Broad consensus of military, academic, and business experts have lined up in support of US ratification of UNCLOS

Support for U.S. accession to the Convention is surprisingly broad¹⁴. Some of the architects of plans to scuttle the Convention treaty under the Reagan administration have now come around to support it because the more odious provisions were amended or eliminated since that time¹⁵ The Navy, Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the State Department and the White House, support accession. These groups support accession despite the fact that they occasionally squabble over its implementation, largely due to the dual interest of the U.S. (e.g., the environmental protection mandate of the Coast Guard vs. the security mandate of the Navy has put these two forces at odds in the past¹⁶). Likewise, major resource extracting industries and their trade groups, who are often at odds with environmental groups over regulations, share a common interest with many of these groups in ratifying the Convention. Finally, the most authoritative body on U.S. ocean science and policy ever assembled, the Joint Ocean Commissions Initiative, chaired by retired Navy Admiral James Watkins and former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, has indicated U.S. accession to the Convention as one of its highest priorities.