Why has there been a 'long peace' in Antarctica?

• Published in: The Yearbook of Polar Law Online
• Main Author: Jabour, J
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Brill - Nijhoff 2015
• Subjects: Law and Legal Studies; Law; International Law (excl. International Trade Law); Antarctic; Pulitzer; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Yearbook of Polar Law
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/2211-6427_024; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/107767

This article draws on the work of John Lewis Gaddis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian particularly well known for his scholarship on the Cold War. In his 1986 paper, The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System Gaddis posited a range of plausible reasons for why neither the United States nor the Soviet Union took the ultimate step of initiating a nuclear war against the other. This restraint was founded on principles of mutual understanding of the consequences of such an action and contributed to what he termed the long peace in post-Cold War international relations. This article examines why there has also been a long peace in Antarctic relations, using Gaddiss theories and applying them to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties dealings with each other in the context of the Antarctic Treaty System the legal regime that governs Antarctica. It finds that despite a radically different set of international relations circumstances today, Gaddiss theories hold true. How long this long peace will last is not the point here; merely that it exists is cause for optimism.