As with any "political" or policy-making venue, the membership of IWC can be segregated into various factions. The main division is between nations that advocate sustainable, limited, and highly regulated whaling and those nations that vote consistently against resumption of whaling and are quite vocal publicly and privately in their staunch opposition to whaling for any reason. The latter openly describe themselves at "Like-minded" nations. Both are almost equally divided with 15 on the "Like-minded" side and 13 espousing "sustainable use." The balance of power, to date, has tipped consistently toward the "Like-minded" faction largely due to the frequent alliance of six nations including Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, and Switzerland. Two can be called neutral: Denmark and Oman.

"Like-minded" nations opposed to whaling include: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Sustainable Use nations are Antigua Barbuda, China, Dominica, Grenada, Guinea, Japan, Korea, Norway, Russian Federation, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Solomon Islands.

The pro-whaling versus anti-whaling nations at IWC provide an ironic historical twist. Many of the "Like-minded" anti-whaling nations are themselves the very nations responsible for the depletion of the great whale stocks due to their insatiable appetite for whale oil to lubricate and light their entrance into the industrial age. Thanks, in part, to their unregulated exploitation of cetaceans, these nations built great wealth and are among the world's most highly developed states. Their wanton destruction of whale resources led directly to the ICRW and IWC.

On the other hand, many of the "sustainable use" members of IWC are nations whose people have an even longer legacy of dependence on whales as a source of cultural identity and nutrition. Theirs is a history of coexistence with, not destruction of whale resources. Many are classified as "Third World" economically emerging nations. They cannot hope to match the economic and political clout of such anti-whaling super powers as the United States, Great Britain and Germany.

The ideological tension between "Like-minded" and pro-sustainable use member nations is not the only factor contributing to the lack of action by IWC to take any substantive action toward completing and implementing a global whale management regime. By shifting one's focus from IWC's inertia on its core mission to seemingly secondary issues such as the push for sectioning off ocean real estate into "sanctuaries" for cetaceans, the resolve by member nations opposed to whaling in any form become clear.