Elliot L. Richardson The United States is finally awakening to the fact that it has a major stake in the future of the Arctic. Recognition of the national importance of the Arctic has been slow in coming despite the resource wealth that Arctic Alaska has thus far yielded. Although the United States has had strategic interests in the Arctic since World War II and active oil and gas interests there since the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, its interest in the Arctic has been low in comparison with that of its Arctic neighbors, Canada and the Soviet Union. What has been described by...