Fear and Loathing in the South Pole: the Need to Resolve the Antarctic Sovereignty Issue and a Framework for Doing It

Antarctica is a continent on the brink. The constant political instability of oilrich nations, coupled with an increasing global petroleum demand, is fueling the likelihood that the world will turn its thirsty eyes towards this great unexplored frontier in search of natural energy resources. Mineral exploration in Antarctica, however, has been effectively barred since 1959 under the Antarctic Treaty System (“ATS”), which, in its current form, prohibits mineral exploration as far into the future as 2048. The strategic potential presented by this vastly unpopulated continent has not gone unrecognized by the major global political players. To add further strain to this inherently tense environment, seven nation states have publicly expressed sovereignty claims to some part of the continent, with the United States and Russia reserving a right to assert such a claim in the future. The existing ATS amounts to an agreement to disagree on the issue of sovereignty between claimant states. History has shown that long-unsettled sovereignty disputes can boil over into full-scale military confrontations. Two examples illustrate the fallacy of simply “waiting out” competing claims. First, the Spratly Islands, a group of more than a hundred islands in the South China Sea that are believed to possess significant oil reserves, have been witness to armed conflicts between claimant states on at least four different occasions. Second, the longstanding Falkland Islands territorial dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom boiled over into war in 1982, resulting in numerous casualties on both