"[I]t's inevitable that they'll tap into this area for oil and gas. Look what happened in the Falklands in 1982. But this is an uninhabited continent and there would be heavy diplomacy and sanctions if a war was about to be fought over Antarctica." [14]
With the May 13, 2009 deadline approaching for submitting Antarctic claims, Russia sent explorer amd member of parliament Arthur Chilingarov, the Russian president's special representative for international cooperation in the Arctic and Antarctic, to Antarctica in January. Chilingarov led the Russian expedition which planted the national flag on the Arctic Ocean seabed under the North Pole in 2007.
Heading the Antarctica-2009 expedition and accompanied by fellow parliamentarians, he said at the time: "We are definitely showing the whole world that we have serious plans to continue polar research." [15]
For Argentina, Britain formally attempting to arrogate to itself a million square kilometer swathe of the Antarctic was preceded by the United Kingdom granting a new constitution to the Falklands Islands (Las Malvinas to Argentina) last November, one which while granting a greater degree of nominal autonomy still invested London with power over "external affairs, defense, internal security and the administration of justice." [16]
Argentina lodged a protest, with the country's foreign ministry stating, "This British unilateral act mainly constitutes a new and open violation of the 31/49 Resolution taken in 1976 by the UN General Assembly, which urges both parties in dispute (Argentine and United Kingdom) to abstain from taking decisions to introduce unilateral decisions." [17]
Buenos Aires condemned the British action as a "violation of Argentine sovereignty and international law." [18]
This January Argentina renewed its concerns over the "anachronistic colonial situation unsuitable with the course and evolution of the modern world." [19]
As May 13 grew more close, in late April Argentina filed a counter-claim based on twelve years of research to challenge "the illegitimate British occupation of the southern archipelagos" [20] and affirmed that "its continental shelf extends out from the South American and Antarctic continent and from an archipelago of islands Britain also lays claim to." [21]
Both claims are to be examined and adjudicated on by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf based on Article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but indisputably more is at stake than legal fine points. What is being fought over is control of vast natural resources including hydrocarbons, untold mineral wealth, the world's largest fresh water supply and fishing rights as well as geostrategic positioning which includes military objectives.
And the intensified interest shown in the Antarctic by not only Britain but its former colonial appendage Australia, which will be examined later, is not an isolated instance of aggressive if not illegal pursuit of strategic energy and economic interests abroad at the expenses of others - all others - but part of an accelerating pattern by the major Western powers and their military outposts to gain control over the world's resources, and that at a breakneck pace.
The same campaign by the West, acting in various ad hoc or longstanding coalitions, but especially in the collective military condominium that is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is being conducted in the Arctic Circle [22], the Persian Gulf [23], the Caspian Sea Basin [24] and the African continent, especially in the Gulf of Guinea [25].
In the Antarctic Ocean it isn't limited to Britain's audacious maneuvers, ones which would never have been attempted without the complicity of its allies, but by a little-noted and just as large-scale and unprecedented move by Australia.
In April of last year the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf - through who knows what combination of select compliance and international negligence - granted Australia 2.5 million more square kilometers in the Antarctic Ocean so that the nation's territory, in the words of Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, "expanded by an area five times the size of France," which could "potentially provide a 'bonanza' in underwater oil and gas reserves."
"The decision gives Australia the rights to what exists on and under the seabed, including potentially lucrative oil and gas reserves and biological resources." [26]
The expansion of Australia's seabed borders included the Kerguelen Plateau around the Heard and McDonald Islands, which extend southwards into Antarctica. As such Australia became the first nation to be granted exclusive property rights in the ocean.
Referring to the Western-engineered secession of Kosovo from Serbia two months beforehand, Dmitry Yevstafyev of the Center for Policy Studies in Moscow sounded this grave warning:
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