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heritage of our past and a means of shaping our future.

The challenge of international order takes an unprecedented urgency in the contemporary world of interdependence. The intertwining of our economic progress, our communications, our physical safety -- these are current realities, not abstract, distant prospects. We flourish together or we suffer together.

In an increasing number of areas of political concern, the legal process -- negotiation, agreement, rulemaking -- has become of central relevance. Technology has opened up great new areas of human activity where progress depends on the up new prospects if either current progress or regulation of international contention. The use of the oceans for navigation and for exploitation of resources; the use of outer space for exploration and for increased knowledge of our

[Y]

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own planet; the new excesses of hijacking, terrorism, and warfare; the expansion of multinational corporations -- will surely become areas of growing dispute—and strife if they are not regulated by a legal order. These issues encompass many of our central foreign policy concerns; strengthening security, ensuring the health of the economic system, reconciling political objectives, promoting human rights and well-being.

The United States will not seek to impose a parochial or self-serving view of the law on others. But neither will we carry the quest for accommodation to the point of prejudging our own values and rights. The new corpus of the law of nations must benefit all peoples equally; it cannot be the preserve of any one nation or group of nations.

~~But~~ The United States is convinced in its own interest that

—We are convinced that the growing interdependence
the extension of legal order is a boon to humanity & necessarily
The traditional aspiration of Americans takes on a new relevance
and urgency in contemporary conditions.

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Of this small planet requires a determined expansion of the legal consensus. Unilateral national action and unrestrained pursuit of special advantage inevitably provokes counter-action and therefore spells futility and anarchy. In an age of awesome weapons of war, there must be accommodation or disaster.

If Therefore there must be an expansion of the legal consensus, This is why the United States considers it in its own in terms both of subject matter and participation. Many new interest to further the rule of law among nations. Some

of international activity, and important areas that call for regulation still lack a legal consensus --

such as many of the new fields of technology and communication, cry out for agreed international rules.

In other areas, juridical concepts have advanced faster than the underlying political will that is indispensable for their observance -- such as the UN Charter provisions protecting the use of

force concept in self defense. But the pace of legal evolution

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not
In a world of 150 nations, we can see
in the world at large, only at grave risk. We cannot afford to
wait upon the growth of customary international law.

Nor can we,
Therefore we cannot be content with the snail's pace of

treaty-making as we have known it in recent years in
international forums.

We must accelerate that process if
we are to shape a pivotal moment in history. To reach
our goal of cooperative international conduct and economic
and social progress, we must begin to build appropriate
institutions and practices.

This morning, I would like to set forth the American view
on several major issues of law and foreign policy -- that
can move us toward a more orderly and more lawful world --
in the oceans and in outer space, in the conduct of war and

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The law governing use of the oceans dates from the
seas
until now, the law of the seas
Seventeenth Century, and has been founded on a relatively
simple precept: freedom of the seas, limited only by a
narrow belt of territorial waters generally extending three
miles offshore. Today, the explosion of technology --
requires new and more sophisticated solutions,
both military and commercial -- have made these definitions
irrelevant and potentially dangerous.

-- In a world desperate for new sources of energy
and minerals, the oceans contain vast and largely
untapped lede of vital reserves, exist in the oceans.

-- In a world that faces widespread famine and
malnutrition, fisheries become an increasingly
vital source of protein.