Political costs of relying on Freedom of Navigation program no longer worth the risks

In fact, many of the nations making claims that the U.S. considered excessive were asserting that the Convention was a legal contract, the rights and benefits of which were not necessarily available to non-parties—such as the United States. The Continual counter-assertion that these rights and benefits were already embodied in customary international law was appearing more and more difficult to sustain. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the summer of 1994, the chairman of the Department of Defense Task Force on the Law of the Sea Convention, John McNeill, pointed to the likelihood of “increasingly egregious excessive claims” by many coastal states as a critically important reason to seek U.S. accession to the Convention.⁵⁷ The danger of continuing to rely on the FON program was summed up by Rear Admiral William Schachte: “The political costs and military risks of the Freedom of Navigation Program may well increase in the changing world order.”⁵⁸ Conversely, accession to the Convention, by the United States would, it was hoped, convince states making excessive claims to retract them and, perhaps more importantly, keep in check their natural desire to extend sovereignty to offshore areas, when it would be inimical to navigation and overflight rights.”