9. Cuestión
9.1 Comparación del original y su traducción
9.1.7. Traducción de juegos
of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). In the Antarctic a total of 12 countries (the seven claimants, the US, Belgium, Japan, South Africa and the Soviet Union) conducted scientific programs in over 60 research stations.60 In September 1957 the ICSU established the Special (later Scientific) Committee on Scientific Research to coordinate science in the Antarctic after the IGY. This non-governmental body provided an institutional focus for the development of an epistemic community and was to become a integral part of the Antarctic regime.
In the interests of advancing knowledge about the Antarctic, scientists intended that cooperation would be encouraged and politics put to one side during the IGY. Military activity was banned as contrary to this spirit, although logistical support by the military was permitted. Mapping activities were also considered inappropriate in the Antarctic because of the political implications for claims. In accordance with the principle of scientific cooperation, meteorological and rescue services were pooled and the exchange of science personnel was encouraged.61
Scientists lobbied successfully, through their national IGY committees, to secure an agreement on free access to all parts of the Antarctic for the purposes of scientific investigation. Under this agreement, which was formulated in a resolution o f CSAGI, the exercise of sovereignty by the claimants was to be held temporarily in abeyance in the interests of science. Scientists from any country would free to go anywhere in the Antarctic without being subject to diplomatic protest notes and confrontations over the location of bases. In effect this embodied the principles of the Escudero Declaration proposed some years earlier by Chile as a possible solution to the claims issue. What is important is that the tacit support of the claimant governments was obtained to put it into effect. In this way, cooperation between states (although not strictly intergovernmental) began in the Antarctic with some limited concession to interdependence norms.
Antarctic regarding the relations of the participating countries" - thus hoping to avoid diplomatic exchanges (Peterson 1988:39). Note also Shapley’s (1985:59) references to the fact that the US planning committee seems to have been unaware that the State Department was continuing to make plans for a US claim and hoped to use the scientific expeditions during the IGY as part of its development o f the "constructive occupation" doctrine.
60. For a summary o f the interests o f the IGY states, albeit from a British perspective, see Bertram (1958). Not all o f the Antarctic stations were new ones - in 1955 there had been 20 stations on the Antarctic continent, operated by Argentina, Chile, the UK and Australia. 19 of these were peninsula stations; the other was Australia’s Mawson station.
61. In both the 1956/57 and 57/58 seasons, Soviet meteorologists wintered at Little America V station, and US meteorologists wintered at the Soviet station Mirny (Department of State
Nevertheless, this scientific cooperation did not mean an absence o f politics. Given the potential for tension among the claimants and between the superpowers, it was perhaps naive to hope (as the scientists did) that politics and science could be kept completely separate. For example, the decentralised "mother-daughter" system for communication o f essential weather data was constructed so that no "daughter" station was reliant on a politically unsympathetic "mother" (Shapley 1985:87-88). The US, which had already established a base at McMurdo in 1955, established the Amundsen-Scott base at the South Pole,62 effectively giving it a geographic foothold in all sectors.63
More importantly, scientific activity itself had direct political implications. Bertram argued (1958:10) that, with the exception o f Belgium, the IGY Antarctic nations had aspirations and interests that extended beyond the scientific. He argued (1958:2) "it is the naive alone who are convinced that pure science is the sole stimulant" for the increase in activity. Hayton argued (1960b:370) in a similar vein: "in the absence of the political purpose it is doubtful whether so much energy and money would have been budgeted for permanent meteorological observatories and geographic and oceanographic investigations".
The so-called ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ on freedom o f access to all parts o f the continent, and the temporary ‘freezing’ o f the claims that accompanied it, was scheduled to last only for the duration o f the IGY.64 The potential for a resurrection of prior conflict over territory,65 as well as the spectre o f future tensions between the superpowers, encouraged the Antarctic states to think once more about a treaty for the continent.
62. No-one had stood at the South Pole since Scott in 1912. Shapley (1985:85-86) gives a nice account of how decisions were made about the siting of some of the bases in order to avoid confrontation. According to Shapley (1988:313) the US had not planned a South Pole station. However at a 1955 IGY planning meeting, the Soviet delegate announced that the USSR intended to put a base there. The French chairperson (Shapely suggests with a quick wink to the US delegate) countered this by saying that the US already had plans for siting a station there, even though they had not til that moment. The Soviets were therefore "diverted" to the Pole of Inaccessibility. Quigg (1983:48) tells the story differently, suggesting that the US had expressed a prior interest in the South Pole site.
63. The siting of the seven US scientific stations was influenced by the Department of Defence and a 1954 National Security Council memorandum and was intended to insure that the US was second to none in the Antarctic (Quigg 1983:49).
64. Many of the scientific stations had been constructed to close when the IGY finished. In many countries IGY funding had been a ‘one-ofF arrangement which was unlikely to continue.
65. In the early 1950s Britain, Chile and Argentina had resumed their heated diplomatic correspondence over their conflicting claims (see Hanessian 1960:447). In 1952, British and Argentine expeditions exchanged gunfire (although without casualties) at Hope Bay. See Beck (1986b:35) for details. See Beck (1986b:32-36) also for a description of the various actions taken by the three competing claimants to assert their sovereignty over the area. In 1953 tension arose after the British tore down an Argentine hut on Deception Island and arrested two Argentine personnel who were expelled as illegal immigrants.
62
The Soviet announcement that it would remain in the Antarctic after the IGY caused "genuine apprehension that the most dangerous inter-nation rivalry of all time, the Cold War, might be extended to the South Pole" (Hayton 1960b:371). Bertram (1958:18) argued that "political stability in Antarctica in the next few years is certainly improbable".66 These Cold War fears were exacerbated by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and by the dawning of the missile age.67 Hayton (1960b:382) noted that "some countries were visibly nervous [at Soviet activity] and lamented privately that a final settlement of the political status of the area had not been reached prior to the widening of the field of participation to include the unscrupulous and unpredictable chief o f the Communist bloc". The Australians especially were worried about Soviet activity in its territory where the USSR had built its IGY bases.68
Discussions on a settlement resumed during the IGY, this time with a greater sense of urgency.69 The IGY provided governments with an opportunity to break the impasse of the late 1940s and early 1950s on the sovereignty question. Territorial concessions were made and political arrangements tested without states having to make formal or long-term commitments. However, the political landscape had changed since 1948. The claimants and the United States were no longer in a position to negotiate an exclusive settlement. Other interests had joined the debate. The Soviet Union could no longer be excluded from any discussions or agreement and the other Antarctic IGY states (Belgium, Japan and South Africa) were unlikely to accept any agreement made without their involvement.
Thus the demand for a regime, that is for cooperation, arose in response to pressures from states outside the key ‘in-group’ (the claimants and the US). Those external states could not be excluded from any subsequent agreement on the Antarctic.
In May 1958, well before the IGY finished, US President Eisenhower formally invited the eleven other Antarctic IGY states to participate in a conference for the purposes of
66. Quigg (1983:144) notes that Admiral Dufek, who had been a leading figure in the US IGY effort, had drawn up contingency plans in the event of hostilities in the region.
67. The launching o f Sputnik on 4 October 1957 fueled concerns about Soviet technological ability and the spectre o f "[Soviet] intercontinental missiles poking their snouts out of southern ice fields" (Anon 1958:94).
68. When Secretary o f State Dulles had visited Australia in March 1957, the Australian government asked him to do something about the situation.
69. In 1956, New Zealand Prime Minister Nash had revived the UN trusteeship proposal but again it was not well received. Various proposals were also made for some form of expanding condominium based initially on the US, New Zealand and Australia (Quigg 1983:140). In 1956, and again in 1957 and 1958, India, concerned at the possibility o f conflict in Antarctica, proposed that the question o f the Antarctic be placed on the UN General Assembly agenda, but did not press the matter in the face of Argentinian and Chilean opposition and lack of support from Britain. However this served to indicate that there was a potential for interest from non- Antarctic states.