The answer is almost certainly not. If they were to become hostile, the carefully crafted – and eye-wateringly expensive – process of gathering scientific data and going through the decades-long UN process would fall apart. These three countries have committed to a peaceful and cooperative means of drawing their lines on the map in ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The “Arctic Five”, which includes the US and Norway, also signed a declaration in 2008 committing to orderly settlement of Arctic borders, which helped to deescalate matters after Russia planted a flag at the North Pole seabed the year before.
In fact, when there are international tensions around borders, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf won’t weigh in. “One thing the commission says is ‘avoid politics’. Any disputed sovereignty over land and they’re not even touching it,” says Philip Steinberg, a professor of geography at Durham University and director of the International Boundaries Research Unit.
The Falkland Islands, or Malvinas, are a case in point. “As soon as the commission received a submission from Argentina, Britain raised an objection,” says Steinberg. The commission’s response was to consider Argentina’s broader claims to an extended continental shelf, but not consider the waters around the disputed islands.
Patriotic posturing
Just because the nations have committed to a peaceful process, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be political intrigue.
Right now, the UN commission has not concluded on any of the three submissions, though Russia, which was first in line to make its submission in 2001, appeared to hear positive early signals towards the end of last year, says Klaus Dodds, professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London. “The commission had clearly released an indication to the Russians that they were sympathetic to their submission. That is exceptionally exciting to the Russians. After a mere 20-year wait, I think they’re going to get what they want – which is confirmation that the continental shelf and those submarine ridges belong to one another.”
That puts Russia in a strong negotiating position, says Dodds. “You can imagine what’s going to happen. President Putin will stand somewhere very grand – you’ll have an enormous map of the Arctic beside him – and he’s going to say: ‘The Arctic is ours.’”
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