Polar Diplomacy

Here is a book that boldly goes where almost everyone seems to be going these days, to the Canadian Arctic. In years past, northerners used to complain about the neglect of Canada’s Far North, the lack of political attention to the region and the stunning hypocrisy of a people blessed with vast northern expanses and a rich cultural fascination with the North that nonetheless huddles as close to the Canada–United States border as they could possibly get. Not any more, for Canadians and others around the world are clearly interested in the Arctic now.

In fact, we are perilously close to the “enough books already” situation on aspects of the Arctic, particularly with regards to political development. A few decades back, the standard joke about the North was that a northern aboriginal family consisted of a man, a woman, two children and an anthropologist. Now it seems that the political...