Antarctic Treaty System at 60: fit for the future?

Abstract

For six decades the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) has succeeded in keeping the Antarctic continent free from military conflict while facilitating international scientific cooperation and environmental protection. As the international system undergoes profound changes once again today with the rise of Asia, a global resurgence of great power politics, an international pandemic, and an accelerating global climate crisis, it seems warranted to explore how this successful multilateral regime might be impacted. In the face of such systemic international challenges, what explains the continued success of the ATS? What does a future multipolar world order or a crisis of liberal democratic global order mean for this carefully balanced governance arrangement of one of the most fragile environmental systems on the planet? The relationships between a rising China and resurgent Russia, both with Antarctic interests and legitimate and important stakes in the ATS, and a United States of America engulfed in polarised domestic politics, yet holding the same set of ATS rights, will no doubt affect the ATS and the Earth’s Southernmost continent. Established Antarctic nations are nervous about the intentions of new players, particularly from Asia, while rapidly progressing environmental change and new regulatory challenges such as tourism and bioprospecting all place additional pressure on the ATS. Finding consensus and maintaining the status-quo in an increasingly anxious, contested and competitive international environment will be difficult. And Australia, which has the largest stake (claiming 42% of the Antarctic continent), has a particular interest. It seems fitting to produce a special issue of the Australian Journal of International Affairs to offer just some of the ways in which Antarctic scholars in Australia and New Zealand perceive the future of Antarctica and the ATS. Is the ATS fit for this more strategically competitive international environment and if not, what could and should be done about it? Where can Australia lead this effort? In the first article, Elizabeth Buchanan examines the character of strategic competition in Antarctica. Buchanan argues grey zone activities are a prominent (yet overlooked) feature of contemporary Antarctic geopolitics. Grey zone strategies have allowed states to facilitate their own strategic agendas under the guise of cooperation and yet such activities remain in adherence to the ATS, in many ways as Buchanan argues, the system turns on grey zone activity. She undertakes an in-depth analysis of Australian Antarctic policy settings across the defence and foreign policy sectors since 2000. Buchanan finds Australian policy overlooks grey zone activities and fails to grasp the