The many specialists who address the background of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959\ud
concur that the United States and Soviet Union set aside their own disputes for the\ud
sake of an internationalization agreement which devoted the world's last continent to\ud
peaceful scientific cooperation. While this is true and must be regarded as a\ud
formidable achievement, the treaty gains further significance when evaluated in light\ud
of the Cold War tensions which bore upon it.\ud
This thesis maintains that the controversy surrounding Antarctica reflected the\ud
patterns which at a global level threatened to embroil the superpowers in full-scale\ud
conflict. It contains previously published research which analyzes U.S. Antarctic\ud
policy in detail, and herein provides the groundwork for establishing links between\ud
U.S.-Soviet, U.S.-British and U.S.-Chilean relations at large and their relations in the\ud
far south, as well as between the U.S. internationalization proposals and U.S. national\ud
security policies.\ud
The "fractalization" of U.S. Antarctic policy shifts emphasis from the policy\ud
itself to how Cold War diplomacy and public opinion bore upon it. Physical scientists\ud
regard objects as "fractal" when their structural complexity is maintained at all levels,\ud
as in snowflakes or electronic transmissions. This provides an ideal metaphor for the\ud
analytical framework adopted herein