Acknowledgements
By and large, geostrategic considerations seem to treat the two poles as distinct. Yet, when Christian spent a year in Australia, he realized the considerable and arguably growing geostrategic complementarity between the Arctic and Antarctic along with the Southern Ocean. At the same time, Douglas was increasingly drawn into resolving some of the complex interactions of sovereignty and environmental security in the Arctic through his establishment of the Arctic Domain Awareness Center at the University of Alaska. So, we orchestrated a dialogue among some clever strategic minds across the northern and southern hemispheres. Five years on, this open access book is the result. The time that has elapsed since this project was initially conceived has only reinforced concern about the deleterious impact of adversarial behaviour and climate change on both poles, the need to learn from complementary experiences, and opportunities for cross-polar collaboration among allies and partners to shape the geostrategic environment across both poles. Polar ice caps that used to be flyover country at the edge of the world have become central to geostrategic competition. How that competition plays out has serious ramifications for environmental, political, economic, and human security and stability around the globe.
Australian Defence underwrote the initial project with competitive funding from their Strategic Policy Grants Program, which, inter alia, enabled an author and practitioner workshop in Canberra. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation was so convinced of the project’s novelty and broader importance that it agreed to facilitate open access publication of this volume through its fairly new office in Australia. We are especially grateful to the office’s former director, Dr. Beatrice Gorawantschy, as well as her successor, Bertil Wenger.
Christian started this project while on a fellowship at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, in collaboration with his local colleague Cassandra, who directs the Climate and Sustainability Policy Research (CASPR) group. She and her team organized and led the author and practitioner workshop leading to this publication in Canberra in December 2019. Regrettably, competing commitments did not allow her to join with us in seeing this publication through to completion. CASPR research associate Dr. Claire Nettle provided indispensable operational, editorial, and administrative support throughout the workshop and initial stages in preparing papers for publication. This project would not have come to fruition without them.
Douglas is most grateful for the assistance and support from his colleagues in the Arctic Initiative of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in helping bring this volume to completion. Often the most challenging part of completing a multi-authored volume as this one is left at the end, where all of the fine details of editing are resolved. Daniel Bicknell found time to help considerably in pulling these all together.
We would be equally remiss if we did not acknowledge the unequivocal support from Brian Scrivener, Helen Hajnoczky, and the board at the University of Calgary Press, as well as exceptional copy editing by Anne Holley-Hime, Ryan Perks in readying the manuscript for publication, and editorial assistance by Rhianna Hamilton and Mary Kennedy. I am also thankful to the two peer reviewers who endorsed the quality of the project and whose thoughtful comments greatly enriched the final version of each chapter.
And while we are delighted how the contributors and their chapters came together, a special shoutout goes to three of them: Dr. Heather Nicol, whose mentorship time and again provided us with superior input at critical times from inception through publication, MGen (ret’d) Randy “Church” Kee for this dedication to the polar cause and his friendship, and Dr. Jamie Ferrill, whose skillful intervention, adroit managerial skills, and unwavering and selfless commitment proved vital in leveraging Charles Sturt University and the fine people at their research office to get the project over the line.
Far from being the be all and end all on this topic, this volume instead intends to raise the geostrategic spectre of the two poles to enable a broader, more informed conversation. For too long this topic has flown under the radar; the intent here is to put the Polar Cousins on the radar to foster a more comprehensive and integrated approach to global geostrategy among the Five Eyes countries in particular, and polar allies and partners more generally. This volume’s title is inspired by a book John Blaxland published some years ago on the way common interests yet divergent domestic circumstances encourage bilateral collaboration that manifests in different security strategies.
As Christian has written elsewhere, the Five Eyes,–the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand–are the world’s most powerful and long-standing foreign policy coordination mechanism, which sits at the apex of the international security pyramid. The Anglosphere security community of like-minded states is characterized by shared norms, values, and practices. This Anglo-American tradition in foreign affairs has traditionally perpetuated and staked its reputation on a common set of core national interests: sovereignty; security; prosperity; national, regional, international, and transnational security and stability, including the liberal international rules-based order as well as a democratic conception of the rule of law; and fundamental human rights. By virtue of their geostrategic proximity, these five countries have a disproportionate stake in the two polar regions.
What happens in the polar regions used to stay in the polar regions–not anymore.
Christian Leuprecht
Kingston, Ontario
August 2022
Cassandra Star
Adelaide, South Australia
Douglas Causey