As the world feels the chilly rhetoric between the West and Russia over Moscow's continuing occupation of western ally Georgia, the coldest of cold wars is surely being felt over territorial claims for the North Pole.
Img: USCGC Healy. Credit: U.S. Coast Guard
Athough territorial claims were put on the backburner while the region was firmly encased in ice, new reports that the North Pole region will shortly be ice-free has precipitated a mad scramble for territory from those countries with polar claims -- Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway.
The rapidly changing world realpolitik has seen the teaming up of previous adversaries on the North Pole issue, reports the Financial Times. Both Canada and the United States have set aside a previous conflict over 12,000 sq kms of seabed elsewhere in the Beaufort Sea to join in an effort to meet aggressive Russian claims on Arctic territories.
The stakes are high with an ice-free Arctic opening the way to new, lucrative shipping routes and vast oil and gas resources.
"The Russians know what they want the Arctic for, and under Putin and Medvedev they have been very aggressive," said Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary to the Financial Times. "They are way ahead of everyone else."
A U.S. coastal icebreaker left port in Alaska last week to team up with a Canadian icebreaker on a mission to conduct a seismic survey of the Beaufort seabed north of the Yukon-Alaska border.
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