"You can't go around the world these days, dropping a flag. This isn't the 14th or 15th century." Canadian foreign minister Peter McKay's indignant remark last week about Russia's laying claim to a huge new stretch of Arctic territory came after two of its mini-submarines travelled 4.26km below the North Pole's ice cap to plant a flag on the ocean floor.
Mr McKay was upstaged two days later when his prime minister Stephen Harper embarked on a three-day tour of Canada's Arctic region during which he announced several fresh initiatives to assert its sovereignty there, including on a possible northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Russia's action galvanised other Arctic powers such as the United States, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland to renew their claims to the resource-rich region - now becoming more accessible to exploration because of global warming. Something is stirring at the top of the world. Must it be a neo-imperial adventure or can it be channelled into a constructive effort to protect the region and share its resources?
In fact there is already a framework of international law applying to the Arctic under the international Law of the Sea Treaty agreed in 1982. Most of the powers concerned - but not the US - have ratified the treaty, which allows them to control land masses which are extensions of their continental shelves.
The Russian exploration is part of an effort to prove that the 1,800km long Lomonosov Ridge so qualifies as part of the Siberian land mass. This case was rejected for lack of evidence by a treaty commission in 2001 but has now been revived and will be heard again. Claims are being prepared by other states, as Denmark dispatched a large scientific team this weekend on a similar mission.
The Arctic region has 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves, along with immense quantities of gold, tin, platinum and nickel. As global warming proceeds, more and more of these resources will be opened up. A northwest passage would take 6,500 km off the Atlantic-Pacific journey, making the Panama Canal potentially redundant.
There is a deep irony here, in that this rush to claim national competitive advantage takes the focus off the dire effects of global warming. One of its most dangerous effects in the Arctic will be to expose great tracts of land to the release of methane gas, one of the most potent fossil fuels, which would actually speed up global warming - perhaps uncontrollably.
It would be far better to seek out co-operative solutions for protecting and exploiting the Arctic's resources. This could be done by extending the Law of the Sea Treaty, or by using a precedent established in Antarctica during the 1950s, when a similar competitive surge at the South Pole was wisely steered towards a framework of legal governance.