For 20 years, the U.S. Freedom of Navigation program has ensured that excessive coastal state claims over the world’s oceans and airspace are repeatedly challenged. By diplomatic protests and operational assertions, the United States has insisted upon adherence by the nations of the world to the international law of the sea, as reflected in the UN Law of the Sea Convention. A significant majority of countries (131) are now Parties to the Convention, and there is an encouraging trend toward the rolling–back of excessive maritime claims. Nonetheless, some coastal states continue to assert maritime claims inconsistent with international law, which left unchallenged would limit navigational freedoms vital to U.S. national security and essential to peaceful uses of the world’s oceans.

In FY 1999, U.S. armed forces conducted operational assertions challenging the excessive maritime claims as listed below. In addition, military vessels and aircraft frequently conducted routine transits through international straits, such as the Straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, and Malacca. Air and surface units also transited the Indonesian Archipelago in archipelagic sea lanes passage on 22 occasions and transited the Philippine Archipelago by exercising high seas freedoms, transit passage, and innocent passage, as applicable, on 34 occasions. Combined with robust and highly visible routine operations by U.S. forces on, over, and under the world’s oceans, and strong United States support for the navigational provisions of the UN Law of the Sea Convention, Freedom of Navigation operations have continued to underscore the U.S. commitment to a stable legal regime for the world’s oceans.

On September 2, 1999, the Secretaries of Commerce and Navy, on behalf of the entire Cabinet, submitted to President Clinton a report entitled Turning to the Sea: America’s Ocean Future. This report sets forth the Cabinet’s collective recommendations for U.S. oceans policy heading into the 21st century, and it includes a specific recommendation to expand the U.S. Freedom of Navigation program to exercise U.S. navigational rights and freedoms in areas of unacceptable maritime claims. Guided by this recommendation, the U.S. armed forces will make even greater efforts to assert U.S. navigation and overflight rights in order to promote both global stability and U.S. national security.