Who Will Crack the Ice: The Struggle for Antarctic Treaty System Endurance
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Presentation Type
Submission
Department
Political Science
Major
Political Science
Abstract
What has enabled the endurance of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) amid geopolitical competition and increasing environmental stress? Focusing on the period following the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol), this study analyzes the participation of the United States and the People's Republic of China in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) and how their rhetoric has shaped the treaty's endurance. I argue that the ATS has endured through two mechanisms operating in sequence. First, the regime's founding environmental and scientific norms constrain how states can justify their behavior within ATCM settings, channeling even strategic competition through normative language, which I label normative constraint. Second, as strategic pressures to extract resources and strategic advantage in the area intensify, states increasingly decouple their multilateral rhetoric from their national policy objectives. They have maintained environmental and scientific normative commitments at ATCMs while pursuing material interests through other channels, thereby allowing the treaty to endure in a pattern consistent with organized hypocrisy. These dynamics are traced through China's nearly two-decade engagement with Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic ice sheet, where its trajectory from scientific expedition to station-building to contested governance proposal reveals both mechanisms operating in sequence. Through a qualitative rhetorical analysis of ATCM documents and national policy statements from 2005 to 2024, this study demonstrates that the ATS has endured because both mechanisms have allowed states to participate without juxtaposing the tension between environmental commitments and strategic ambitions in the multilateral forum. However, this combination has produced a "hollowing out" as the gap between normative rhetoric and governance ambition have widened over time.
Faculty Mentor
Felicity Vabulas
Funding Source or Research Program
Political Science Honors Program
Location
Black Family Plaza Classroom 188
Start Date
10-4-2026 2:45 PM
End Date
10-4-2026 3:00 PM
Who Will Crack the Ice: The Struggle for Antarctic Treaty System Endurance
Black Family Plaza Classroom 188
What has enabled the endurance of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) amid geopolitical competition and increasing environmental stress? Focusing on the period following the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol), this study analyzes the participation of the United States and the People's Republic of China in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) and how their rhetoric has shaped the treaty's endurance. I argue that the ATS has endured through two mechanisms operating in sequence. First, the regime's founding environmental and scientific norms constrain how states can justify their behavior within ATCM settings, channeling even strategic competition through normative language, which I label normative constraint. Second, as strategic pressures to extract resources and strategic advantage in the area intensify, states increasingly decouple their multilateral rhetoric from their national policy objectives. They have maintained environmental and scientific normative commitments at ATCMs while pursuing material interests through other channels, thereby allowing the treaty to endure in a pattern consistent with organized hypocrisy. These dynamics are traced through China's nearly two-decade engagement with Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic ice sheet, where its trajectory from scientific expedition to station-building to contested governance proposal reveals both mechanisms operating in sequence. Through a qualitative rhetorical analysis of ATCM documents and national policy statements from 2005 to 2024, this study demonstrates that the ATS has endured because both mechanisms have allowed states to participate without juxtaposing the tension between environmental commitments and strategic ambitions in the multilateral forum. However, this combination has produced a "hollowing out" as the gap between normative rhetoric and governance ambition have widened over time.