“Decided in NSC meeting — will not sign ‘Law of the Sea.’ … ” So Ronald Reagan noted in his diary entry for June 29, 1982. That should have been the last word on the topic, 30 years ago.
Three decades later, the United States still has not bought into the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, often called by the clunky acronym UNCLOS. And still, America enjoys the freedom to cross the oceans. A third of our trade travels over the seas. Have we missed out on anything by spurning UNCLOS? No. Reagan got it right.
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