UNCLOS convention would have no unique effect on ability of submarines to collect intelligence beyond restrictions already agreed to in 1958 convention

The specific argument that the Convention would prevent the United States from using its submarines to collect intelligence is fallacious. Several sources, including the Minority Views in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, note that Article 20 of the Convention requires submarines and other underwater vehicles to navigate on the surface and show their flag when engaged in innocent passage. This is correct, so far as it goes. But the minority report then concludes that this would "fail to protect the significant role submarines have played, especially during the Cold War, in gathering intelligence very close to foreign shorelines."

What the minority report fails to mention is that the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, to which the United States has long been party, contains exactly the same restriction.³⁹ Moreover, the collection of intelligence in any guise within the territorial sea is not "innocent passage."⁴⁰ Such operations are called espionage, not innocent passage. The United States would never accept foreign submarines or foreign warships engaging in intelligence-gathering operations in the territorial sea off of San Diego or Norfolk. Indeed, when President Reagan signed a proclamation extending the U.S. territorial sea to twelve nm on December 27, 1988, consistent with the Convention, one of the first things that the Coast Guard did was to advise a Soviet military vessel gathering intelligence just a few miles off of Pearl Harbor to leave the area immediately.⁴² The U.S. military and intelligence communities are well aware that the Convention would have a positive impact on our national security. Moreover, as Senator Richard Lugar, ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee, has argued, it would be unprecedented for the Senate to deny to our nation's military and national security leadership a tool that they have unanimously claimed that they need, especially during a time of war.⁴³