 on the Antarctic continent, 36 on the peri-Antarctic islands), by 24 countries for a cumulative total of 2666 winters to that of 2008. This paper summarises the winter dates, locations, and national status of all stations in the region. It thus includes all winter stations of the three IPYs and those of the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958). The positions of 120 of these winter stations are south of 60°S, the boundary of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 (although many of them predate the Treaty).

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