Is Santa Canadian?

“Everybody knows the North Pole is in Canada,” quipped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a Huffington Post online town hall this week.

Russia is claiming that iconic zenith for its own, even planting a flag on the ocean floor. And, Trudeau concedes, however much he may dislike Russian President Vladimir Putin, “that doesn’t make him automatically wrong.”

“This is the entire reason that this question is going to be settled not by politicians but by scientists. International oceanographic scientists and international bodies are weighing in to look at the various lines on the map,” Trudeau said, betraying his technocratic instinct.

Leaving the border to “science” is superficially appealing; it seems appropriately objective, fair and Canadian.

However well intentioned, Trudeau’s position is naive and, frankly, silly. Borders aren’t objective. They are arbitrary political distinctions, not scientific ones.

Certainly, political actors can all agree to use scientific processes and measures — lines of latitude or edges of continental shelves — to help determine boundaries and claims, of course. Indeed, the process is underway in the Arctic right now. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t inherently political.

According to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, a country can claim jurisdiction over the ocean floor if it can prove that the seabed is an extension of its continental shelf.

Several countries are now collecting and submitting evidence to support their positions; a ruling is not expected for at least a decade. However, so far, it looks like the Russian and the Canadian claims may overlap.

And that’s where science ends and politics begins.

“At that point, ( the law) offers a number of options,” said Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. “The countries can go to tribunal under the law of the sea — but most are opting to have direct negotiations.”

Indeed, the whole matter became enormously more complicated in 2013, when then-prime minister Stephen Harper ordered a revision of Canada’s claim to the UN to extend past the North Pole.

Although Harper was cast as the villain in that affair, Huebert believes he acted appropriately.

“There was widespread speculation in December of 2013 that there was a gentleman’s agreement between the Danes, the Russians and the Canadians that they would use the North Pole as the delimitation point,” he said.

In other words, Canadian scientists and diplomats ended their surveys of the ocean floor at the North Pole — even though the continental shelf would likely give Canada a larger share of the seabed.

When the results reached cabinet, the government decided there was no particularly good reason to hand over several hundred nautical miles to the Russians.

As much of the affair is still shrouded by cabinet secrecy, this account would almost certainly be disputed. Regardless, Trudeau is now well positioned to capitalize on Harper’s decision if new scientific surveys suggest that Canada does, in fact, have a claim to the ocean floor beyond the North Pole.

Which brings us to the other grim reality about international boundaries: while most of them are, indeed, maintained by goodwill and mutual cooperation, ultimately a border is only as meaningful as a country’s ability to defend it.

It’s impossible to ignore the fact that Russia is pouring billions of dollars into the north, in the form of military bases, personnel and equipment. Some alarmists have suggested the possibility of an outright shooting match in coming decades — although Huebert suggests this betrays an unsubtle understanding of how countries use military force.

“It’s not about going to war over the continental shelf,” he said. The expansion is, “first and foremost, a defence of their nuclear deterrence.”

But it’s also great ground for military posturing. The Arctic is becoming another zone in which the Russians engage in displays of displeasure with the West. Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine may make international headlines; less obvious are the incursions in the air- and seaspace of countries like Finland and Sweden, which are reportedly considering NATO applications.

And “if we say no to Finland and Sweden, there’s a real possibility that intimidation is already having an effect,” he said.

How power and resources are meted out will be subject to negotiations, rulings, scientific discoveries and diplomacy for a generation. Most experts note that Russia has every incentive to play nice in the Arctic. But this is a very long game, and it grows harder to pretend that the drawing of borders can be reduced to sterile, objective processes. These are games of politics, diplomacy and, in extreme cases, war.