Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T01:10:59.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Security Versus Access to Resources: Explaining a Decade of U.S. Ocean Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Finn Laursen
Finn Laursen
Affiliation:
Odense University
Get access

Abstract

In an effort to explain U.S. ocean policy making, four analytical perspectives are applied: statism, international interdependence, bureaucratic politics, and domestic politics. In each of these perspectives, structures, processes, and actors are singled out that may have an impact on the policy-making process. The statist perspective can explain the importance of security interests and of access to resources, but it cannot account for some of the major changes in U.S. ocean policy during the 1970s. The perspective of international interdependence introduces some of the international constraints and explains the use of linkage strategies. But only domestic politics, which played an increasingly important role during the period, can explain the enactment of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. One of the general conclusions is that the policy-making system is structurally biased toward subnational and parochial interests. For this reason, policies of the world-order type are likely to be frustrated.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , January 1982 , pp. 197 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1973).Google Scholar

2 Cf. Harrison Wagner, R., “Dissolving the State: Three Recent Perspectives on International Relations,” International Organization, XXVIII (Summer 1976), 435–66.Google Scholar

3 See Sylvan, David J., “The Newest Mercantilism,” International Organization, xxxv (Spring 1981), 375–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Krasner, , Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 5–13.Google Scholar

5 Morgenthau (fn. I), 4–11.

6 See Sonderman, Fred A., “The Concept of the National Interest,” Orbis, XXI (Spring 1977). 121–38.Google Scholar

7 Krasner (fn. 4), 13–14.

8 ibid., 14–17.

9 For the purpose of this paper, the symmetry between prediction and explanation is being assumed. See Hempel, Carl G. and Oppenheim, Paul, “The Covering Law Analysis of Explanation,” in Krimerman, Leonard I., ed., The Nature and Scope of Social Science (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), 54–58.Google Scholar

10 This argument has also been developed in Laursen, , “Sikkerhedens primat: USA og den nye havret,” Internasjonal Politikk, No. I (January/March 1981), 25–40.Google Scholar

11 “Draft United Nations Convention on the International Sea-bed Area,” in United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of the Sea-bed and the Ocean Floor Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction [hereafter cited as Sea-bed Committee Report 1970], Suppl. 21 (A/8021), 1970, pp. 130–76.Google Scholar

12 See, for instance, the interpretation in Gary Knight, H., “The Draft United Nations Convention on the International Seabed Area: Background, Description, and Some Preliminary Thoughts,” San Diego Law Review, VIII (May 1971), 459–550.Google Scholar

13 Seabed Committee Report 1970 (fn. II), 133.

14 Stevenson, , “Statement,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 63 (August 24, 1970), 209–10.Google Scholar

15 U.S., Congress, Senate, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Outer Continental Shelf, Part 2, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. (1970), 426–30.Google Scholar

16 “Draft Articles on the Breadth of the Territorial Sea, Straits, and Fisheries,” in United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction, Suppl. 21 (A/8421), 1971, p. 241.Google Scholar

17 Stevenson, , “Statement,” Department oj State Bulletin, Vol. 65 (September 6, 1971), 261–66, at 262.Google Scholar

18 ibid., 263.

19 For details, see Laursen, , “The Making of U.S. Ocean Policy, 1970–78,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Pennsylvania, 1980).Google Scholar

20 See especially Barry, James A., “The Seabed Arms Control Issue, 1967–1971: A Superpower Symbiosis?” Naval War College Review, xxv (September-October 1972), 87–101Google Scholar; and Ramberg, Bennett, The Seabed Arms Control Negotiations: A Study of Multilateral Arms Control Conference Diplomacy, Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. xv, Book 2 (University of Denver, 1978).Google Scholar

21 The subject is discussed further in the author's article, “The Law of the Sea and International Security: Aspects of Superpower Policy,” in Laursen, , ed., Toward a New International Marine Order (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, forthcoming, 1982).Google Scholar

22 Stevenson, John R., “U.S. Calls for Prompt International Action to Settle Problems of Law of the Sea,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 67 (October 2, 1972), 382–86.Google Scholar

23 Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), 23–29.Google Scholar Only selected aspects of Keohane and Nye's models are applied in this article.

24 ibid., 8–19.

25 See also Haas, Ernst B., “Why Collaborate? Issue-Linkage and International Regimes,” World Politics, XXXII (April 1980), 357–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 For details, see Laursen (fn. 19).

27 “International Law, World Order, and Human Progress,” in Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy, 3d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 217–36.

28 ibid., 222, 225.

29 ibid., 226–27.

30 Kissinger, , “The Law of the Sea: A Test of International Cooperation,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 74 (April 26, 1976), 533–42.Google Scholar

31 “Secretary Kissinger Discusses U.S. Position on Law of the Sea Conference,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 75 (September 27, 1976), 395–403, at 398.

32 See, for instance, U.S., Congress, Senate: Commerce, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services Committees, Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Act, Joint Hearings, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (1976).Google Scholar

33 U.N. Doc. A/CONF.62/WP.IO/Rev.3, September 22, 1980.

34 Richardson, , “Power, Mobility and the Law of the Sea,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 58 (Spring 1980), 902–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 911.

35 Richardson, , “Seabed Mining and the Law of the Sea,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 80 (December 1980), 60–64, at 61.Google Scholar

36 ibid., 61–63.

37 Allison, , Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 144.Google Scholar

38 ibid., 162.

39 For critiques, see, for instance, Perlmutter, Amos, “The Presidential Political Center and Foreign Policy: A Critique of the Revisionist and Bureaucratic-Political Orientations,” World Politics, XXVII (October 1974), 87–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rosati, Jerel A., “Developing a Systematic Decision-Making Framework: Bureaucratic Politics in Perspective,” World Politics, XXXIII (January 1981), 234–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Halperin, , Bureaucratie Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1974), 17.Google Scholar

41 ibid., 39–40.

42 For an early effort to explain U.S. ocean policy from a bureaucratic politics perspective, see Hollick, Ann L., “Bureaucrats at Sea,” in Hollick, Ann L. and Osgood, Robert E., New Era of Ocean Politics (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 1–73.Google Scholar

43 National Petroleum Council, Petroleum Resources under the Ocean Floor (Washington, D.C., 1969), 57.Google Scholar

44 ibid., 69–70.

45 ibid., 72.

46 National Petroleum Council, Petroleum Resources Under the Ocean Floor: A Supplemental Report (Washington, D.C., March 1971).Google Scholar

47 U.S., Congress, House, Judiciary Committee, Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas [hereafter cited as Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Hearings], 93d Cong., 2d Sess. (1974), 76.Google Scholar

48 U.S. Department of the Interior, “Outer Continental Shelf Off Louisiana,” Federal Register, XXXVIII (April 20, 1973), 9839.Google Scholar

49 National Petroleum Council, Law of the Sea: Particular Aspects Affecting the Petroleum Industry (Washington, D.C., May 1973).Google Scholar

50 “Draft Articles for a Chapter on the Rights and Duties of States in the Coastal Sea-Bed Economic Area,” in United Nations, General Assembly, Report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction, Suppl. 21 (A/9021), 1973, III, pp. 75–77.Google Scholar

51 U.S., Congress, Senate, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Status Report on the Law of the Sea Conference, Hearing, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. (1973), 108–13.Google Scholar

52 “Outer Continental Shelf Leasing Beyond 200 Meters,” Federal Register, XXXVIII (November 5, 1973), 30457.

53 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Hearings (fn. 47), 227.

54 Quandt:, Decade of Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 15.

55 ibid.

56 Kohl, , “The Nixon-Kissinger Foreign Policy System and U.S. European Relations Patterns of Policy-Making,” World Politics, XXVIII (October 1975), 1–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Cohen, Stephen D., The Making of United States International Economic Polic (New York: Praeger, 1977), 93–95.Google Scholar

58 ibid., 62.

59 Terms used in the chapter on “Congress and Foreign Policy,” in Hinckley, Barbara, Stability and Change in Congress (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 155.Google Scholar

60 For recent studies on Congress and foreign policy, see Franck, Thomas M. and Weisband, Edward, Foreign Policy by Congress (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Pastor, Robert A., Congress and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy, 1928–1976 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

61 See Johansen, , The National Interest and the Human Interest: An Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 The rationale for national enclosure can also be stated in terms of the “prisoners' dilemma.” See Eckert, Ross D., The Enclosure of Ocean Resources: Economics and the Law of the Sea (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1979).Google Scholar

63 Kingdon, John W., Congressmen's Voting Decisions (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 59.Google Scholar

64 U.S., Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Emergency Marine Fisheries Protection Act of 1974, Hearing, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. (1974), 49–51.Google Scholar

65 U.S., Congress, House, Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, Territorial Seas, Hearings, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. (1973), 64.Google Scholar

66 U.S., Congress, Senate, Commerce Committee, Emergency Marine Fisheries Protection Act of 1975, Part 1, Hearing, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975), 29–32.Google Scholar

67 See Nessen, Ron, It Sure Looks Different from the Inside (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), 196–201.Google Scholar

68 The Presidential Campaign 1976, Vol. II, Part 1: President Gerald Ford (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 114.

69 “NOAA and the Marine Fisheries Conservation Act,” Marine Fisheries Review, XXXVIII (August 1976), 27.

70 I have developed this argument further in “International Interdependence, Statist Goals, and Domestic Politics: The Case of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976,” Paper prepared for delivery at the 22d Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Philadelphia, March 18–21, 1981.

71 For details, see Laursen (fn. 19), 302–416.

72 U.S., Congress, House, International Relations Committee, Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, Hearings and Markup, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. (1978), 28.Google Scholar

73 Richardson, , “Law of the Sea Conference: Problems and Progress,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 77 (September 19, 1977), 389–91.Google Scholar

74 See Koch, Kathy, “Deep Seabed Mining Passed by House,” Congressional Quar terly, Weekly Report, XXXVIII (June 14, 1980), 1624–25Google Scholar; and “Seabed Mining,” Congressional Quarterly, Weekly Report, XXXVIII (June 28, 1980), 1787.

75 See Richardson (fn. 35).

76 See Alexander, Lewis M. and Hodgson, Robert D., “The Impact of the 200-Mile Economic Zone on the Law of the Sea,” San Diego Law Review, XII (1975), 569–99.Google Scholar

77 Gwertzman, Bernard, “U.S. Bars Treaty for Now on Use of Sea Resources,” New York Times, March 4, 1981, pp. A1, A 11.Google Scholar

78 On the utility of the assumption of rationality for scientific purposes, the author has benefited from discussions with Professor Pierre Salmon at the European University Institute, Florence, 1977–1979.

79 The term was proposed by Manning, Bayless in “The Congress, The Executive and Intermestic Affairs: Three Proposals,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55 (January 1977), 306–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Bennett, Douglas J. Jr, “Congress in Foreign Policy: Who Needs It?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 57 (Fall 1978), 40–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 U.S., Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Two Hundred-Mile Fishing Zone, Hearing, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975), 105.Google Scholar

81 See Stein, Arthur A., “The Politics of Linkage,” World Politics, XXXIII (October 1980), 62–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar