The European countries you're referring to are all partners in NATO. If the two North American partners in NATO decided they had to do this for a security reason, I'm quite confident that our European allies would fall into line, particularly if, as part of this agreement, we made a firm commitment to allow any reputable international shipping company to use the passage within the constraints of reasonable environmental and safety regulations. So there's no issue there.
There is a lot of activity on the Arctic, within the Arctic Council and other bodies, but what people need to understand is that the dominant framework is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. That was negotiated in large part by Canadian lawyer diplomats 27 years ago now. They did an extraordinary job in terms of anticipating the kinds of problems that would arise and protecting Canada and other countries' interests there.
This is a good treaty, which is why President Bush wanted to ratify it and why, I expect, the Obama administration will ratify and come into that treaty framework soon.