From "diplomatic miracle" to systemic tension: modern challenges to the Antarctic Treaty

The subject of this research is the evolution and contemporary challenges of the Antarctic Treaty System as a unique international legal regime for security and scientific cooperation on the continent. In this article, the author analyzes the historical conditions that led to the formation of the regime, the key compromises of the 1959 Treaty, as well as subsequent crises and their resolutions. The central focus of the work is on two critical events: the crisis at the end of the 1980s related to the issue of resource extraction in Antarctica, resolved by the adoption of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty in 1991, and the current challenges to the Antarctic regime. The study examines how the initial gaps and flexible formulations of the Antarctic Treaty have created conditions for new threats to its stability in changed international circumstances over the long term. The author employs historical analysis methods such as the comparative method, problem-chronological approach, retrospective method, and systematic analysis. Document analysis methods such as content and event analysis were used. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the comprehensive analysis of the Antarctic Treaty System as a system whose resilience has historically depended not on resolving fundamental contradictions among the participants but on their successful postponement during unique historical windows of opportunity. The author concludes that the Madrid Protocol, which saved the system by introducing an indefinite moratorium on resource extraction, has itself laid the groundwork for a new postponed crisis. In the current context of the erosion of global institutions and the resurgence of power politics, this crisis is taking on a systemic character. The article’s conclusions indicate that new challenges—such as the emergence of the military-political bloc AUKUS, which creates the risk of creeping militarization, and the strategies to establish "de facto sovereignty" by Argentina and Chile—undermine the universalist foundations of the Antarctic Treaty System.

Antarctic Treaty, Antarctic treaty System, Chile, Argentina, Antarctic, AUKUS, Falkland islands, Islas Malvinal, Latin America, Southern ocean