The Politics of the Northwest PassageFor nearly five hundred years, men have been drawn by the vision of a commercially viable and strategically advantageous seaway that runs west and north from Europe to the Far East. Though costs currently outweigh benefits, the oil and natural gas finds in the Beaufort Sea and the Canadian Arctic islands, as well as the possibility of higher energy prices in the 1990s, have made a gradual increase in the volume and duration of navigation in and about