The Arctic for Donald Trump now, Antarctica tomorrow?

Source: Radio New Zealand

US threats to annex Greenland may also have ramifications for Antarctica, including New Zealand’s interests there, polar region experts say.

Veteran New Zealand researcher Alan Hemmings says the idea the United States might eye up the southern continent for its natural resources or a strategic advantage would have been “fanciful” even five years ago.

However, that had become a plausible scenario, as President Donald Trump’s administration placed national interests above longstanding multilateral agreements.

Another polar law expert said a US withdrawal from Antarctica could be just as concerning, because New Zealand’s own programme there leans on American support.

Since 1958, New Zealand has allowed the US to operate out of the Christchurch Antarctic ‘gateway’, under an agreement where US military personnel are largely subject to their own rules.

The US McMurdo Station neighbours New Zealand’s Scott Base on Ross Island, and the two countries collaborate on science and logistics.

Both countries are original signatories to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial claims – including New Zealand’s – and instead dedicated the continent to international scientific cooperation.

The treaty also prohibits mining and extraction of resources, except for scientific purposes.

However, countries have expressed interest in the resources locked up in Antarctica, including hydrocarbons and rare earth minerals.

University of Canterbury adjunct professor Alan Hemmings said questioning future US plans for Antarctica in the context of what was happening in Greenland was not far-fetched.

Despite their differences in geography and governance, Antarctica and the Arctic “are, in some quite important ways, coupled”.

“At the most superficial level, we tend to talk about the polar regions as some sort of unitary whole,” Hemmings said.

Many states with a presence in Antarctica also operated in the Arctic – New Zealand is one of the few exceptions – and used the same equipment and staff across both polar regions.

Antarctica also has significant natural resources beneath the ice but, even more so than Greenland, the hostile conditions currently make drilling and extraction near-impossible.

It was “not a perfect analogy”, Hemmings said.

“[But] what we’ve seen so far [in Greenland] is enough to make any country, including New Zealand, that has United States forces operating from its territory and with whom it has some sort of treaty or memorandum of understanding, take pause.”

In the near future, a US administration could decide it had a “vital interest” in securing rare earth minerals from the Antarctic.

“It says, in order to do this, it must have a secure base and merely having an access agreement with New Zealand isn’t good enough,” he said.

“If I’d been talking with you five years ago, I wouldn’t have proposed such a contingency. It would have been fanciful, but if we’d been talking 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have anticipated what we’ve seen in relation to Greenland.”

Antarctica was “a hell of a place” to try to extract resources, but that might not stop a US administration driven by power projection and control of territory, rather than rational assessment, Hemmings said.

Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Middlesex University London, said the US had been the linchpin for the Antarctic Treaty, deciding not to pursue a territorial claim there and convening the conference that led to the treaty, but it was now pursuing a security strategy of “western hemisphere dominance”.

“We have seen what that looks like in the case of the US pursuit of Greenland – what next?

“The US decides to resurrect a claim to the Antarctic, arguing that the threat posed by China needs to be neutralised by a firm approach, and that smaller states such as Chile, Argentina and the UK cannot be trusted with the security of the Antarctic Peninsula region.”

Resources and the growing Antarctic presence of other treaty parties, especially China and the Russian Federation, could draw US attention.

“Trump might conclude that Russia is on the verge of launching mining activity and China wants to fish more aggressively, and all of that means the US must act,” Dodds said. “The Arctic for now, but Antarctica could be part of tomorrow’s world for Trump.”

Quiet-quitting Antarctic science

University of Canterbury professor and polar law specialist Karen Scott said, in stark contrast to Greenland, she had not heard or read anything to indicate that the United States was interested in doing that.

“Obviously, that’s not impossible,” she said.

The way the US was interacting with Greenland showed “utter disregard for international law”.

“If the United States did decide that it had interest in Antarctica, which couldn’t be accommodated under the treaty, then I don’t think we would necessarily have any confidence that it would comply with international law in the Antarctic.”

For now, though, Scott was more worried about the opposite risk – an apparent US disinterest in its scientific endeavours on the continent.

“The main concern at the moment, actually, is more whether the United States might withdraw from Antarctic activities and what implications that would have for the support of the science being undertaken by other states.”

The US National Science Foundation stopped operating its dedicated research icebreaker in Antarctica last year and cut polar research funding by 70 percent.

“There’s an indication that its science is potentially being impacted down there by the very significant cuts that the US is making domestically across its science programmes,” Scott said.

“If there were a significant withdrawal of logistics from the United States, I think that would make life quite difficult for New Zealand in terms of operating down in Scott Base.”

The US remains a member of the Scientific Council for Antarctic Research, despite announcing last week it would withdraw from 66 other international organisations.

However, it will withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which together underpin the global scientific understanding of climate change and the political response to it.

Scott said many states engaged in climate-change research in Antarctica, “so I think the research would go on”, but a US withdrawal, either formal or informal, could open up space for other states to dominate.

“China has an increasingly significant presence in the Antarctic. It has become much more likely to contribute to discussion and potentially to contest the traditional way of doing things.

“It and Russia, in recent years, have proven quite challenging to manage.”

Expert urges New Zealand autonomy

Hemmings said the US might change its science focus in Antarctica, but he believed the continent was too strategically important to withdraw from.

“The Antarctic Treaty area is one-tenth of the surface of the planet,” he said. “I think it’s very difficult to imagine an assertive US administration of any stripe, including this one, bailing out of engagement there.”

A change in US priorities may still have knock-on effects for New Zealand’s own programme and foreign policy, he said.

“If the United States continues to operate in the Antarctic, but on totally different criteria, what would that mean for New Zealand’s willingness to let it use New Zealand?”

In the short term, a diversion of US specialist polar resources from Antarctica to Greenland could still create difficulties, he said. That included the US Coast Guard’s only operational heavy icebreaker – the Polar Star – and the 10 ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules that the US Airforce operates.

“The Americans’ icebreaker is in the Antarctic every year to break a route into the Ross Sea, down to McMurdo, which enables New Zealand’s vessel HMNZS Aotearoa, the tourism industry and the Americans’ own logistics support vessels to actually get to McMurdo.”

New Zealand should consider how it could become more autonomous in Antarctica, Hemmings said.

“For example, it could co-operate with the Germans, with the Italians, with the Koreans, who all also operate in the Ross Sea.”

There had already been some helpful investment, he said.

“It’s in a better position now than it was 10 years ago. It’s got new Hercules [airplanes], it’s got [HMNZS] Aotearoa. and it’s got a couple of other vessels that are ice-strengthened. They’re not icebreakers, but it could change its dependence on the US over a 5-10-year time horizon.”

Antarctica New Zealand referred questions about co-operation with and reliance on the US Antarctic programme to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ministry did not directly address questions about whether a withdrawal of US resources from Antarctica would create logistical challenges or if a shift in US focus would trigger a rethink of access arrangements.

In a written statement, a spokesperson said New Zealand “continues to enjoy close co-operation with the US in our Antarctic operations, in shared active engagement in the Antarctic Treaty System and in joint science activities”.

The science partnership with the US continued to expand, most recently in November, with the signing of a memorandum of co-operation and funding of up to $5 million MBIE’s Catalyst Fund, the MFAT spokesperson said.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand