a4 
fact of overlapping U.S. and Soviet deployments around the globe. 
With both sides sustaining worldwide ocean commerce and communi- 
cations, each would grant the other a legitimate national interest in 
worldwide naval access. Such mutual tolerance has been evolving 
gradually without any formal agreement. The suggestion here is that 
this trend should continue even in the face of a more visible Russian 
presence in areas where they previously were strangers or occasional 
visitors, but the United States at the same time should indicate it 
expects reciprocal tolerance by the Russians in areas near the Soviet 
Union, especially the Arctic, which technological improvements are 
making more accessible to us. 
This would be the opposite of an ocean spheres of dominance 
policy. Its major virtue is that it would redefine as “‘normal’’ (and 
therefore nonthreatening) what is occurring anyway, thus reducing 
one possible generator of a full-blown naval arms race: the mutual 
paranoia that otherwise would be stimulated by “penetrations” of 
what were thought to be the ocean preserves of one or another 
of the superpowers. Additionally, this approach could dampen what 
otherwise might be a revival of intense recruiting of Third World 
coastal-state clients for exclusive porting and maritime maintenance 
facilities. If the provision of maritime privileges to one superpower 
would not exclude or alienate the other, incentives would be reduced 
for the United States and the Soviet Union to intervene in the Third 
World to assure that governments would be in friendly hands. 
A generally relaxed attitude by both superpowers toward one 
another’s ubiquitous presence in the ocean might also provide a basis 
for slowing down the current attempts to divide up much of the 
ocean into exclusive jurisdictions. By example, no less than by coor- 
dinated diplomacy, the superpowers might engender some hope of 
averting the transformation of the ocean into an arena for new boun- 
dary wars and imperial conflicts. The United States and the Soviet 
Union both have high commercial and security interests in preserving 
extensive international rights of navigation. Additionally, as the leading 
oceanographic countries, they both are concerned to avert coastal- 
state restrictions on the activities of maritime scientists. By showing 
a willingness to accomodate to the presence of even each other’s 
vessels and installations, the superpowers would be reestablishing the 
norm that the ocean is an international commons open to all for 
peaceful use. Moreover, the two superpowers would be asking other 
coastal states to grant them privileges of access no greater than they 
were asking of each other. 
UNILATERALISM VS. BILATERALISM VS. MULTILATERALISM 
Most of the policy alternatives I have discussed here would require 
considerable bilateral coordination, if not explicit agreement, between 
the United States and the U.S.S.R. This is not to say that Soviet 
capabilities and intentions should be the only frame of reference for 
U.S. naval programs. U.S. shipping and general ocean access could, 
of course, be disrupted from other quarters and therefore, whatever 
the course of the bilateral relationship with the U.S.S.R., the United 
States must maintain sufficient flexibility to unilaterally decide where 
and in what strength to deploy its naval forces. But even where 
