Steel, ice and decision-making. The voyage of the Polar Sea and its aftermath: The making of Canadian northern foreign policy.

• Main Author: Huebert, Rob.
• Other Authors: Ph.D.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Dalhousie University 2014
• Subjects: History; Canadian; Political Science; International Law and Relations; Canada; Greenland; Northwest Passage; Northwest passage; Thule; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10222/55411

On August 1, 1985, the American icebreaker, the POLAR SEA entered the Northwest Passage. Its mission was to re-supply the American base at Thule, Greenland and then to engage in scientific research off the coast of Alaska. Under normal circumstances, each mission would have been undertaken by separate American icebreakers. However, a series of events in 1985 resulted in the United States Coast Guard being overcommitted with inadequate resources to meet its requirements. Its response to this problem was to deploy the POLAR SEA for both missions. But, in order to do so, it was necessary for the vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. The status of the Passage was an issue of longstanding disagreement between Canada and the United States. As a result, this particular voyage while uneventful in itself, was to unleash a series of events that would culminate as the defining event for the creation of Canadian northern foreign policy in the second half of the 1980s. The objective of this thesis is to determine why and how this occurred. In order to do so, it is necessary to provide a means of analysis by which it is possible to explain how a state makes foreign policy. It is the contention of this thesis that a decision-making model provides the most promising means of understanding how foreign policy is made. Therefore, this thesis will ask two questions: (1) How is foreign policy made?; and (2) How was Canadian northern foreign policy made following the voyage of the POLAR SEA? Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1994.