1866 



Here, if anywhere, was an opportunity to foresee the consequences 

 of technology for international amity, and to plan long in advance 

 to solve an international problem by international agreement. 



It is not remarkable that an area amounting to some three-fifths 

 of the surface of the Earth should be the subject of many conflicting 

 goals and purposes, not only among the nations that border it but 

 also for landlocked nations that still claun a share of the international 

 commons. Among the claims at issue are freedom of the seas, the right 

 to fish, oil deposits on continental shelves, deep ocean mineral deposits, 

 territorial right of transit through narrows, sovereignty, disposal of 

 radioactive wastes, control of oil spills, protection of environmental 

 quality generally, and the right to conduct scientific research. 



With so many issues at stake it is also not remarkable that the 

 decisionmaking machinery for ocean policy is widely diffused, both 

 internationally and for the United States.^" Even so, it does not 

 appear that all interested parties have access to the processes of 

 decision. Those who ply the seas, research the weather, eat fish, or 

 have a concern for global tidiness, all share an interest in how the 

 seas are to be managed. 



However, it was left to the tiny Kepublic of Malta, August 17, 1967, 

 to propose to the United Nations a broad-gauge approach to the 

 problem, ^^^ The U.S. policy on this large subject nearly 2 years 

 later was merely that this nation was "keeping our options open 

 until we decide where our national interests lie best and where inter- 

 national agreements may be reached." ^^ 



During the roughly 10 years since the Malta proposal, progress has 

 been agonizingly slow toward resolving this issue which had been so 

 long foreseen. Questions were unanswered as to whether nations pos- 

 sessing the technology for suboceanic exploitation should go ahead and 

 use it, as to whether landlocked nations had any rights to the ocean 

 floor, as to whether the poor countries of the globe ought to have some 

 kind of preferential rights, and as to the degrees of sovereignty to 

 assign to the near-shore, continental slope, and deep-sea parts of the 

 ocean. Should nationalism or internationalism prevail ? 



One possible approach to the problem that does not seem to have 

 received much attention thus far is to recognize that technology has 

 changed the nature of the international commons itself. The seas were 

 once uniform; now they are becoming of value in some areas and of 

 little or no value in others. This technological effect may suggest the 

 proposition that the law of the sea can no longer be generalized but 

 must be tailored to specific parts of the oceanic whole. Each geo- 

 graphic subdivision of the oceans might be treated as a "region" 

 along with the nations directly associated with that part of the ocean. 

 These multinational regions, in consultation with each other, could 

 shape the separate rights and obligations, laws, and jurisdictional 

 principles to be applied within the region. Separate provision for the 

 rights of poor nations, nations outside the region, and the United 

 Nations as a general coordinating and planning body for all nations, 

 might then be less of a political issue. 



"1 i-o. international machinery see ibid., pp. 484-495; for U.S. national machinery, see pp. 495-511. 

 «2 ]' "lo Malta proposal see ihid, i)p. 489-490. 



5M Qu 1 in ibid at p. .'jIS, this statement hy the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, U. Alexis 

 Johnson, was promptly styled by Senator Pell as a "no-policy policy." 



