It is, no doubt, a coincidence that the Kremlin’s musings on whether there will be a war over the Arctic — the theme, couched, of course, in hypothetical terms, tucked into a high-profile defence review — should appear on the same day as a United Nations deadline for filing claims to the seabed.

This has the air of a stunt, and in Arctic stunts Russia has no equal. No other country would have conceived of the showy James Bond literalness of using a submarine to put a flag on the Arctic seabed (to no legal consequence). Nonetheless, that added a frisson to the rising agitation about who will eventually get what. Countries are jostling for rights to previously inaccessible oil and gas, now within reach because of the summer melting of Arctic ice and new deep-water drilling kit.

But to talk of war is to ignore the vast legal effort under way to settle just those questions. Yesterday’s deadline is part of it. Reading the Kremlin’s fierce and gloomy strategic review, which foresees threats and competition for Russia on all sides, other countries are presumably intended to tremble and surrender their claims.

Of course, no one can be confident that Russia will not try some pre-emptive claim with more substance than planting a flag. But the proper response from other countries at this point is not to build a new navy of submarines but to hire a new army of lawyers.

The most fortunate aspect of the “race for the High North”, as a recent Nato gathering in Reykjavik dubbed it, is that it is slow. Yes, everyone can see the trends caused by global warming. The Greenland Inuit plan summer sea tours through the fabled North West Passage connecting Europe and Asia (if it does indeed open up as ice melts). Canada has moved deftly to set up naval bases.

But it is not a wild frontier without laws, to be settled entirely by speed or force. True, seabed boundaries are not yet fixed. Some have called the United Nations exercise to map each country’s claim the last great conquest. There are, judging by yesterday’s submissions to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, many overlapping claims. But it is not (yet) an unruly process, nor one where countries have given up hope of diplomatic solution.

As the law stands, countries can treat waters up to 12 miles (20km) from their coast as their territory. If they have signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, waters up to 200 miles from shore, stretching over a country’s continental shelf, are called “exclusive economic zones”. The US has not signed the convention but President Obama has said that he plans to.

But — and here is the room for dispute — if countries that have signed it can prove that their continental shelf extends beyond the 200 miles, they can also claim rights to resources there — not just oil and gas underneath it but the genes of marine life. The deep ocean floor is owned by no country, nor, at the moment, are oil and gas resources there accessible easily even with the best technology.

Norway, Australia and a few others have concluded their claims entirely. Among potential disputes, two are particularly bitter. The first is between Russia and Denmark, over claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain chain stretching from Greenland towards Russia. The second is between Canada and the United States over whether shipping routes that open up through Canadian islands are “internal” Canadian waters or international. Many lawyers regard Canada’s case as sound but President Bush did not want to concede it.

Of course, where the land above sea level is in dispute — as in the Falkland Islands — then the seabed is, too. The UN Commission makes no attempt to settle such conflicts.

The Russian stunts resemble James Bond in simplifying a hugely complex change into one climactic race. But if the Arctic ice does melt, then the warming of Siberia could make Russia itself a different country. It would face opportunities previously out of reach, many more exciting and easily exploited than the ridges of the Arctic seabed.

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