From Defense One, March 23:
Russia's latest military exercise could be it's latest step toward claiming maritime borders in the Arctic.
Tensions have increased a notch in the Arctic with the news that the Russians have started a major military exercise in the region. Nearly 40,000 servicemen, 41 warships and 15 submarines will be taking part in drills to make them combat-ready—a major show of strength in a region that has long been an area of strategic interest to Russia.
Russia might be reshaping national borders in Europe as it reasserts its geopolitical influence, but the equivalent borders in the Arctic have never been firmly established. Historically it has proven much harder for states to assert sovereignty over the ocean than over land, even in cases where waters are ice-covered for most of the year.
For centuries the extent to which a nation state could control its coastal areas was based on the so-called cannon-shot rule—a three-nautical-mile limit based on the range of a cannon fired from the land. But this changed after World War II, leading to the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) in 1982.
Under UNCLOS, every signatory was given the right to declare territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles and an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of up to 200 for commercial activities, such as fishing and oil exploration. Signatories could also extend their sovereignty beyond the limits of this EEZ by up to an additional 150 nautical miles if they could prove that their continental shelves extended beyond 200 nautical miles from the shore.
Orderly settlement
It is quite common to read about a “scramble for the Arctic” in which the states concerned—Denmark, Norway, Canada, Russia and the US—race to carve up the region between themselves. In fact, this is not a very accurate description.
There are two dimensions to developments in the region—one legal and the other political. In legal terms, these five littoral states have sought to use UNCLOS to establish borders and assert their primacy over much of the Arctic Ocean and the seabed below (with the exception of the US, which is yet to ratify the convention).
Canada and Russia have also used the special provisions provided byArticle 234 of UNCLOS—relating to the right to regulate over ice-covered waters—to strengthen their authority over emerging Arctic shipping routes (the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route).
In 2008 the five states issued the Ilulissat Declaration, committing to the “orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims” using the legal framework provided by the law of the sea. This has been reflected in the continental-shelf claims they have submitted to the UN over the past 15 years: Russia (2001), Norway (2006), Canada (2013) andDenmark (2014)....MORE
