ABSTRACT
The United States' overarching concern in several UN conferences on the law of the sea has been to legitimate its power as an industrialized maritime state. American policies at LOS III are perceived by the Group of 77 as attempts to perpetuate in treaty law the economic and military predominance of the industrialized North. Sometimes American interests parallel those of the nonindustrialized coastal states. This proved to be the case in the management of coastal fisheries. In the tuna case, the United States decided in favor of American environmental protectionists and coastal fishermen who sought national protection in American coastal waters. The drama of the American unilateral action to protect coastal fisheries was played against a broader backdrop of domestic politics and economic concerns. The preeminence or at least the high performance of American marine science in the twentieth century has been due in part to the same laissez-faire high-seas regime that served commercial interests.
