Two years after the sensational expedition that planted the Russian flag on the North Pole, and a year after the peak in world oil prices, international attention to Arctic geopolitics has visibly dissipated. Russia, however, continues to prioritize the Arctic, which is mentioned several times in its May 2009 National Security Strategy. It is also the main focus of an ambitious document on the “Fundamentals of State Policy in the Arctic to 2020,” issued in September 2008. All that is needed is a legal claim to add vast underwater territories to Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Arctic Ocean, a document that was to be submitted to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) in 2008, but is still not ready. […]
Memo #:
58
Series:
2
PDF:
PDF URL:
http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/pepm_058.pdf
