394 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



The same situation was repeated at the 1955 session of the International Law 

 'Commission in Geneva, held directly after the Rome Conference. As an added 

 attribute of these two conferences the extravagant 200-mile claims to extending 

 sovereignty were overwhelmingly killed. 



THE COLD WAE AND THE INTERNATIONAL STRAITS ISSUE 



Remember that all of this imbroglio had been brought to the fore by an 

 attempt to regularize the handling of petroleum harvesting rationally on the 

 Continental Shelf by means to which nobody in the international community 

 was strongly opposed, and on which there was almost uniform agreement. 

 By the end of 19."i.l this problem was no chtser to being settled than it had t^^en 

 at the time of Truman's proclamation in 1945, because it had become entangled 

 in other controversial issues surrounding the law of the sea. 



There now arose, at the 1956 session of the International Law Commis- 

 sion, a latent separate issue which was quickly to gather more diplomatic 

 .strength than all of these other issues combined. This was the issue of the 

 12-mile limit for the territorial sea and the contingent international strait issue. 

 In the activities at Rome and Geneva in 1955, involving the fishery aspects of 

 this subject, the Russian and United States delegations had acted together 

 as complementarity as if they had had the same instructions, for the rea- 

 son that their fisheries interests were essentially the same. From 1956 through 

 1960 these two powers came into violent opposition in the ensuing actions 

 respecting the law of the sea because when the 12-mile issue came into play 

 the world power struggle automatically came to the fore and on this issue the 

 United States and Russia were as far apart in the period 1956-60 as great 

 powers can be without going to war. 



Again one must oversimplify the comment because of space restrictions and 

 refer the more serious student to the ample literature on the subject for ade- 

 quate detail. 



Essentially the military problem came down to this issue : Under a 3-mile 

 breadth for the territorial sea a naval power like the United States could 

 bring its power (under late 1950 military technology) quite quickly to bear 

 on any trouble spot in the world and if it could maintain its supply lines to 

 this trouble spot by sea it would have great advantage at war vis-a-vis a land 

 power such as the then existing Communist alliance. Under a 12-mile breadth 

 of the teritorial sea an estimated 116 important international straits would fall 

 subject to national sovereignty. Even under a 6-mile rule for the territorial 

 sea 52 of these straits would be so affected. Also high seas areas like the Aegean 

 Sea would become mostly territorial sea over which air flights could not be 

 made without permission of the neighboring sovereigns. Additionally, in many 

 parts of the world ocean the naval task force required by the military tech- 

 Tiologies of the late 1950's could not be deployed because there would be inade- 

 quate sea room for this purpose. 



Naturally Russia, under the world power conditions existing in the late 

 1950's, would have given almost anything to secure international agreement 

 ■to a 12-mile territorial sea ; just as naturally the United States would have 

 given as much to get international agreement to a 3-mile breadth for the ter- 

 ritorial sea and thus pi-eserve the status quo. The 12-mile issue was of such 

 overwhelming importance to both these giants, because of the military overtones 

 it bore, that both threw aside their respective fishing interests and concentrated 

 their diplomatic strength on the military-diplomatic issues in the ensuing con- 

 ferences from the spring of 1956 through 1960. 



There was never the remotest chance that in the period 1956-60 Russia 

 could get even a simple majority of nations to agree to a 12-mile limit for 

 the territorial sea. On the other hand if she could prevent the United 

 States and its allies from achieving agreement to a 3-mile limit for the ter- 

 ritorial sea she could establish the framework which might permit the estab- 

 lishment of a 12-mile limit at some future and near time. A great number 

 of new nations were due to come into being in 1960 and directly thereafter. 

 How they might vote in a subsequent conference on this issue, if it could 

 be kept open, was moot. Russia felt, and the United States feared, that 

 Russia might win in the course of time if the 3-mile issue were not settled 

 before all of these new nations became independent. 



The key to the whole issue was the rules of procedure in international con- 

 ferences held under the auspices of the United Nations. It requires a two- 



