Here is another example of something I frequently find myself cautioning against; the relationship between fact and fantasy in the media. This example is from the BBC.
So, now that the North West Passage has had a few clear weeks, and many people seem content to assume that this will be the case for many years to come (isn’t it a bit soon to make this assumption?), David Shukman reports that Canada is ‘asserting its control’ over this part of their territorial waters:
In another sign of potential friction in the warming Arctic, Canada has warned that it will step up patrols of the North West Passage. Record summer melting of sea-ice has cleared the passage for the first time; and immediately escalated a dispute over who controls the route.
Canada maintains the waterway that connects the Atlantic with the Pacific lies within its territorial waters.
It has backed that up with plans for a new military base in the Arctic.
However, the United States, and other countries claim international rights to use the route for shipping.
note the language use to emphasise the message that this represents a ‘threat’: ‘friction’, ‘warned’, ‘step up’, ‘patrols’, ‘escalated’, ‘dispute’, and the classic ‘plans for a new military base’.
But the lack of details in certain key areas makes me suspect there is perhaps less to this story than Mr. Shukman is making out. I’m not saying he’s lying about this, not at all; it may well all be both true and accurate. It’s important to recognise that part of the job of experienced journalists is to recognise the underlying reality, when on the surface, not much is stirring. But the question of how the North West Passage is to be used, and who is responsible (and who is to profit from it, we imagine) for this new shipping route, is here being specifically ‘framed’ in terms of a potential international ‘conflict’. What evidence is there that there is going to be anything more dramatic than diplomatic discussions, at worst a political dispute over the use of the NWP? Apart from the statement that ‘the USA and Europe’ are promoting the status of the passage as an ‘International Water’, not a lot. The impression from the article is that this is a military conflict-in-waiting, which is hardly credible.
As for the details that Mr. Shukman does provide: What sort of ‘military base’ is Canada planning, exactly? Where? And what is it’s intended purpose? Are they planning a large Naval installation, or a twenty-man research base? Details, please…
It is also hard to understand under what circumstances any other nation might claim that the NWP represents ‘International Waters’; it is surrounded by the Canadian Archipelago (is there some dispute about which country Ellesmere Island, or Banks Island belongs to?) , and as such, exists entirely within Canadian territory, as much as the Panama Canal is within Panama, or the Suez within Egypt. (Don’t even go there…); how this could then be ‘disputed’ water is at least a matter of curiosity to me.
I don’t doubt that there will be some interesting manoeuvring going on in the Arctic Ocean, should the climate change for long enough to allow detailed research and exploration of potential resources, but the idea that Canada is ‘flexing its military muscles’ seems faintly incredulous. Id’ be happy to be proven wrong.
Thanks to the inimitable resource that is Wikipedia, I learn:
Northwest Passage
Northwest Passage routes
The legal status of a section of the Northwest Passage is disputed: Canada considers it to be part of its internal waters, fully under Canadian jurisdiction, arguing that they are archipelagic waters under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[24] The United States and most maritime nations,[25] consider them to be an international strait,[26] which means that foreign vessels have right of “transit passage”.[27] In such a regime, Canada would have the right to enact fishing and environmental regulation, and fiscal and smuggling laws, as well as laws intended for the safety of shipping, but not the right to close the passage.[28][29]
So maybe there is an argument going on, but really; will it ever be more than posturing?
š
Old man in a cave 
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October 8, 2007 at 5:02 pm
bigcitylib
I can’t say whether it will ever amount to more than posturing, but yeah we’re taking this pretty seriously up here. As for the NWP, the U.S. gov. is claiming that it is an international passage.
And as for the port, well, that is “promised” by the current gov. The BBC guy may have no details because the idea is stilli n its infancy.
Nothing in the article that I read strikes me as controversial or over the top, IMHO.
October 8, 2007 at 5:20 pm
fergusbrown
Hi, BCL; I am probably a bit out of the way here, as it hasn’t been a major feature before in the UK. It appear that the BBC is going to run a series of reports over the next ten days from the research ship, so perhaps by the end we’ll be better informed. What I was trying to get at was the use of language in the article; the language of military confrontation. It has an implication of hostility and aggression which doesn’t fit with my understanding of the Canadian character (not counting ice hockey, you understand).
A bit of digging shows me that there has been a long history of wrangles over who owns what and where; (is it Hart Island?), and it’s more likely that this is a signal to the Russians more than to the USA, though it’s the latter who seem most insistent on sending their nuclear subs up and down without paying at the tollbooth.
Simultaneous to this report, there’s another on the BBC about the damage being done to the lives of the indigenous populations of Siberia by the building of a 4000km pipeline all the way to China. It occurs to me that Nunavuk and its occupants could take on an international significance in the coming years, for a host of reasons.
It isn’t that I don’t take international territorial claims seriously; to the territories involved, they matter a lot. But I’m made uncomfortable by a framing which uses the rhetoric of war, when any sane person would want to resolve disputes such as this in a diplomatic and peaceful fashion.
October 8, 2007 at 5:43 pm
bigcitylib
1) We’ve got a Conservative government thats styled a bit on Mr. Bush’s Republicans, so they’re more prone to that kind of rhetoric.
2) Personally, I AM a bit worried about military confrontations over the arctic. The Russians, for example, have been flying jets around pretty close to our borders, and we’ve had to scramble in response. And I don’t put it past the Yankees to start thinking about territorial moves, if it turns into the gold rush people say it might. All down the road, mind you. Not tomorrow. But enough to worry people a little.
October 8, 2007 at 9:39 pm
fergusbrown
Can we conclude, then, that Alert is aptly named?
I’m not going to contradict you; there’s a great big Canadian blogosphere out there, and I’ll take a look before expressing any further opinion. It just seems so…extreme. ‘The battle of Ellesmere Island’.