Thank you very much for the question. I'll take the first hit at that.
I think we have spent a lot of time as friends—despite all of our differences in the Arctic, Canada and the U.S. are fundamentally friends—talking about this problem but not actually resolving it. It's amazing that we're still disputing the boundary in the Beaufort, not because it isn't a legitimate dispute but because we've talked, mapped, and debated this thing for a long time. You would think we could come to some sort of settlement. I think as long as the U.S. and Canada have been working at cross purposes in the Arctic, it has emboldened the Russians and it has emboldened others to try to map out a new regime in the Arctic, to our detriment.
I was at a meeting not that long ago where there was a serious discussion of the United States establishing an eastern Arctic port in Greenland simply because we couldn't come to terms with Canada about where an Arctic base might be located for ships, sort of a deepwater port. That's such a waste of effort, and inevitably a waste of money.
I think we need to resolve this in two steps. The U.S. has to start taking the Arctic more seriously. It is peripheral in many ways to U.S. conceptions of national security. That has to change. Also, I think we need to look for some progress from Canada. I think the governments of Canada over the years have hoped that the U.S. would sign the Law of the Sea treaty, providing a structure for resolution of this. The Senate still won't consider that, despite the support of President Obama and President Bush before him.
I think we may need to look for a new route out. That may take, as a forward gesture, something from Canada, but overall I think we have to find a way to come to terms with each other and then present a united front to the rest of the world.