I may disagree with my friend and colleague a little bit on this. The changes are happening so quickly in the Arctic that having a wait and see policy and allowing time to work to our advantage might result in our missing opportunities and ending up in crisis.
Let's take the Northwest Passage. The Northwest Passage dispute, for all practical purposes, was dealt with by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988. It was an incredible diplomatic accomplishment. He himself cites the Arctic cooperation agreement with President Reagan as one of his signature accomplishments.
Were it not for the subsequent changes resulting from climate change, we wouldn't be talking about the Northwest Passage. The problem is that commercial vessels are entering in increasing numbers, and this agreement, which applied to U.S. government vessels, doesn't cover the new challenge. So we need an updated Arctic cooperation agreement. We need to take the work that Mr. Mulroney did and update it to the 21st century.
I know there are American diplomats who would welcome such a conversation, because they realize that having the longest coastline of North America seasonally ice-free is not in their interest if it's a wild west zone, with only international jurisdiction, as opposed to being part of a North American states' internal waters jurisdiction. They want to have that conversation. It will be a tough negotiation. There will have to be compromise.
In 2008 I did a model negotiation with Paul Cellucci, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, on this very issue. In a day and a half we didn't solve the sovereignty dispute, but we came up with nine concrete recommendations as to how the two countries could work together. This is a moment where we should be talking with our ally.
As I said, we should also be talking with Russia and the other Arctic countries. But this dispute, the Northwest Passage, will be resolved when Mr. Obama and Mr. Harper sit down together, just like Mr. Reagan and Mr. Mulroney did. They should talk about it and come to some kind of new arrangement soon.