Arctic Yearbook 2015 | Page 329

329 Arctic Yearbook 2015 in the High North. Furthermore, the article only examines whether and how the claims process may lead to tensions between the states – it does not aim to predict how the claims themselves will be settled. The analysis of the legal structures in the following section only aims to unpack the relationship between international law and geopolitics. It does not provide a complete overview of the many complex intricacies of the UNCLOS sections on continental shelves. The argument progresses in three steps. The first section examines how international law structures the Canadian, Danish, and Russian claims and where one finds the boundary between law and geopolitics. The second section focuses on the geopolitical reasoning that guides how the states approach the delimitation process. The final section then uses international law and geopolitics to outline the current state of the claims process. International law: the principles of delimitation The continental shelf proces ́