Reports of the Death of Colonialism...

...have been greatly exaggerated.

An article in today's New York Times reports on Russia's successful expedition to the North Pole this past weekend. Nothing newsworthy there, you might think, except the team planted their titanium version of the Russian flag two miles under the ice, on the Arctic Ocean's floor. A pair of mini-submarines, Mir-1 and Mir-2 (creative with the names, those guys are), entered the ocean through a hole cut in the ice, and carried explorers through the total darkness to their goal.

Pretty neat stuff, from a scientific perspective; I hope that there will be underwater photos passed around. But the interesting part of the story from my corner of the world is the connection between exploration and ownership. In the Times' reporting of the story, the expedition and media attention were scripted to bolster the case for Russia's ownership of that territory, based on the extent of the nation's continental shelf. Pravda's (English version) reporting made a little more of the scientific significance of the expedition, but also underscored the posturing that the effort represented.

I was bothered on the first reading of this by the voyage's egregiously political purpose (two of the crew are members of Russia's Parliament, according to the Times.) What bothers me more at this point, though, is the implicit link between exploration and ownership. A quote from Canada's foreign minister Peter MacKay, sums it up:

This isn’t the 15th century; you can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say "We’re claiming this territory."

Interesting thought. We haven't had to deal with this issue much lately here on terra firma, thinking we had pretty much already raised our leg on every corner of the planet. However, the ocean floor beneath the North Pole is a potentially rich source of oil and minerals, and so nations are jockeying for position to be able to claim the "rights" to that land. (The thought of us drilling and mining beneath those ice shelves leaves me sleepless, but that's another rant.) It's a problematic idea that we should be able to claim pillaging rights to the ocean's floor as if we were calling "shotgun" for a ride in the car, and doubly problematic that scientific exploration has to be motivated by this posturing.