U.S. Foreign Policy and the Law of the Sea (review)

BOOK REVIEWS U.S. Foreign Policy and the Law ofthe Sea. By Ann L. Hollick. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1981. 496 pp. $32.50. Reviewed by Elliot L. Richardson. Ann Hollick's book is thorough and thoughtful. Chronological in structure, objective in tone, and straightforward in style, it should serve as a useful source for anyone seeking a comprehensive picture of how U.S. interests in the oceans have fared over the past half-century. Dr. Hollick's chronicle begins with offshore issues in the 1930s and traces the evolution of U.S. oceans policy in bilateral, regional, and multilateral contexts down through the close in 1980 of the Ninth Session of the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III). Throughout this period, law-of-the-sea issues increased geometrically in scope and complexity. Consequently, Dr. Hollick has had to choose between allocating space on the basis of the lapse of time or in proportion to the pace of change. Perhaps because the oldest records are the most accessible, she has opted for the former. As the book moves forward in time, therefore, its narrative becomes progressively more condensed. Her account, for example, of the salmon controversy with Japan, an episode of the mid-1930s, occupies nearly six pages. The negotiations in UNCLOS III on financial arrangements, one of the conference's most critical issues, rate only one misleading paragraph. Had the earlier level of detail been maintained to the end, the last half of the book, while longer, would have been more readable. What to me, in a number of instances, looked like errors of interpretation or of emphasis might also have been Dr. Hollick's attempt to say too much too summarily. No book, to be sure, can be both what it is and what some reviewer might wish it had been. Still, I can't help regretting that another of the casualties ofcompression was any attempt to portray the principal actors. In UNCLOS III, the influence of the leading participants owed far more to their individual qualities than to the importance oftheir countries. They shared in common a powerful sense ofcommitment to the goal of extending the rule of law over more than two-thirds of the earth's surface. The outcome was a triumph of consensus. Only the United States and three other nations voted against it, each for its own reasons and none for reasons touching 227 228 SAIS REVIEW more than a small fraction of the entire text. This near-miracle could not have been accomplished if no more had been at stake than navigation and fisheries, hydrocarbons and manganese nodules, marine science and marine mammals. Not that these are unimportant. But what drove the conference was the awareness that its success would strengthen the world's ability to cope with the consequences of its own inseparability . I wish Dr. Hollick had discussed this dimension. The book's most valuable contribution is its account of the ordeal of policy formulation and execution in an internal battleground where manifold interests compete and clash. From this account emerges a nightmarish picture of a huge, slow-moving machine whose interlocking parts now swell, now shrink, now change position, and constantly fluctuate in relative force. At one stage, defense concerns dominate, at another, resource interests gain priority. At one stage the secretary of state takes personal charge, at another, no one above the rank of deputy assistant secretary is seriously interested. The struggle to reconcile interagency differences crowds out coherent strategic planning. Delegation leaders come and go. Although in UNCLOS III these weaknesses were by no means confined to the United States (Great Britain, West Germany, and Japan suffered more from discontinuity of leadership, and Soviet policy was subject to sharper changes of direction ), the United States, having more at stake than any other country, could even less afford them. And though the law of the sea should not soon require another such comprehensive effort, other multilateral challenges underscore the urgency of designing more adequate policymaking machinery. A case in point is the telecommunications arena in which such issues as the allocation of slots in the geostationary orbit, direct satellite broadcasting, and...