Broad, bipartisan consensus because the U.S. pursued and achieved all objectives in negotiations

JOHN NORTON MOORE: Now, this convention is one of the most important multilateral conventions in history. Today it is enforced for 154 countries plus the European Union. It is enforced for all permanent members of the Security Council with the exception of the United States. The U.S. was the most important and most influential nation in the world in the negotiations. And it ultimately achieved every single one of its negotiating objectives in this treaty. I wish we could say that in all of the others. Ultimately, of course, the last ones were achieved in the renegotiation in 1994 on Part 11, seabed mining, that enabled us to achieve, and more, all of the conditions set by Ronald Reagan. Now, this was not simply an accident. The United States was extremely well organized for this negotiation. We had an 18-agency interagency task force. We had 100-member advisory board that included virtually every affected industry group and environmental group in the United States. And it is not surprising that today every single president after this has been adopted, of both parties, certainly all of our government agencies, particularly our military and our chiefs of staff and our Coast Guard, all industry groups, environmental groups and basically every affected interest group in the United States is a strong supporter of moving forward. Now, what are some of the things that we achieved? The United States achieved an expansion of resource jurisdiction that is far greater than what we achieved in the acquisition of Alaska and the Louisiana Purchase combined, an area of resource jurisdiction larger than the entire continental United States. The United States achieved every single one of its national security objectives, including particularly transit passage through, over and under straits used for international navigation. We achieved assured access to seabed minerals with four sites set aside for the United States with an aggregate resource value of over $1 trillion. The United States basically also received a stable rule of law and stable expectations for oil and gas and fisheries and other economic development in the oceans. And even precedentially, we achieved a breakthrough. The United States, on the counsel of the authority, was the only nation in the world given a permanent seat on the council and a veto on the council