A look at the map will give the reader some notion of the frozen "Alaskan" islands under discussion. All are far closer to the Russian mainland than to the Alaskan mainland. All lie on the Russian side of the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary set by a treaty that the U.S. Senate ratified overwhelmingly more than two decades ago, after being signed by President George H.W. Bush, and with the support of both of Alaska's senators.
The largest, Wrangel Island (in Russian, Ostrov Vrangelya), is named for the Russian explorer Ferdinand P. Wrangel, who heard of the island from Siberian natives as early as 1820. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wrangel did not land on it while mapping the Siberian coast that year. The first European to sight it may have been the British explorer Capt. Henry Kellett, who in 1849 discovered and landed on nearby Herald Island, and saw Wrangel in the distance.
The uninhabited Wrangel Island was sighted by U.S. vessels in 1867 and 1881, but not settled. A Canadian explorer named Vilhjalmur Stefansson and survivors of a disastrous expedition reached the island in 1914. But when Stefansson later tried to claim Wrangel for Canada without authorization, he caused an international incident, infuriating the Canadian government. Then in 1926 the Soviet Union staked a claim to the island and settled a few native families there.
According to a 1990 story by the Associated Press, Wrangel and four other uninhabited islands were surveyed in 1881 by a U.S. Navy commander, and for a time were listed in the "District of Alaska" by the U.S. Geological Survey. That's about the extent of justification for calling them "Alaskan." Neither the U.S., Britain nor Canada has disputed the Soviet (and now Russian) claim to Wrangel. The U.S. State Department says Wrangel and the others weren't included in the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and "they have never been claimed by the United States."
Nevertheless, a crusading California activist named Carl Olson, of Woodland Hills, Calif., made it his business to claim that the islands are "100 percent American," as the AP said in 1990. The organization Olson founded, "State Department Watch, Ltd," is still pressing that argument today. (The group is a nonprofit advocacy organization that reported taking in $2.4 million in 2010 but spent most of it on fundraising, according to its most recent IRS Form 990. It paid Olson an $80,000 salary, made grants of $51,000 to the "1776 Tea Party" of Laguna Woods, Calif., and $9,500 to the "Minuteman Project, Inc." of Aliso Viejo, Calif. But nearly $2 million was reported going for postage and printing. The group reports that it hired Virginia-based WJM Associates, a fundraising and marketing firm that lists several Republican and conservative groups as clients.)
Despite Olson's objections, the Senate ratified a treaty establishing the current maritime boundary between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (now Russia) on Sept. 16, 1991. The vote was a lopsided 86 to 6. Alaska's senators, the late Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, both Republicans, voted in favor of ratification.
But voting against the treaty were Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and four other Republicans, led by the late Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. During a very brief debate, Helms said he was fighting to "protect the status" of Wrangel Island and four others: Herald, Bennett, Henrietta and Jeannette Islands.
The treaty did not specifically cede sovereignty over the islands to the Soviets (which the U.S. wasn't disputing anyway), and merely clarified the location of the maritime boundary to settle squabbles over fishing and undersea mineral rights. Nevertheless, Helms said he would vote against it because "I doubt that the State Department will make use of the opportunity to press U.S. claims to the five islands — even though the right to do so is preserved."
(To read the full debate in the Congressional Record, search the Library of Congress Thomas website for the 102nd Congress, and enter "S13036″ to bring up the first page.)
And sure enough, no president or secretary of state since has shown any interest in disputing the Soviet/Russian claim to Wrangel Island or the others. Which brings us to the present accusation that President Obama is somehow giving away something the U.S. has never claimed to own. How can that be?
For one thing, the maritime boundary treaty has never been ratified by the Russians, which is required for it to take full force. By the time the U.S. Senate had ratified the treaty (signed by the Soviets the previous year), the Soviet Union was near collapse. Shortly afterward, the Russian Federation notified the U.S. government by diplomatic note that it would continue to abide by the terms of the agreement on a provisional basis, however.
Ironically, in view of claims of a U.S. "giveaway," it is the Russians who have sought to renegotiate the terms of the boundary treaty on grounds that their side gave up too much to the United States. A history of the matter, by Vlad M. Kaczynski of the Warsaw School of Economics, published in the May 1, 2007, edition of the Russian Analytical Digest, details why the new Russian Federation refused to ratify the treaty:
Kaczynski, 2007: Many accuse Gorbachev and Shevardnadze of ceding Russia's rightful fishing areas in their haste to negotiate a deal for signature at the 1990 White House Summit. "Russian parliamentarians understood perfectly well that the agreement infringed upon Russia's interests and therefore the document has never been ratified by the Russian parliament," these critics say. Other Russian officials have voiced their opposition to the treaty not only because of lost fishing opportunities, but also due to the loss of potential oil and gas fields and naval passages for submarines.
Content to hang on to what the Soviet negotiators gave up, the U.S. State Department says, "The United States has no intention of reopening discussion of the 1990 Maritime Boundary Agreement." However, since the treaty has yet to be ratified by the Russians, Olson and some on the right argue that the U.S. should still be pressing claims to Wrangel (Olson prefers to spell it "Wrangell" with two "l's") and other islands and rocks.
The whole business was raised anew in an opinion piece published Feb. 16 on the conservative site World Net Daily (notable for promoting dubious claims about the president's birthplace). It was written by Joe Miller, the Tea Party favorite who defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski (daughter of former Sen. Frank Murkowski) in the 2010 Republican Senate primary, only to see Lisa Murkowski go on to win the general election handily as a write-in candidate.
"Obama's State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians," Miller wrote. "We won the Cold War and should start acting like it." The following day, Miller posted an addendum to his piece conceding that he was raising "an old issue" and that he had been "assisted with this article" by Olson's State Department Watch.
It is an old issue indeed. In fact, World Net Daily itself published a July 29, 2008, article critical of the State Department for the "island giveaway." Of course, George W. Bush — not Obama — was president at the time. (The Bush administration's official Arctic Region Policy stated that the U.S. would abide by the 1990 maritime agreement and would continue to urge the Russian Federation to ratify it.)
And we're not sure why Miller mentions only seven islands when Olson always has insisted the U.S. has a claim to eight. But whatever the count, it is simply false to claim that Obama is "giving away" islands to which no U.S. president has asserted a claim for more than 85 years, if ever.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/03/alaskan-island-giveaway/
