Nonetheless, recognizing national security as important, it should be remembered that some clauses within the UNCLOS 1982 framework can assist in these goals for every state party including the US. We think, for example, that national security must surely encompass resource and energy security, environmental security, and maritime and navigational security, each addressed in UNCLOS 1982. We ask also, perhaps not rhetorically, when has the world not been dangerous? Each age and each state defines its own dangers and looks for cooperative ways to meet them. There is almost nothing in UNCLOS 1982 that is not of some favourable relevance to state sovereignty, state security, or many other matters of vital importance for every state. This must perforce include the US and its government’s current but historically deviate fixation on self-defined and perceived rather than objectively real threats. The UNCLOS 1982 basis of global ocean manage- ment encompasses five guiding principles that provide a comprehensive international system for ocean governance and rules for access to maritime resources; the protection and preservation of the marine environment; marine scientific research; the development and transfer of marine technology; and the settlement of disputes. Those principles would only assist the US or any other state in its proper national security goals. Ignoring them, by any mechanism, including excessively focusing on improper ones or choosing not to accept them as an organising principle along with most other states to help the world understand national security in similar terms, harms any state doing so. Hence, the US is harming itself by not ratifying.