The U.S. is making a unilateral grab for more territory in the Arctic Circle. From Stephen Karganovic at strategic-culture.su:
Altruistically disguised groundwork is cumulatively being laid for the opening in the Arctic of an important new Cold War 2.0 front.
At the recent (18 to 29 March) 29th session of the International Seabed Authority Council in Kingstone, Jamaica, some harsh words were exchanged by major superpower delegations, presaging a new area of confrontation that is bound to further burden international relations. The trigger was State Department’s curt announcement several months ago indicating that the United States intends to extend the outer limits of its continental shelf. The subject matter of this announcement was too arcane for even politically astute members of the public to properly understand. The international agreement which governs the demarcation of sovereign state jurisdiction beyond the paltry 12 nautical mile territorial sea and contiguous zone allowed by customary international law, that all are more or less familiar with, is an even more obscure topic. The instrument in question is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, adopted in 1982, and the operative provision in matters relating to the allocation of continental shelf limits is its Article 76.
What drew the attention of the few observers who follow these convoluted but far from unimportant issues was a statement by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declaring its “non-recognition of the outer limits of the continental shelf declared unilaterally by the United States in December 2023 beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the width of the territorial sea is measured in seven regions of the World Ocean.” Laying the groundwork for the emerging dispute, the Russian side stated that their American counterparts’ aspirations “do not comply with the rules and procedures established by international law.” For those versed in the subtleties of Russian diplomatic rhetoric, enough said.
Ivan has way more icebreakers because he lives there that’s why and they are nooklar (nuclear) powered.
Why does no one ever go to Antarctica?
Antarctica is a freezing, inhospitable place, with average winter temperatures that plummet to minus 56 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 49 degrees Celsius), winds that reach 200 mph (321 km/h) and just 6.5 inches (166 millimeters) of annual precipitation. (h/t-LS)
17,098 million km2 Coastline. 37,653 km. Russia’s Arctic territory stretches along 24,140 kilometers of coastline along the Arctic Ocean and waters above the Arctic Circle from the Barents Sea in the west at the border to Norway to the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk in the far east. Russia’s coastline accounts for 53 percent of the Arctic Ocean coastline and covers the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, and East Siberian Sea. (h/t-TAI)