The Antarctic Treaty of 1959

Antarctica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Day
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Antarctic

Why were the Russians and other claimants suddenly prepared in the late 1950s to reach agreement on the governance of Antarctica? The onset of the Cold War and the arrival of Russian whaling fleets had raised fears that territorial rivalry in Antarctica could erupt into...

Bungled publicity: Little America, big America, and the rationale for non-claimancy, 1946–61

Polar Record ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Kendall Moore
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Power Negotiations

Although indispensable for hastening the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, United States policy entailed contradictions that jeopardised its domestic ratification. Many senators opposed their government's adherence to the Hughes Doctrine of 1924, requiring sovereignty claims to be based on occupation rather than exploration. US exploration, they knew, had covered more territory than the combined total of the seven nation-states that already had declared their rights based on criteria other than occupation. The Department of State appreciated that public opinion, whether related to Antarctica, the Cold War, or both, might generate congressional pressure to reverse the non-claimant stance and thereby derail the 12-power negotiations even before they reached the conference stage. This article presents evident and hypothetical consequences of policymakers' refusal to address this dilemma, the likelihood of which accompanied an increasingly pro-claimant stance among journalists, as well as the personal exasperation of Admiral Richard E. Byrd.

“Some Sanity and Love”: The Cold War, Antarctic Treaty, and Fids’ identity, 1957–1958

Polar Record ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 334-336
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Avery
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Falkland Islands ◽  
British Government ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Governments ◽  
The Antarctic

AbstractIn 1942, the British government created the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) to enforce sovereignty over the Antarctic Peninsula. The small groups of men who worked for the Survey called themselves Fids. During the late 1950s when Antarctic sovereignty was being hotly debated and worked out by national governments, Fids serving at British bases criticised the British government’s use of science as a bargaining chip. Using in-house magazines written and printed at FIDS bases and oral histories, this article examines how Fids viewed Antarctic politics and how those events influenced daily life at bases on the Peninsula.

scholarly journals A IMPORTÂNCIA ESTRATÉGICA DA ANTÁRTICA PARA CHINA E INDIA A LUZ DO REALISMO OFENSIVO DE MEARSHEIMER

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mônica Heinzelmann Portella de Aguiar ◽  
Leonardo Faria de Mattos
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Order ◽  
Scientific Cooperation ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Future ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Treaty System

The Antarctic Treaty was signed during the Cold War and intended to preserve the continent and transform it into a conflict free territory, prioritizing scientific cooperation. Despite having quadrupled the number of its signatories, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) faces nowadays the uncertainties of the new international order. Starting out from John Mearsheimer’s realistic perspective, this paper aims to analyze, the strategic importance of Antarctica and the interests that China and India have on the continent, as well as speculate on how their rise on the international scenario can impact the future of the Antarctic Treaty System.

Particular generalisation: the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 in relation to the anti-nuclear movement

Polar Record ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Kendall Moore
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Orientation ◽  
Nuclear Movement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Test Ban ◽  
The Antarctic

ABSTRACTThis article presents the US role in the formation of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 in relation to the era's anti-nuclear movement. The purpose is two-fold: to highlight the strategic orientation of US Antarctic policy, suggesting that it was less enlightened than it is frequently portrayed; and to highlight the influence of the anti-nuclear movement upon the treaty's inclusion of a test ban which the United States initially opposed, hoping to reserve the right to conduct nuclear tests. The treaty is depicted as a particular generalisation: one aspect of the cold war that gains significance when scrutinised in relation to another that is much better-known.

Diplomazia e scienza: la politica antartica del Regno Unito e l'Anno geofisico internazionale, 1955-1959

2009 ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Mauro Elli
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
South American ◽  
Scientific Cooperation ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
International Geophysical Year ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Zero Sum

- This article is concerned with the relations between diplomacy and science in British Antarctic policy in the run-up and during the International Geophysical Year. Using a variety of unpublished documents, it shows how the comprehensively traditional approach of UK diplomacy mainly concerned with territorial disputes with Argentina and Chile in Antarctica, and prestige was an advantage, in that it allowed Britain to play an original, positive role not hamstrung by the zero-sum view of the cold war prevailing in Washington. Caught between financial difficulties and political imperatives, British diplomacy wished to capitalize on the success of international scientific cooperation in order to both solving the dispute with the South American countries and involving positively the USSR. The eventual result was the Antarctic Treaty, a paradigmatic example of interaction between diplomacy and science, and one of the few non-confrontational outcomes of the early cold war.

Why Has There Been a ‘Long Peace’ in Antarctica?

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 632-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Jabour
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic

This article draws on the work of John Lewis Gaddis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian particularly well known for his scholarship on the Cold War. In his 1986 paper, “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System” Gaddis posited a range of plausible reasons for why neither the United States nor the Soviet Union took the ultimate step of initiating a nuclear war against the other. This restraint was founded on principles of mutual understanding of the consequences of such an action and contributed to what he termed the ‘long peace’ in post-Cold War international relations. This article examines why there has also been a ‘long peace’ in Antarctic relations, using Gaddis’s theories and applying them to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties’ dealings with each other in the context of the Antarctic Treaty System – the legal regime that governs Antarctica. It finds that despite a radically different set of international relations circumstances today, Gaddis’s theories hold true. How long this long peace will last is not the point here; merely that it exists is cause for optimism.

Nationalism in Today’s Antarctic

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 531-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan D. Hemmings ◽  
Sanjay Chaturvedi ◽  
Elizabeth Leane ◽  
Daniela Liggett ◽  
Juan Francisco Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
National Pride ◽  
The Past ◽  
Relative Proximity ◽  
The World ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Antarctic

Whilst nationalism is a recognised force globally, its framing is predicated on experience in conventionally occupied parts of the world. The familiar image of angry young men waving Kalashnikovs means that the idea that nationalism might be at play in Antarctica has to overcome much instinctive resistance, as well as the tactical opposition of the keepers of the present Antarctic political arrangements. The limited consideration of nationalism in Antarctica has generally been confined to the past, particularly “Heroic-Era” and 1930s–1940s expeditions. This article addresses the formations of nationalism in the Antarctic present. Antarctic nationalism need not present in the same shape as nationalisms elsewhere to justify being called nationalism. Here it occurs in a virtual or mediated form, remote from the conventional metropolitan territories of the states and interests concerned. The key aspect of Antarctic nationalism is its contemporary form and intensity. We argue that given the historic difficulties of Antarctic activities, and the geopolitical constraints of the Cold War, it has only been since the end of that Cold War that a more muscular nationalism has been able to flourish in Antarctica. Our assessment is that there at least 11 bases upon which Antarctic nationalism might arise: (i) formally declared claims to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica; (ii) relative proximity of Antarctica to one’s metropolitan territory; (iii) historic and institutional associations with Antarctica; (iv) social and cultural associations; (v) regional or global hegemonic inclinations; (vi) alleged need in relation to resources; (vii) contested uses or practices in Antarctica; (viii) carry-over from intense antipathies outside Antarctica; (ix) national pride in, and mobilisation through, national Antarctic programmes; (x) infrastructure and logistics arrangements; or (xi) denial or constraint of access by one’s strategic competitors or opponents. In practice of course, these are likely to be manifested in combination. The risks inherent in Antarctic nationalism are the risks inherent in unrestrained nationalism anywhere, compounded by its already weak juridical situation. In Antarctica, the intersection of nationalism with resources poses a particular challenge to the regional order and its commitments to shareable public goods such as scientific research and environmental protection.

From the New Geopolitics of Resources to Nanotechnology: Emerging Challenges of Globalism in Antarctica

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan D. Hemmings
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Administrative Capacity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Do So

Abstract The Antarctic regime does not face imminent collapse, but its apparent calm disguises significant ecological and geopolitical instability. Over the past 15 years, the picture of human activity in Antarctica has transformed from one still heavily terrestrially focussed, dominated by national Antarctic programmes, largely science focussed, and situated within a Cold-War geopolitics, to one where diverse activities, increasingly including the marine environment, involving a much wider group of actors and commercial imperatives, is the norm. Globalism has brought new pressures, and increased intensity of pressures to Antarctica. Whilst the existing Antarctic Treaty System retains a theoretical capacity to develop standards and provide regulation, it has shown no obvious inclination to do so for a decade and a half. Critically, the system seems to have lost confidence in Antarctic exceptionalism as its organising principle, and to lack administrative capacity to address substantive issues. Given technology’s overcoming of the natural defences of Antarctica, if globalism now denies us the capacity to treat anywhere differently and thereby disables the principle of Antarctic exceptionalism upon which international governance of the region was predicated, Antarctica faces severe difficulties. This paper argues for continuing special treatment of Antarctica and a new deliberative exceptionalism. It suggests that significant unresolved issues within the present Antarctic dispensation need attention, notably the beginning of a debate on the abandonment of territorial sovereignty claims, a more coherent institutional development and the establishment of a political level Meeting of Parties in addition to the current officials-only meetings.

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