Борьба Канады за суверенитет в Арктике: история и современность - Дмитрий Анатольевич Володин

with neighboring countries in the Arctic in the 1920s forced Canada to correct the system of ensuring of its sovereignty over the islands of the Arctic Archipelago. In the 1920s Canada opened six police posts on these islands and from 1922 began to patrol these islands annually by a special vessel. In the mid-1920s Canada also expanded the set of arguments for justifying its sovereignty by referring to the sector theory, which signified dividing the entire Arctic into sectors among countries in the region. Despite the lack of recognition of the sector theory in the United States and Norway and by many well-known lawyers of that time, Canada achieved de facto recognition of its sovereignty over the Arctic Archipelago from these countries and from these lawyers through its active actions within the framework of the traditional method of establishing sovereignty – effective occupation.

Chapter 5. “The Army of Occupation” in the Canadian North. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States initiated three major infrastructure projects to reliably connect Alaska to the rest of the United States through the Canadian territory Although these three projects (Northwest Staging Route, Alaska Highway, Canol) were beneficial financially to Canada, their implementation required the employment a huge number of U.S. military and civilian personnel in the Canadian North. The presence of these Americans in the Canadian North was seen as a political problem by the Canadian leadership. The Canadian government faced a dificf ult choice. These projects could seriously weaken the country’s sovereignty in the High North. On the other hand, Canada’s refusal to participate in their implementation threatened that the United States would implement these projects alone. Canada faced much the same choice with regard to U.S. military projects in the Canadian North at the beginning of the Cold War. In the end the Canadian government approved all these projects (during and after WWII), believing that it is really possible to defend Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic only through cooperation with the United States in the defense of the continent.

Part II. Struggle for maritime space, is devoted to Canada’s claim to sovereignty over the waters of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and spans the period 1950s – early 2020s.

Chapter 6. From land sovereignty to maritime sovereignty (1950s–1960s). In the 1950s Canada’s policy of assertion of its sovereignty in the Arctic was undergoing major changes. By the beginning of the 1950s Canadian lawyers made an important conclusion that Canada’s sovereignty over all lands in its Arctic sector can be justified by the right of effective occupation without involving a sector theory. Since 1954 Canada began to perceive the problem of sovereignty in the Arctic not as a problem of sovereignty over land but as a question of sovereignty over sea space. The shift in focus – from land to sea – has forced Canada to abandon the sector theory as unnecessary and ineffective. In the mid-1950s the government of L. Saint Laurent decided to limit the country’s maritime claims in the Arctic to the waters of the Arctic Archipelago. The straight baseline method, recognized by the International Court of Justice in 1951, was chosen as the legal basis for such claims. In the first half of the 1960s the governments of J. Diefenbaker and L. Pearson made efof rts to legalize Canada’s extended maritime borders in the Arctic at the international level, but failed both because of their unwillingness to aggravate relations with the United States for this and Canada’s desire to act strictly within the framework of international the law of the sea. Chapter 7. P. Trudeau Government and the functional approcach to the problem of sovereignty in the Arctic. In 1969–1970 American oil companies with the support of the U.S. authorities organized two voyages of the tanker Manhattan across the Northwest Passage to test the viability of this route for the delivery of Alaska’s oil to the more southern states of the United States. Although Canada supported this project and took part in it, but at the same time the P. Trudeau government adopted two new laws, which sharply strengthened Canada’s control over shipping in the Northwest Passage (NWP). In an efof rt to prevent an open conflict with the United States, Canada did not declare all the waters of the Arctic Archipelago as its internal waters, but made a choice in favor of the so-called functional sovereignty, that is, the ability to exercise a certain set of rights over a specific territory. In 1970 the P. Trudeau government introduced to Canadian Parliament two bills: the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (AWPPA), which established a 100-mile-wide maritime zone off the north coast of Canada and its Arctic islands to control water pollution, another bill – an amendment to the Territorial Sea and Fishing Zones Act – expanded from 3 to 12 miles the width of Canadian territorial waters. To achieve recognition of the AWPPA at the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, Canada acted in two ways before the opening of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1973. On the one hand, Canada developed and supported those concepts that gave coastal states the right to operate outside territorial waters. On the other hand, Canada sought the adoption of international documents to protect the marine environment from pollution.

One of Canada’s main goals at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea was to legalize its 100-mile maritime pollution prevention zone in the Arctic. At first Canada tried to achieve this goal by seeking appropriate powers for coastal states on a global scale. However due to the strong opposition of maritime powers and insufifcient support from coastal states Canada changed tactics and opted for a separate pollution prevention regime for the Arctic through a separate deal with the US and the USSR. Article 234 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea legitimized Canada’s right to impose additional (environmental) requirements on foreign ships in its economic zone in