диссертация (Англо-американские международно-правовые доктрины о современном статусе Арктики), страница 2

In his unfinished Ode toPeter the Great, M.V. Lomonosov emphasized the importance for Russia of TsarPeter the Great’s efforts in 17-18 centuries to protect the state’s northernmostborders; in the poem, Lomonosov has the young Russian Tsar prophesize thediscovery of the Northeast Passage, “Columbuses of Russia, in scorn of sullen fate,will to the Orient discover a new path amidst the ice, and our Nation brave willreach America”. 1 Russian scholarly works amply cite M.V. Lomonosov’sdepiction of the Arctic Ocean as “a vast expanse, where Russia’s glory canincrease, combined with unprecedented benefit”.2 More than once have scholarsnoted the geostrategic importance of the Arctic for Russia, the legal effect of theheroic labours in 14-19 centuries of the Russian pioneers, pathfinders of the Arctic,who sacrificed their lives so the Russian Arctic could grow, and Russia’ssovereignty could expand to new remote Arctic plains; they have highlighted thepivotal role that Russia and other Arctic states have played in formulating thespecial legal status of the Arctic Ocean and its seas, starting from the 1825Russian-English Treaty and the 1867 Russian-American Treaty, that were the firstto delimit the rights of Russia and its neighbouring states to their “Polarpossessions” by sectors (along the meridians going up to the North Pole).3 Thereality, however, is that this “patriotic” vector in Russian international legalscholarship is omitted in the most authoritative foreign international legaldoctrines, the ones published in English and predominant not only in the US andthe UK, but generally in the English-speaking (and thus the largest) legalcommunity.1Cited in Severnyi tekst russkoi literatury [The Northern Text of Russian Literature].

Issue. 2. Khudozhestvennayakartina mira. M. SAFU. 2014. Ed by E.Sh. Galimova. (182 P.) P. 18.2Cited in Vylegzhanin A.N., Zilanov V.K. Shpitsbergen: pravovoi rezhim prilegayushchikh morskikh raionov[Spitzbergen: The Legal Regime of Adjacent Maritime Areas]. M. 2006. P. 6.3For more details, see Vylegzhanin A.N. Pravovoe polozhenie Arkticheskogo regiona v dokumentakh [Documentson the Legal Status of the Arctic Region]. / Arkticheskii region: problemy mezhdunarodnogo sotrudnichestva [TheArctic Region: Issues of International Cooperation].

Vol. 3. Primenimye pravovye istochniki [Applicable Law]. М.2013. P. 16-26.9Furthermore, at present, given the substantial reduction of the surface area ofthe centuries-old ice in the Arctic, not only the economic and military activity inthe Arctic Ocean including its seas has increased, but the states’ interest in makingclear the legal regime of that smallest of the oceans has also soared.4 Not just theeight Arctic nations, whose territory overlaps with the Arctic Circle, but many nonArctic states, too, are adopting basic legal documents setting forth their policy inthe Arctic.5 It is notable that attempts of the non-Arctic States to create their ownlegal instruments relating to the Arctic Ocean are not considered in thefundamental U.S. “Arctic Law and Policy Year in Review”.6 These attempts areconsidered however in Russian law doctrines.7During the Yeltsin years, NATO succeeded in changing Russia’s legalpolicy in the Arctic, starting from the notorious 1997 Resolution of theGovernment of Russia.

The Resolution, for the first time, reflected Russia’sagreement with NATO’s position that it is not the existing customary internationallegal rules that form the foundation of the legal regime of the Arctic Ocean,including those on the sectoral delimitation of rights to islands and lands, includingunderwater ones (according to the approach maintained by the Russian Empire andthe USSR), but rather the new international treaty – the 1982 UN Convention onthe Law of the Sea (hereinafter, UNCLOS) (even though at the 3rd UN Conferenceon the Law of the Sea, the USSR delegation never viewed it as applicable to theArctic). Following the 1997 Resolution, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resourcesand the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafted the respective documents and charts,according to which, for the first time in Russian history, the seabed area within theRussian Arctic sector was mapped as excluded from Russia’s sovereignty.

Apartfrom that apparent loss of territory by Russia, the new Arctic policy launched4Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean. Ed. by P.A. Berkman and A.N. Vylegzhanin. Springer. Dordrecht.2013. P. XIX-XXVIII. (459 P.).5T. Koivurova, E. Molenaar. International Governance and Regulation of the Marine Arctic. Oslo. WWF.

2009. 38PP.6Arctic Law and Policy Year Review: 2017. 2018 Washington Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. P. 106263.7A. Vylegzhanin, Dudykina, I., Kienko, E., Salygin, V. Positions of the non-Arctic states on the legal regime of theArctic Ocean. Gosudarstvo i pravo [Journal of State and Law]. No. 10. 2018. P.124-135.10during the Yeltsin years undermined the previously stable legal environment in theArctic.

The Arctic Ocean floor was no longer regarded as the continental shelf areaof the five Arctic states delimited along meridian lines. Russia took the approach,where only the 200-mile zone was its continental shelf, while the rest it intended to“accrue” by addressing the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf(hereinafter, the CLCS).

Norway, Denmark, and Canada followed Russia’sexample of approaching the Commission for the “accretion” of their shelf in theArctic, having promptly estimated that with the new legal criteria for theboundaries based on geological data, each of them could better ensure its nationalinterests in the Arctic: Norway, by consolidating its rights to the shelf north ofSpitzbergen; and Canada – by stepping beyond its own Arctic sector andintervening into that of Russia. The international legal doctrine has differentopinions on the frenzy the Russian agencies have created since 1997 around theissue of clarifying the status of the Arctic Ocean seabed, ranging from views to theeffect that there are no alternatives to the legal method (adopted in 1997) ofspecifying the boundaries of the high-latitude Arctic shelf based on one of theArticles of the 1982 UNCLOS, and, consequently, that a spurt of competition andeven conflict on the matter among Arctic states is inevitable; to criticism ofRussia’s new approach as a strategic legal mistake that undercut the legal titles inthe Arctic held by the Russian Empire and the USSR.Against this background, an analysis of the Anglo-American doctrines ofinternational law related to the present-day theoretical issues of the status of theArctic is, without doubt, relevant both in terms of theory and much-needed bypractice.Existing legal literature on the subject-matter of this study.

At thepresent moment, the Russian academic literature lacks complex studies that wouldanalyse the perception of the legal regime of the Arctic Ocean engrained in theAnglo-American doctrines of international law.Some international legal issues related to that regime are to an extentcovered by works on the specific theoretical and practical aspects of the North11Passage, the Northwest Passage, the Polar Code, and the Central Arctic. At thesame time, however, the foreign interpretations even of these issues ofinternational law have not been comprehensively studied by Russian scholars.A number of issues of international law related to construing the status of theArctic Ocean proffered in the Anglo-American doctrines, have been examined inthe works by the deceased Professors V.L. Lakhtin, Yu.G.

Barsegov, S.V.Molodtsov, A.K. Zhudro, F.I. Kozhevnikov, and M.I. Lazarev. Among thecontemporary Russian academic works on questions of international law closelytied to the topic of this dissertation, one should note the treatises of aCorresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, I.S. Ivanov, andProfessor A.N. Vylegzhanin, and, primarily, their collection of legal documentsThe Arctic Region: Issues of International Cooperation.

Vol. 3. Applicable LegalSources, published by the Russian International Affairs Council (hereinafter, theRIAC) in 2013. In an extensive introduction to the collection, its specialized editorProfessor A.N. Vylegzhanin supplies a general overview of the international legalissues of the current specification of the Arctic Ocean’s status. A Chinesetranslation of the book was published in 2015. An English translation is underway.That said, the book does not contain a substantive analysis of the Anglo-Americandoctrines on the contemporary legal regime of the Arctic and, first and foremost, ofthe Arctic Ocean, including its peripheral seas.