ABSTRACT
The 1988 Black Sea bumping incident involving the United States and the Soviet Union demonstrates how the US Freedom of Navigation (FON) programme has helped preserve navigational rights and freedoms for all seafaring nations, enhance safety of navigation and overflight, and reinforce the rule of law at sea. When the Soviet Union ratified the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone in 1960, it entered a reservation to Article 238 indicating that coastal states had ‘the right to establish procedures for the authorization of the passage of foreign warships through its territorial waters’. Between 1948 and 1979, the United States filed about 20 diplomatic protests against excessive coastal state maritime claims. Realising that the demarches alone were ineffective and that a tangible demonstration of US resolve was needed to deter excessive maritime claims, the administration of US President Jimmy Carter launched the FON programme in March 1979.
