President Eisenhower, the Antarctic Treaty, and the Origin of International Spaces

Abstract

The late 1940s and early 1950s was a dangerous period of cold war posturing, with few bridges between the United States and Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons were a reality, and ballistic missiles were inevitable. It was during this period in the wake of World War II (as revealed in minutes of U.S. National Security Council meetings from 1954 to 1959) when President Eisenhower became the catalyst for an unprecedented mixture of global strategies to achieve “a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind.” One of the possibilities was to create an international status for the Antarctic area, as suggested in the draft agreement that was circulated by the United States to the seven claimant nations in 1948. Planning also was underway for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957–1958 with scientific satellites anticipated to advance upper atmospheric research and promote the freedom of space, which was seen to be analogous to the longstanding concept of the freedom of the seas. In support of this space policy, the White House restrained the Army Ballistic Missile Agency from launching its JupiterC rocket into orbit in September 1956, which enabled the freedom of space to emerge with the IGY launch of Sputnik in October 1957. Building on this momentum of scientific cooperation, in May 1958, President Eisenhower invited the Soviet Union and the 10 other nations involved with Antarctic research to begin secret negotiations that would result in adoption of the Antarctic Treaty in Washington, D.C., on 1 December 1959, creating an international space “forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes . . . with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind.” Following the 1958 Convention on the High Seas that had created the initial international space beyond sovereign jurisdictions, the Antarctic Treaty also became the first nuclear arms agreement with nonarmament and peacefuluse provisions that would become precedents for the outerspace and the deepsea regimes that further established these areas as international spaces. The statesmanship of President Eisenhower that led to the Antarctic Treaty and the other international spaces demonstrates the role of science as a tool of diplomacy to build on the common interests of allies and adversaries alike for the lasting benefit of all humanity.