323 
gests that they are unlikely to be exhausted.“ The notion of physical 
Soviet need for Norwegian space is not tenable. And the associated 
spectre of Soviet strategic need is no more viable: the offensive bene- 
fice of a westward movement of her base complexes was always logi- 
cally offset by the defensive advantages of status quo—so long as 
the practical neutrality of the intervening territory remained 
unquestioned. The Soviet strategic need, or imperative, as regards 
Northern Norway lies in its exclusion from active participation in 
hostile strategic designs.’® 
By the late 1960’s basic Soviet security requirements appeared to 
have been met. The failure to acquire Svalbard and Bear Island facili- 
ties was compensated for by the establishment of military bases (and 
radar installations) on ice floes in the Barents and White Seas, and 
on Franz Josef’s Island.!® Electronically equipped surface vessels and 
the presumed employment and integration of ocean floor monitoring 
devices!” further supplemented early warning capabilities. Finally, the 
establishment of such a North Sea naval presence as promised ef- 
fectively to isolate Norway behind (e.g. East of) potential front 
lines 48 secured against a possible future Norwegian abnegation of 
self-restraint. . 
The early 1970’s however, brought new anxieties. On the one hand 
technology had outstripped reigning International Law. The Geneva 
Convention of 1958 had stipulated coastal states’ authority to extend 
to depths of 200 meters, or such depths as to which exploitation 
was feasible. But whereas 200 meters had originally been thought 
the limit of technological feasibility, 1970 technology promised oil 
drilling at depths of 400 meters, and ocean bed mineral extraction 
at depths down to 1,500 meters;'® and all bets were off regarding 
future potentials. The early 1970’s thus saw the entire ocean floor 
between Northern Norway and Svalbard placed in the “exploitable” 
rubric. And while the logic of the Geneva text, and of Norway’s 
1963 assertion of sovereignty over her continental shelf?° was 
unequivocal, the continued absence of a more realistic International 
Law consensus on the outer limits of coastal states’ rights did inject 
an element of uncertainty. The element was all the more disturbing 
in view of the discovery that the geological structure of the shelf 
between Norway and Svalbard was extremely favourable to oil and 
gas prospects.2! The spectre of a multinational scramble to install 
rigs in the area, a spectre of some urgency following the oil crisis 
14 See Maps ‘“‘The Kola Coastline, from Nordkapp to Mys Kanin Nos”, op. cit., and Barents Sea 
Depths in Carte General Bathymetrique des Oceans, Carleton University Geography Map Library 
9200 Acc. 1487; See also Jan Klenberg’s ‘“The Cap and the Straits.” Occasional Papers in Interna- 
tional Affairs, No. 17, Harvard University, 1968. 
15 “Soviet Strategy’’, op. cit. 
16T. J. Laforest, ‘“‘The Strategic Significance of the North Sea Route,’ U.S.Naval Institute 
Proceedings. Dec. 1967. 
7 Jens Evensen, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Present Military Users of the Seabed: 
Foreseeable Developments,’ Document presented to symposium on the International Regime of the 
Sea-bed, Rome, July 1969. 
18 See e.g. charts presented in “NATO Letter,” Sept. 1970, pp. 6-11. 
19 Norwegian Ministry of Industry’s ‘““Oversikt over Oljepolitiske Spoersmaal” (auth. Jens Evensen), 
1971. 
20 See e.g. Norwegian Ministry of Finance’s Parliamentary Report, No. 25 (1973-74), titled 
“Petroleum Industry in Norwegian Society.” 
_7! Norwegian Petroleum sources; or see i.e. Sea Power. Nov. 1974: “Official Norwegian Reports in- 
dicate an opulent future . . . seismic investigation has shown a succession of oil-bearing anticlines as 
far north as Bear Island, deep in the Arctic Circle, and possessing fields even richer, possibly than 
those in the North Sea”’. 
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