The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021

26 MAY 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Creation of the Arctic Council The eight nations of the Arctic—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States—estab- lished the Arctic Council in 1996 through a nonbinding instru- ment known as the Ottawa Declaration. The council, though not a formal international organization with legal per- sonality and assessed bud- getary contributions, has served, in the words of the declaration, as a high-level forum to promote “coop- eration, coordination and interaction among the Arctic states, with the involvement of the Arctic indigenous communities and other Arc- tic inhabitants, on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable devel- opment and environmental protection in the Arctic.” The inclusion of Arctic Indigenous peoples in virtu- ally all aspects of the coun- cil’s work makes this forum unique. Six groups of “Permanent Participants,” representing Indigenous communities through- out the region, take part in council meetings in their own name and right, not as part of national delegations. Decisions of the council, though in principle made only by consensus of the governments, in practice also require the consensus of the permanent participants as well. The Arctic Council, largely through its six standing working groups on various aspects of monitoring and protecting the Arctic, has produced groundbreaking analyses of Arctic climate change, biodiversity, shipping and countless other topics. At its biennial ministerial meetings, which all U.S. Secretaries of State have attended since 2011, the council adopts far-reaching recommendations on an extraordinary range of issues. U.S. Leadership in the Council The chairmanship of the Arctic Council rotates every two years among its eight members. The United States most recently chaired the council from May 2015 to May 2017, a term that spanned two U.S. administrations. Indeed, when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson presided over the Arctic Council ministe- rial meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2017, he brought to frui- tion a set of programs and projects that the Obama administra- tion had launched two years earlier. The United States has found many ways to exercise leader- ship within the council even while not leading the body as a whole. Experts from the United States have very frequently spearheaded the work that the council undertakes, such as the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and the 2009 Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment. Three times in the past decade, the council created task forces to negotiate new treaties for the Arctic region. In each case, the United States co-led these task forces, which produced in quick succession (at least by the normal standards of diplomacy) the 2011 Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic, the 2013 Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparation and Response in the Arctic, and the 2017 Agree- ment on Enhancing International Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic. It is worth noting that Russia also co-chaired each of these task forces. Indeed, the success of each endeavor depended substantially on cooperation between Russia and the United States in working through the challenges that each group confronted. Having served as U.S. co-chair for the first two task forces, I can say from experience that successful leadership of the negotiations required a great deal of behind-the-scenes communication and trust, which occurred despite rising bilat- eral tensions at the time. Similar communication and trust also existed between the American and Russian co-chairs of the third task force, which was established after the Russian invasion of Crimea and the resulting international sanctions. This demonstrates the willingness of the two governments in those years to “compart- mentalize” the Arctic and pursue cooperation there despite conflicts elsewhere. David Balton chairs a Senior Arctic Officials meeting in Juneau, Alaska, in March 2017. COURTESYOFDAVIDBALTON