Notes On Liberty

For decades, the high priests of the Arctic establishment—the tenured mandarins, the deep-state bureaucrats, and the military-industrial gatekeepers—have policed the intellectual boundaries of the Far North. Safely insulated within their sanitized consensus, they preach their cozy and self-serving sermon of Arctic orthodoxy, and shamelessly pivot en masss to whatever...

12. Why America Should Embrace Marine Mammal Diplomacy

United States can help secure its strategic future in the Arctic by lifting its import bans on marine mammal products like seal pelts and whale meat to support the Arctic’s traditional economies. This could be particularly advantageous to America’s ambitious but

5. Rebound in Arctic Indigenous Whaling

Canada’s Historic 1982 Withdrawal from the IWC

In 1982, Canada took a decisive diplomatic step by formally withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission. This move was driven by a clear recognition that international bodies were becoming too dogmatic to accommodate the constitutional...

By Barry Scott Zellen, PhD

1. Introduction: The Ideological Deadlock of the Maritime Commons

For over half a century, the international discourse surrounding the harvesting of cetaceans has been trapped in a state of paralysis. This structural deadlock is driven by a stark division between distinct worldviews. On one side stands a dominant...

By Barry Scott Zellen, PhD

For over four decades, my work as an Arctic scholar has been animated by a single, foundational truth: the global arena is not merely a collection of Westphalian states competing for structural dominance.

While classical international relations theory fixates on over simplified structures such as Kenneth Waltz’s classic “three i...