A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force finds that Alaska and the Arctic are of growing economic and geostrategic importance and recommends actions to improve the United States' strategic presence in the Arctic region.

Based on Shelagh Grant’s groundbreaking archival research and drawing on her reputation as a leading historian in the field, Polar Imperative is a compelling overview of the historical claims of sovereignty over this continent’s polar regions. This engaging, timely history examines: the unfolding implications of major climate changes the impact of resource exploitation on the indigenous peoples the current high-stakes game for control over the adjacent waters of Alaska, Arctic Canada and Greenland the events, issues and strategies that have influenced claims to authority over the lands and waters of the North American Arctic, from the arrival of the first inhabitants around 3,000 BCE to the present sovereignty from a comparative point of view within North America and parallel situations in the European and Asian Arctic This book will become a standard reference on Arctic history and will redefine North Americans’ understanding of the sovereign rights and responsibilities of Canada’s northernmost region.

Winner of the 2011 Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the 2011 J. W. Dafoe Book Prize Nominated for the 2010 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize Nominated for the 2011 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize Nominated for the Lela Common Book Prize for Canadian History Based on Shelagh Grant's groundbreaking archival research and drawing on her reputation as a leading historian in the field, "Polar Imperative" is a compelling overview of the historical claims of sovereignty over this continent's polar regions. This engaging, timely history examines the unfolding implications of major climate changes; the impact of resource exploitation on the indigenous peoples; the current high-stakes game for control over the adjacent waters of Alaska, Arctic Canada and Greenland; the events, issues and strategies that have influenced claims to authority over the lands and waters of the North American Arctic, from the arrival of the first inhabitants around 3,000 BCE to the present; and sovereignty from a comparative point of view within North America and parallel situations in the European and Asian Arctic. Polar Imperative is a definitive reference on Arctic history and will redefine North Americans' understanding of the sovereign rights and responsibilities of this northernmost region.

A hard-hitting, timely, and provocative book about the history and future of the Canadian Arctic. With passion and sharp words, Arctic Front confronts Canada’s longstanding neglect of the Far North and outline what needs to be done to protect our national interest. Through a lively and engaging history of the region, Arctic Front reveals how Canadians and their governments have: ignored this region for generations expanded Canadian sovereignty over the past hundred years by reacting to other countries’ challenges become the least effective of all Circumpolar nations in responding to the needs of the Arctic neglected our obligations to the North, including a failure to capitalize on the human and economic resources of this vast land or to establish a presence that would make any foreign claims to offshore resources inconceivable. As global warming continues to melt the ice in the Northwest Passage and the competition for northern resources heats up, Canada, the authors warn, will be forced to defend this area from a position of grave weakness. Our leaders need to take action today, blending defence and development, to complete Canadian nation building in this fragile region. An energetic and engaging collaboration by four of Canada’s leading Northern specialists, Arctic Front is a clarion call to all Canadians about our endangered Arctic region, challenging the country to step away from the symbols and myth making of the past and toward the urgent political, environmental and economic realities of the 21st century.

Though it has been home for centuries to indigenous peoples who have mastered its conditions, the Arctic has historically proven to be a difficult region for governments to administer. Extreme temperatures, vast distances, and widely dispersed patterns of settlement have made it impossible for bureaucracies based in far-off capitals to erect and maintain the kind of infrastructure and institutions that they have built elsewhere. As climate change transforms the polar regions, this book seeks to explore how the challenges of governance are developing and being met in Alaska, the Canadian Far North, and Greenland, while also drawing upon lessons from the region's past. Though the experience of each of these jurisdictions is unique, their place within democratic, federal systems and the prominence within each of them of issues relating to the rights of indigenous peoples situates them as part of an identifiably 'North American Arctic.' Today, as this volume shows, their institutions are evolving to address contemporary issues of security, environmental protection, indigenous rights, and economic development.