The Antarctic Treaty Has Held for 65 Years

On December 1, 1959, twelve countries with a stake in Antarctica signed a treaty in Washington that set aside the entire continent for peaceful scientific use. Signatories included the United States, the Soviet Union, Argentina, the UK, and Japan. All of them had territorial claims or scientific bases on the ice; most of the claims overlapped. The treaty suspended the claims without resolving them. It bans military bases, weapons testing, nuclear detonations, and the disposal of radioactive waste south of 60° S. It has been signed and ratified by 57 nations today.

The mechanism is interesting. The original text does not require claimants to give up their claims, and it does not declare them valid either. It just froze the status quo and said: no new claims, no expansion of existing claims, and nobody's scientific activity prejudices the underlying legal question. On-site inspections are allowed by any signatory at any time. An Argentine inspector can walk into an American base unannounced. An American inspector did the same at a Soviet base during the Cold War.

The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection, signed in Madrid, added a 50-year moratorium on mining and mineral extraction. That window expires in 2048. Any party that wants to reopen mining has to trigger a review conference, where any three-quarters majority can extend the ban or rewrite it.

The treaty works partly because no one really wants to fight over a continent where water ice has been measured at -89.2°C and the nearest port is weeks away. But it also works because scientists run it. The biennial Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting is attended mostly by researchers and polar-program administrators, not foreign ministers. The result is one of the few international regimes to survive 65 years without a major revision, a nuclear-free commons managed by a committee of people who are mostly arguing about fuel caches.