From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 6/25/2005 6:39 PM
Reselling Alaska
26.06.05
By Boris Yunanov The Moscow News
Soviet diplomats ceded the United States a huge chunk of an oil-bearing shelf in the Bering Sea due to political shortsightedness. It is unlikely that the issue would be ever settled in Russia's favour
 
Territorial matters are among the most serious issues in Russia's foreign policy. At first glance, these are trifles that are not worth fussing about. Once we have decided to cede someone a patch of our native land, this must be in our supreme political interests.

Yet all is not so simple. In the mid-1980s, the agenda of Russian-U.S. relations included the delimitation of maritime areas in the Bering Sea. The negotiations were tortuous and long drawn-out, while many people at that time also thought that it was a trifling matter. Lawyer Vladimir Gladyshev, a former staff member of the USSR Foreign Ministry Legal Department and actual participant in the events, sets the record straight, putting the situation into a broader and more historical perspective.

Loxodromes and Orthodromes

In the second half of the 1970s, the Soviet Union and the United States introduced 200-mile fishing zones that retained all the basic freedoms of the high seas, including the freedom of commercial and military shipping and navigation. In some sectors of the Bering Sea, however, the distance between the Soviet Union and the United States is less than 400 nautical miles. The most obvious solution would be to draw a delimitation line at an equal distance from the two countries' coasts. There was a precedent: In 1969, the UN International Court of Justice ruled on the delimitation of maritime areas in the North Sea. The court did not take into account the fact, however, that a disproportionate advantage could be granted to a side that had small islands some distance away from its coast, not to mention traditional fishing areas.

In short, in the early 1980s, the issue of the sea border came up again. The Americans proposed delimiting the fishing zones on the basis of a 1867 convention on the sale of Alaska. In order not to aggravate bilateral relations with extra problems, the USSR immediately accepted the proposal.

Yet what is appropriate for delimiting land borders may not necessarily be appropriate for maritime areas. In the latter case it was of principal importance specifically which map was to be used for the purpose of drawing the line: If it was a Mercator projection map, where meridians and parallels are drawn as absolutely straight lines (loxodromy), the Soviet Union was to get an advantage in the form of tens of thousands of square kilometers. If a "land" map was used - that is to say, a map in the ordinary conical projection (orthodromy) - the United States would have profited.

So the sides started pondering the question of where exactly a delimitation line was drawn in 1867 and came to the conclusion that it had not in fact been drawn. It turns out that in the 19th century no one bothered with such "trifles" as loxodromy and orthodromy. What was to be done? It was the Americans who showed initiative. U.S. Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger handed Vladimir Isakov, the Soviet minister/counselor in the United States, a "compromise proposal approved by President Reagan." The gist of the proposal was: The dividing line should be drawn precisely between the loxodromic and orthodromic lines, thus dividing the disputed area in half.

Eagleburger Tricks

The Americans dubbed the compromise border line a "pragmatic line." It would seem that everything was simple and clear. But Eagleburger proposed using his approach for all purposes in delimiting sea areas between the two countries. That, however, changed the situation drastically. After all, originally the sides were only concerned with 200-mile fishing zones, while the wording "for all purposes" implied also the delimitation of the continental shelf which in such relatively shallow areas as the Bering Sea goes far beyond the limits of a 200-mile zone. As a result, an oil-rich area of the continental shelf was to end up completely under U.S. control, which automatically enabled the United States, on the one hand, to prospect and develop natural resources, and on the other, to grant licenses to others. That infringed on Soviet interests.

Although the negotiations were still in progress, the U.S. administration, under pressure from oil companies, started issuing licenses for oil production in a disputed area that was 500,000 sq km large. Following a series of Soviet protests, the granting of licenses was put on hold.

On several occasions U.S. military aircraft pointedly flew over Soviet search vessels. The Soviet Union responded in kind - by putting troops on alert, filing diplomatic protests, etc. Tensions were mounting in the Cold War spirit.

At that point the Soviet Union reasonably proposed dividing the shelf in half, applying the "pragmatic line" only to 200-mile zones. The United States replied to the effect that in selling Alaska in 1867, Russia ceded America all rights and interests to the east of the line specified in the convention. The Americans insisted that the USSR had actually confirmed that interpretation of the document by agreeing in principle to the delimitation of 200-mile zones. The Soviet delegation instantly raised objections: In 1867 there was no question of renouncing sovereignty. Nor could sovereignty be at issue now. Sovereignty is a fundamental principle of international law.

The Soviet position at the negotiations was not just preferable - it was legally better substantiated, and the Americans were keenly aware of that. Not surprisingly, they did not support the Soviet proposal that the dispute be transferred to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. If the Soviet Union made such a proposal, it was absolutely sure that its position was valid - watertight.

Missiles vs. Fur Seals

The Americans' subsequent response boiled down to this: Let us upgrade the level of the negotiations and consider the issue not from a legal but a political perspective.

The U.S. delegation was led by the legendary American diplomat John Negroponte. Generally speaking, shifting an issue into another dimension is the classic tactic of any smart negotiator, and the Americans showed that they were really smart. Thanks to Negroponte's rhetorical skills and ingenuity, at first they cleverly steered the negotiations into a deadlock and then forced the Soviet Union to make concessions and fully abandon its claims to the continental shelf in the disputed region.

Our negotiators were hamstrung by the interference of Soviet bureaucratic structures responsible for relations with the United States, which were afraid that any aggravation of the situation at the negotiations could hinder progress in Soviet-U.S. discourse. These impediments were the reasons the Soviets did not insist on the case being transferred to the Hague Court. Had Gorbachev, at one of the numerous summit meetings, proposed the move to Reagan as a model of "new thinking," it would have been very difficult for the Americans to refuse.

It should be noted in fairness that some members of the Soviet delegation were dead set against giving in to America on such a win-win case. Yet representatives of the Soviet nomenklatura immediately exerted strong pressure on them - to the effect that our arguments are inconsistent, the Americans by definition know international law better than we do, and generally speaking, what is at stake here are the fateful problems of intermediate range missiles, while you keep talking about 19th century fur seals. It is inadmissible to jeopardize a breakthrough in USSR-U.S. relations over some legal pettiness.

This approach was supported by all government agencies and departments that were involved in the negotiations, including the Defense Ministry and the KGB. Viktor Chernomyrdin, then-minister of the gas industry - if anyone knew about the huge oil resources of the Bering Sea shelf, it was him - also signed off on a memo to the Politburo. The only member of the Soviet leadership who rejected the demagoguery, sharply opposing any territorial concessions to the United States, was A.N. Yakovlev. He deployed efforts to turn around the course of the negotiations even though they did not have a direct bearing on him. Based on one of his memos to the Politburo, the KGB even conducted a special investigation into the possibility of Soviet officials lobbying for U.S. interests in the Bering Sea.

Nonetheless, the proponents of "coordinated" departmental positions prevailed. It was easier for them to give in to the Americans than to offer a coherent explanation to their bosses why the negotiations had stalled. The recent border agreement with China testifies to how deeply ingrained this approach still is and how prone Russian diplomats are to repeat the mistakes of their Soviet predecessors.

Although it has not been ratified by the State Duma, the agreement with the United States on the Bering Sea is observed by both sides. The issue of its revision is unlikely to be raised. It would be like opening a can of worms. No one wants to return to a problem that could, in diplomatic jargon, become an "irritant" to bilateral relations.

http://english.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2005-23-24