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The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) was created during the Cold War. Its persistence over 50 years (1961 onwards) has also tended to mythologize its achievements, and mummify foundational norms as it addressed the modalities of collective governance and the problem of territorial sovereignty. The ATS ‘regime’(defined by Berridge and Lloyd (2012, p. 212) as ‘rules and procedures relating to a specific international activity, geographical area, or economic resource’) has attracted little strategic reassessment of its foundational norms and declaratory values. Two decades after the Cold War epoch closed, the system appears to be less integrated into the international system, less innovative in its practices and moribund so far as further institutional development goes (on historical origins, Bulkeley 2009; Dodds 2010). To the extent that the Antarctic Treaty was a response to particular circumstances, there were …