🥶 Modern lessons from Antarctica

This article first appeared in International Intrigue, a weekly newsletter focusing on geopolitics and international affairs.

Captain Scott’s Terra Nova in Antarctica circa 1910, from the ‘Heroic Age’ of Antarctic exploration.

As a young whippersnapper, I was captivated by Antarctica. Perhaps because Antarctica is in Australia’s backyard (Melbourne is closer to Antarctica than it is to Darwin!), or perhaps because a mid-90s edition of the Guinness Book of World Records seared into my brain the fact that Antarctica is the highest, driest, windiest and coldest place on Earth.

It felt like the last unknown place in the world — a throwback to a time when we had no idea what lay just over the horizon. I remember marvelling at the sheer bravery (or idiocy) of Roald Amundsen and Captain Scott as I read anything I could get my hands on about their race to the South Pole in 1911.

In the 110 years since their journeys, the world has set up permanent research stations, built airfields, and even developed glitzy tourist infrastructure in Antarctica. Oh and last year, a 30 year old British woman did this:

(Apparently there’s internet in Antarctica and it’s probably better than Virgin Media in London 🙄).

How is Antarctica governed?

In the wake of the Second World War, several nations considered establishing a sovereign claim over Antarctica. The US, Britain and Argentina went so far as to train military personnel for potential Antarctic war, which culminated in the ‘Hope Bay Incident’ when Argentina fired on British personnel in 1952.

To avoid the escalation of such events, in 1959 the Antarctic Treaty (now known as the Antarctic Treaty System or ‘the ATS’) was signed by 12 countries. The treaty remains in force 62 years later, but has expanded to include 54 countries.

The ATS’s main goals are to:

• Keep Antarctica peaceful and prohibit any military activities.
• Freeze (😂) all claims to sovereignty over Antarctica (see map below).
• Promote scientific research and cooperation and ensure environmental protection.
• Ban all mining and exploration for resources.
• Prohibit nuclear explosions and waste disposal (testing nukes in unspoilt places was all the rage back then).
• Set up dispute resolution systems to prevent conflict in the future.

The ATS holds a meeting of countries every year where decisions are made about how to administer and manage Antarctica.

(Random aside: I spent a good chunk of my foreign service career as an international lawyer working on Antarctic issues. Perhaps the most high-profile issue our team worked on was when Australia took Japan to the International Court of Justice over whaling in Australia’s Antarctic waters).

Why does the ATS work so well?

The ATS is one of the most successful international agreements ever signed. A war-weary world in 1959 could scarcely dream that Antarctica would one day see China, Russia, Argentina, the US and Australia regularly collaborate for the greater good.

Politically speaking, Antarctica might as well be Mars. For example, last year China orchestrated a difficult evacuation of a sick Australian on Antarctica’s east coast — all while politicians thousands of kilometres away in Beijing and Canberra jawed at each other over deep fakes.

The ATS model works so well because, in the language of game theory, it has created a stable equilibrium from which all participants have no incentive to deviate:

• 🧊 Because sovereignty claims weren’t extinguished, only frozen and lying dormant, there’s no incentive to over-develop or try to exclude other countries from a claimed area.
• ⛏ Because mining is banned, there is no zero-sum race to extract minerals before other countries.
• 👿 Dispute mechanisms have isolated and managed conflict and thus avoided any escalation of tensions that might destabilise the broader system.
• 🧪 The promotion of scientific research and cooperation has demonstrated the benefits of collaboration, allowed trust to develop, and promoted a stable equilibrium.
• 🕊 The sheer length of time the ATS has been in force has set a cultural precedent. No working politician, diplomat or scientist has known anything other than peace and cooperation in Antarctica.

Summed up, it is not worth it for any country to begin resource extraction or military activities — the resulting instability would damage that country’s long term interests and likely outweigh any short term gains.

How could the ATS apply to contemporary conflicts?

Take the dispute between China and several Southeast Asian nations over who ‘owns’ the South China Sea:

• Could competing territorial claims in the area be frozen until some set time in the future?
• Might demilitarisation and a nuclear ban lower political tensions and help promote a more stable status quo?
• Could banning resource extraction or setting up joint resource development remove the zero-sum game dynamic and ‘grow the pie’ for all?

Critics of this approach would argue it is too late — China has already established a permanent presence in the South China Sea and would never agree to demilitarise. Sadly, they’re probably right. After all, an international agreement requires… agreement.

But there is no shortage of territorial disputes elsewhere in the world (a remarkable number of which seem to involve China 🤔). The ATS might provide a nice framework of how to develop solutions for modern territorial conflicts in places like Crimea, Ethiopia, Gaza or the Himalayas.

Trust in global institutions is declining rapidly, largely because some organisations have proven ineffective or incompetent in high profile moments (cough cough WHO ‘don’t wear a mask’).

For those of us who generally believe in global institutions, the best way to push back against critics is to point to a compelling example of multilateral success. For that, look no further than Antarctica.

For fellow history nerds, check out this cool short video about the 1911 race to the south pole: “Two exploration teams raced to the South Pole. Only one made it out alive”.

Ed note: since sending this article out, I’ve had some great comments from my subscribers pointing out why the Antarctic Treaty System wouldn’t work elsewhere — as one brilliant comment put it:

“penguins don’t have human problems”.

That’s fair and likely correct. My point wasn’t to literally suggest we could ctrl-c, ctrl-v the treaty, more just learn some lessons about the stable equilibrium it’s promoted and how it achieved that. For example: freezing territorial claims over Crimea without prejudice could turn the focus more quickly to demilitarising the region and rebuilding infrastructure and helping citizens.

I’d love to hear any comments you might have!

I’m the co-founder & writer of International Intrigue, which is where this article first appeared. International Intrigue is a weekly foreign affairs newsletter that makes geopolitics enjoyable and accessible. I’d love you to check it out!