NATIONAL SECURITY AN THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA
Second Edition
January 1996
INTRODUCTION
On October 7, 1994, the President transmitted the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to the United States Senate for its advice and consent to accession. The Department of Defense has long supported the Convention on national security grounds. As Secretary of Defense William Perry stated on July 29, 1994, "The nation's security has depended upon our ability to conduct military operations over, under, and on the oceans. We support the Convention because it confirms traditional high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight; it details passage rights through international straits; and it reduces prospects for disagreements with coastal nations during operations."
U.S. OCEANS POLICY: 1973-1996
Between 1973 and 1982, more than 150 nations participated in the negotiation of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. From the U.S. perspective, the Convention was a success, save for the provisions dealing with deep seabed mining. It secured much needed agreement to limit the breadth of the territorial sea to 12 nautical miles (NM), in the face of a large number of nations seeking to establish territorial sea claims of up to 200 NM or more, and struck a positive balance between coastal States and maritime States on issues such as marine pollution, fisheries and mineral resource exploitation, as well as with regard to navigational freedoms through the waters and air-space of exclusive economic zones (EEZs), territorial seas, straits, and archipelagic waters.
However, while United States maritime interests were significantly protected and advanced by the balance struck among these interests, the provisions dealing with deep seabed mining in Part XI of the Convention were not satisfactory. As a result, on July 9, 1982, President Reagan announced that eleven sessions of negotiations had failed to produce a "universal" agreement which accommodated the diverse interests represented at the conference on the full range of oceans uses. Of particular concern to the U.S. and other developed countries were those seabed-mining provisions that deterred development, did not guarantee a decision-making role for the U.S. properly reflecting its interests, permitted amendments to the regime without U.S. consent, mandated transfers of privately owned technology, permitted sharing of benefits with national lib-
