Air Force Chief Hints Western Fighter Jets Could Go to Ukraine

PATRICK TUCKER and JACQUELINE FELDSCHER

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Ukraine may get Western fighter jets and pilot training to aid in its conflict with Russia, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said, but he doesn’t know precisely what kind of fighter jets they would be.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley—in a separate engagement on Wednesday—emphasized that no decisions have been made.

At the Aspen Security Summit in Aspen, Colorado, on Wednesday, Brown hinted strongly that the idea of getting Western jets into Ukraine is now on the table.

“There's US [jets], there's Gripen out of Sweden, there's the Eurofighter, there's [the French] Rafale. So there's a number of different platforms that could go to Ukraine,” he said in response to a question on if the U.S. might be willing to sell or provide Ukraine with U.S. fighter jets. “I can't tell you exactly what it's gonna be,” he said.

The Biden Administration Wants To Standardize How the U.S. Conducts Cyber Operations

LAUREN C. WILLIAMS

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The White House is reviewing a key cyber operations policy in hopes of refining it to make sure offensive cyber capabilities are used appropriately and are ready when needed, according to a top cyber official.

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology for the National Security Council, said the White House’s review of a policy implemented by the Trump administration in 2018—often referred to as National Security Presidential Memorandum-13—is needed to make sure the United States’ use of offensive cyber capabilities “fits within our foreign policy goals.”

The Biden administration is currently re-working the policy, which gave U.S. Cyber Command more discretion to engage in time-sensitive cyber operations, to determine whether cyber capabilities are “resilient, flexible, and ready to be used when needed,” and to check that appropriate processes and reviews are in place, Neuberger said during the Aspen Security Forum Wednesday.

Senators Take Aim At Future Quantum-Enabled Hacking With New Bill

PATRICK TUCKER

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Experts believe quantum computing may render some of the core cybersecurity algorithms at the heart of many modern-day digital experiences—from accessing money via an ATM to sending secure messages—obsolete. A new bipartisan bill pushes the U.S. government to prepare more quickly for that eventuality.

The problem is a complex one, literally. The public key encryption standards for everything from bank transactions to secure communications are based on the mathematical principle of factorization. A classical computer would take around 300 trillion years to crack them. But a quantum computer, able to process bits composed of values far more diverse than “1” or “0,” could crack the same encryption standard in seconds.

The bottlenecks on alternative routes to export Ukrainian grain

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Russia's invasion has forced Ukraine to reroute its grain exports, as its six major Black Sea ports remain under a blockade. The standoff has left millions at increased risk of starvation. A deal is being discussed to allow the resumption of exports but it may take months until the ports re-open. The BBC's Nick Thorpe has seen the bottlenecks in Hungary and Romania.

"You have to understand this as a logistical chain, and there are so many weak links," says Capt Botond Szalma. In his office in Budapest, a chart of the Black Sea, the Danube river, and the whole eastern flank of Europe, from Poland to Turkey, is spread out on the table.

He is a third-generation ship's captain; his grandfather and father both moved grain on the Danube. "We're trying to catch up on 30 years of disastrous neglect of the rail infrastructure in the whole region, including Hungary," says Capt Szalma, who is also executive vice-president of the Federation of National Associations of Ship Brokers and Agents (Fonasba).

Russia is ‘About to Run Out of Steam,’ MI6 Chief Says

KEVIN BARON

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ASPEN, Colo. — America’s internal division is reducing its international influence, China is not 10 feet tall, Iran doesn’t really want a nuclear deal, and Russia is “about to run out of steam” in Ukraine, said Britain’s spy chief in a rare and frank interview about global threats and the state of Western intelligence services.

“Epic fails” is how Richard Moore described the Russian invasion’s three main goals: remove Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, capture Kyiv, and sow disunity within NATO. Moore, who is chief of UK's Secret Intelligence Service—better known as MI6— spoke at the high-powered Aspen Security Conference here on Thursday.

The Irony of Misinformation: USIA Myths Block Enduring Solutions

Christopher Paul and Matt Armstrong

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“There is no question today that the policies and actions of the US are often misunderstood and misrepresented abroad.” Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke those words before Congress in 1947, and yet they are just as true—possibly even truer—today, as major U.S.-competitors have built up well-funded and organized entities that constantly mislead audiences about U.S. policies and motives. Russia, for example, uses its global state-run media, such as RT and Sputnik, as well as hordes of paid internet trolls; it leverages ideological and profit-minded fellow travelers to unleash a “firehose of falsehood” that undermines the credibility of all news sources; all while promoting narratives that favor the Russian state. China has the equivalent of an entire military service—the strategic support force—devoted to information warfare, and a huge government entity, the United Front Works Department, that coordinates China's international exchanges and outreach, it also works to shape international public opinion of China.

Unlike these competitors, the United States government has failed to institutionalize the importance of information in foreign policy. The United States lacks formalized leadership structures to tackle these information issues head on, just as it lacks a central organization to coordinate activities to understand, inform, and influence foreign audiences. These are longstanding gaps, readily acknowledged in the policy analytic community since at least 2001 (PDF), and discussed at length throughout the first decade of the 21st century. And yet, these gaps persist today.

New Legislation May Not Be Enough to Counter Chinese Interference in British Universities

Fiona Quimbre

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UK universities appear to have become a battleground for espionage and interference activities. From Chinese missile manufacturers setting up labs in the UK to autocracies shaping the research agenda of universities and confiscating papers on Taiwan, there is alarming evidence of growing Chinese espionage and influence that could threaten national security and academic freedoms.

Adding to this mound of evidence, a new RAND Europe study reveals that almost three-quarters of joint research centres established between UK universities and Chinese partners focus on sensitive areas with potential national security risks. These include synthetic biology, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, and satellite and space technologies. While some centres present little risk and bring about substantial economic and societal benefits, some may present notable national security risks because of their association with military-linked Chinese universities and entities.

Russia's Ambitions and the War in Ukraine: Q&A with Dara Massicot

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“Iwanted to be wrong,” Dara Massicot tweeted on the evening of February 23. It was just before dawn on the following day in Moscow and Kyiv, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun. “The next days and weeks will be dark times and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Massicot is a senior policy researcher at RAND who specializes in Russian military strategy. Long before the war in Ukraine, she had documented a shift in Russian thinking and posture toward its neighbor, a focus on reining it back from the West at all costs. She had also detailed serious shortcomings in Russian ground forces, and an overall lack of preparation for a major ground war.

Determining the Military Capabilities Most Needed to Counter China and Russia

David A. Ochmanek

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Although the United States, along with its allies and partners, possess greater overall economic wherewithal than China and Russia, the mission assigned to U.S. forces—namely, to project power rapidly and at scale across great distances to defeat aggression in an adversary's "neighborhood"—is more difficult than the adversary's forces' missions. It is therefore imperative that decisionmakers make wise choices for investing scarce resources into capabilities that have the greatest potential to thwart adversaries' designs. This Perspective offers a blueprint for doing that.

Civilian Casualties: Lessons from the Battle for Raqqa

Aboud Hamam

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The United States had promised the most precise air war in history to destroy the Islamic State across its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. Yet by the end of the U.S.-led battle for Raqqa, the group's de facto capital, as many as 80 percent of the buildings were deemed uninhabitable. Several thousand civilians who had survived months of shelling and street fighting had nowhere to go for safe drinking water within the wreckage.

Researchers from RAND spent months analyzing the battle and asking what the United States could have done better to protect those civilians from the harms of war. They found that military leaders too often lacked a complete picture of conditions on the ground; too often waved off reports of civilian casualties; and too rarely learned any lessons from strikes gone wrong. Raqqa may have been a victory, but it was also a smoldering monument to how much more the military could do to protect civilians.

Intelligence Agencies Say Russia Election Threat Persists Amid Ukraine War

Adam Goldman

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Top national security officials warned on Tuesday about the continuing threat of election interference from abroad, emphasizing that Russia could still seek to meddle or promote disinformation during the 2022 midterm races even as it wages war in Ukraine.

“I am quite confident the Russians can walk and chew gum,” Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said during a cybersecurity conference in Manhattan, where he spoke alongside Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

Iran and China also remained potent threats, mounting their own campaigns to undermine American democracy, the officials said.

Building a cyber resilience strategy for a geopolitically unstable world

Tomer Saban

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As Russia's invasion of Ukraine becomes more entrenched, with important cyber and disinformation components, businesses and other organizations, such as NGOs and universities, must have four critical internal, overlapping cyber-systems in place to build a strong cyber resilience strategy. These relate to governance, culture, risk, and crisis management.

The figure below summarises the thesis of this piece, which is that businesses that have a systematic approach to cyber-risk governance, a culture of cyber-hygiene, cyber-risk management and cyber-crisis management strategies will be able to achieve systematic cyber preparedness and resilience. Vital to surviving and thriving in our tumultuous times.

Why Russia Keeps Losing Generals

Austin Wright

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Before late February, Russia was seen as one of the military powerhouses of the world. With the world’s fifth-largest standing army, comprising 900,000 standing troops and 2 million reservists, and a defense budget of $65.9 billion, the might of the Russian military loomed over Eurasia and NATO at large.

Fast-forward to today, and the reputation of the Russian military is defined by images of Ukrainian farmers stealing Russian tanks and an inability to cross basic river systems. Apparently the Russian military has trouble swimming, which bodes well for Finland. The only thing it seems to be good at are massed artillery and war crimes. And particularly embarrassing is the Russian ability to get its senior leadership killed—or sacked. So far, Russia has reportedly lost at least nine generals on the battlefield and plenty more at home as President Vladimir Putin continues his purge of generals. High defense spending and an aggressive foreign policy haven’t healed the serious issues that have plagued Russian military culture since the fall of the Soviet Union.

What Better Way to Use the Arsenal of Democracy?

David E. Johnson

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At what point can the United States and other countries no longer afford the massive transfer of weapons to the Ukrainians, lest they jeopardize the readiness of their own militaries? When does the arsenal of democracy shift to the arsenal for self? These are questions that are starting to be raised as the demand for weapons becomes clear in what is now a protracted war in Ukraine.

The contributions by the United States and Ukraine's other supporters have been immense. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said that as of mid-April approximately 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons went to Ukraine.

Javelins, Switchblades, and Stingers have been deployed regularly by Ukraine in its struggle against Russian invaders. Images of burning tanks, often with their turrets blown off, are a testament to the effectiveness of these weapons.

Rebuilding Ukraine for a Changing Climate

Mark Stalczynski, Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, Nihar Chhatiawala

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The Kiev School of Economics keeps a running account of damage to Ukraine's infrastructure. As of May 25, it totaled over $105 billion, including 44 million square miles of residential buildings, 15,000 miles—or 14 percent—of all roads—and according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy, $2 billion in damage to energy infrastructure. The extent of that damage will, almost certainly, grow. And the cost of rebuilding will, almost certainly, rise. And yet, eventually, the war in Ukraine will end, and the country will in all likelihood undergo a massive reconstruction.

Such a moment presents a historic opportunity. Ukraine could rebuild in a way that would both lower its carbon footprint and construct infrastructure resilient to the effects of climate change. Such transitions toward a clean, efficient, and resilient infrastructure are generally quite costly. Part of this cost normally comes from stranded assets—that is, assets no longer economical in the new sustainable grid design that need to be decommissioned.

What if Russia's Army Fails in Ukraine?

Peter A. Wilson and William Courtney

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Perhaps foreseeing a Russian win or stalemate in Ukraine, some foreign policy experts urge that it cede territory. French President Emmanuel Macron calls for not “humiliating” Russia. These entreaties could miss the mark. The battlefield is fluid and could turn for or against Ukraine. The West should prudently prepare for Ukrainian success as well as a less favorable outcome.

A few weeks ago, euphoria reigned when Ukrainian forces pushed back Russian attempts to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa—Ukraine's three largest cities. Now, pessimism is ascendant. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks of “very fierce” fighting in eastern Ukraine and high casualties. Ukrainians may be running out of some ammunition.

Momentum Grows for Scrutiny of Business in China

Maseh Zarif

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Congress is debating government funding for the U.S. semiconductor industry. The scope of a bill remains in flux, but it may include guardrails to restrict funding for recipients’ activities in China.

Another, broader congressional proposal to enhance government oversight of certain business activities in China that have a national security nexus has also gained traction. The White House signaled its support last week.

These measures may be narrowed in the near term, especially as corporations in the semiconductor industry lobby to protect the status quo, but the signs from Washington are clear: Policy momentum for national security-based scrutiny of U.S. business and investment in China is growing and here to stay. That momentum is needed, given the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and the stakes for U.S. national security.

Should Israel get more involved in Ukraine?

ANTHONY AVICE DU BUISSON

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The ascension of Yair Lapid to the position of Israeli prime minister provides an opportunity for a stronger commitment by Israel to Ukraine in its war against Russian occupation.

Israel’s position since the inception of the war has been one of strategic hedging. Jerusalem provides medical and financial support to Kyiv, while at the same time engaging Moscow on security matters. This most notably includes addressing Iranian military activity in neighboring Syria.

This balancing act comes at a time when Moscow is engaging in mass atrocities toward Jews and non-Jews in Ukraine. A Russian military strike on a civilian mall in Kremenchuk, Poltava, is just a recent example of the state’s atrocities in the country. Mounting civilian losses due to indiscriminate military strikes, coupled with a disregard for regional peace and security, places pressure on countries like Israel to reconsider their position.

Why Sri Lanka Imploded

KAUSHIK BASU

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HAMBURG – As Sri Lanka’s economy unravels before our eyes, one must ask how this could happen in a country that is historically known for its high standard of living and stable economy. Sri Lanka’s achievements go back decades, giving it a per capita GDP that is 70% higher than India’s, and a life expectancy at birth of 77 years, compared to 73, 70, and 67, in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, respectively.Politics

But now, Sri Lanka’s economy is in free fall. The proximate causes of the crisis are clear enough. Problems stemming from international factors such as COVID-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine were exacerbated by Sri Lanka’s own policy mistakes. In 2019, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (who has now fled the country) announced a round of mindless tax cuts, depriving the state of sorely needed revenue. Then, in 2021, his government abruptly banned imports of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. While the aim of the policy was to stall foreign-exchange outflows, the main result was a dramatic reduction in domestic food production, leading to acute food shortages this year.

The legacy of Europe’s heat waves will be more air conditioning. That’s a problem.

Casey Crownhart

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Fewer than 10% of households in Europe are air-conditioned. But as temperatures rise, that figure is set to climb. Rising AC use may present new challenges, as most systems are inefficient and produce emissions that contribute to climate change. In extreme cases, when adoption gets high enough, too many units working overtime can overload the electrical grid on hot days.

Climate change is making extreme heat the norm across more of the world, increasing the need for adaptation. But in the case of AC, some experts are concerned about how to balance that need with the harms the solutions can cause.

Global AC sales more than tripled between 1990 and 2016, according to a 2018 report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). That growth is likely to continue, with energy use for cooling worldwide expected to triple again between now and 2050.

Russia sought to unmask Ukrainian hackers with malware app, Google says

JULIA MUELLER 

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Russian hackers apparently disguised and advertised a malware-infected Android app as a tool to fight back against Moscow in an effort to expose Ukrainian hackers.

Google’s Threat Assessment Group (TAG) released a report Tuesday explaining that Russians disguised the malicious app as one that would launch Denial of Service attacks on certain Russian websites — and distributed the app from a domain masked as an extension of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Regiment.

The distributor, Turla, is a group TAG attributes to the Russian Federal Security Service.

“Join the Cyber Azov and help stop russian aggression against Ukraine!” reads the advertisement on the third-party site distributing the apps, according to a screenshot shared by Google. “We have developed an Android application that attacks the Internet infrastructure of Russia.”

The World Needs a Digital Lifeline

RICCARDO PULITI

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WASHINGTON, DC – In periods of crisis, digital technologies provide a lifeline that keeps people, communities, and businesses functioning. From the COVID-19 pandemic to violent conflicts and natural disasters, being connected has allowed us to continue working, learning, and communicating.

How policymakers have responded to these emergencies has played a large part. In particular, as new paper by the World Bank Group’s Development Committee shows, more agile regulation has accelerated digitalization and unleashed innovation. In today’s global context of several overlapping crises, this needs to become the norm. Secure and resilient internet infrastructure is a fundamental necessity.

Boris Johnson’s Fall – and Ours

ROBERT SKIDELSKY

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LONDON – Nearly all political careers end in failure, but Boris Johnson is the first British prime minister to be toppled for scandalous behavior. That should worry us.

The three most notable downfalls of twentieth-century British leaders were caused by political factors. Neville Chamberlain was undone by his failed appeasement policy. The Suez fiasco forced Anthony Eden to resign in 1957. And Margaret Thatcher fell in 1990 because popular resistance to the poll tax persuaded Tory MPs that they could not win again with her as leader.

True, Harold Macmillan was undone in 1963 by the Profumo sex scandal, but this involved a secretary of state for war and possible breaches of national security. Election defeats following economic failure brought down Edward Heath and James Callaghan in the 1970s. Tony Blair was forced to resign by the Iraq debacle and Gordon Brown’s impatience to succeed him. David Cameron was skewered by Brexit, and Theresa May by her failure to deliver Brexit.

Ayman al Zawahiri is alive; Taliban and Al Qaeda “remain close,” UN reports

BILL ROGGIO

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Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of Al Qaeda who served as Osama bin Laden’d deputy on 9/11, “is confirmed to be alive” and is “communicating freely,” according to a report from the United Nations’ Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team. Additionally, the UN said the Taliban-Al Qaeda alliance remains strong, as reported by FDD’s Long War Journal, and the leaders of Al Qaeda’s branches in North and East Africa have assumed roles in Al Qaeda’s line of succession.

While it is not news that Zawahiri is alive, well, and communicating comfortably, some terrorism analysts previously claimed Zawahiri was dead as recently as Nov. 2020. While not explicitly stated, Zawahiri is likely operating inside Afghanistan.

Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leader & Osama bin Laden successor, died a month ago of natural causes in his domicile. The news is making the rounds in close circles.

In Face Of Unprecedented Signs Of Climate Collapse, We’re Still Being Failed By Politicians, Media And Ourselves

Andy Worthington

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Last week, as the mercury started to rise in the UK, and sober weather-watchers warned that, for the first time ever, temperatures might reach 40°C in the UK, the default position of TV’s weathermen and women was to talk of records being broken, as though extreme heat was some kind of Olympic sporting event, and the plucky British weather was some sort of super-athlete, whose ‘achievement’ was to be celebrated.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing to celebrate about temperatures reaching 40°C in the UK, as was recognised when Grahame Madge, a spokesman for the Met Office, said, “We’ve just issued a red warning for extreme heat for Monday and Tuesday which is the first such warning ever issued. The warning covers an area from London up to Manchester and then up to the Vale of York. This is potentially a very serious situation.”

War in Ukraine Could Change the Types of Weapons the Pentagon Wants, Raytheon CEO Says

MARCUS WEISGERBER

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The war in Ukraine could alter the Pentagon’s future weapons buying plans, as military leaders look to better protect large, expensive equipment, the head of America’s second largest defense company said.

“What we're learning from the war in Ukraine is big, slow things are big, slow targets, whether it's warships or tanks,” Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes said in an interview Tuesday. “An asymmetric weapon can take out a multibillion dollar system.”

In Ukraine, both Ukrainian and Russian forces have used relatively cheap, modified commercial drones to drop explosives on military formations. Homemade weapons rigged with explosives were used by ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Boris Johnson’s Fall Gives Brexit a Chance to Succeed

Garvan Walshe

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There’s an old political joke where a soul is asked to choose between heaven and hell and is given a trial run in each. Down in hell, he’s shown around what amounts to the best country club in the world, plays a few holes of golf with Beelzebub, is served fine venison, and washes it down with long-vanished Bordeaux vintages in a tête-à-tête with the devil himself. Preferring this to sitting on clouds listening to lyre music surrounded by winged toddlers, he chooses hell, only to be thrust into a fire pit, watching his best friend be flayed alive by a pair of oversized demons. What happened to the country club, he asks? Satan wastes no time in putting the poor soul right: “Then, we were campaigning. Now, we’re governing.”

As prime minister, Boris Johnson gave Britain a government that ended up on the lower end of purgatory—closer to the decaying end of a dictatorship, with sex predators being appointed to positions of authority, admissions of mysterious visits to supposedly former KGB agents’ villas, $1,000 rolls of wallpaper, and attempts to extort a $180,000 treehouse for his latest son, all against the background of a once-in-a-century pandemic and the most serious war in Europe since 1945.

What to read to understand modern warfare

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Jul 19th 2022The war in Ukraine is a curious mix of old and new. Soldiers crouch in trenches that would not be out of place in Verdun, were it not for the glimpse of a reconnaissance drone above. Some Ukrainian gunners receive orders via Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation of satellites. Others fire artillery pieces that pre-date the Cuban missile crisis. Chinese-made quadcopters drop 1940s-vintage grenades on unsuspecting Russian tanks. It has the feel of a steampunk novel by Tom Clancy. Making sense of all this can be tricky. Conscription has ebbed away in America and most big European countries, so military matters seem rarefied. The Western wars of the past 30 years have been waged largely against assorted insurgents and guerrillas; the sound of big guns once more pounding out duels within Europe is disorienting. How to understand it all? This selection of five books should help you brush up on modern warfare.

The Face of Battle. By John Keegan. Penguin Books; 384 pages; $18. Bodley Head; £16.99

A lot of military history is a snoozefest: hagiographies of generals and bloodless accounts of obscure engagements. So when John Keegan, a lecturer at Sandhurst, Britain’s military academy, published “The Face of Battle” in 1976, it was an instant classic. The book examines three seminal battles—Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme—at the level of the individuals who fought them. “Inside every army is a crowd struggling to get out,” writes Keegan, “a human assembly animated not by discipline but by mood”. The line is sometimes barely discernible. In the first world war, entire battalions came into being “when a train load of a thousand volunteers was tipped out on to a rural railway platform in front of a single officer”. In Ukraine, conscripts have been thrown into the meat-grinder with little training. Keegan vividly describes how booze, religion, fatigue, honour, the promise of loot and raw coercion keep soldiers from fleeing. Men in close combat will eventually break, though, in little under a year in the case of the second world war. Modern battles have drones, artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles. But their aim is the same—“for it is towards the disintegration of human groups that battle is directed”. (We reviewed another of Mr Keegan’s books, on the American civil war, in 2009.)

The planet is on fire — but 2022 won’t crack the grim top 5 list of warmest years on record

Dave Levitan

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Trains slowing to a crawl for fear of buckling railroad tracks. Wildfires licking the sides of a highway. Airport runways melting.

Reports of all sorts of heat-related calamities sweated forth from the U.K. this week, as the country saw its all-time highest temperature record fall multiple times over the course of a scorching Tuesday. Elsewhere in Europe, the heat wave fueled wildfires in France, Spain, Portugal and Greece, while in Asia, China expected temperatures in the triple digits across a number of provinces. In the U.S., parts of the Plains hit 115 degrees and more than 100 million people were under heat advisories.

It may feel like the planet has reached a new and more extreme pinnacle of disaster, but from a pure numbers standpoint, this isn’t even a top five apocalypse.

On The United States, The UN Convention On Law Of Sea And US Freedom Of Navigation Operations

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THE US AND UNCLOS NEGOTIATIONS, 1973-1982

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (the Conference) began in 1973 and ended with the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on 12 December 1982. The US administration of Republican President Richard Nixon was a principal initiator of the Third Conference. The US maintained a bipartisan approach and actively participated in the Conference negotiations throughout the presidencies of Richard Nixon (Republican, 1969-74), Gerald Ford (Republican, 1974-1977) and Jimmy Carter (Democratic, 1977-81). However, the situation changed with the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan replaced the US negotiating team and called for a review of the provisions in Part IX on Deep Sea Mining.[1]

The US and Part IX on Deep Sea Mining

The Reagan administration called for fundamental changes to Part IX on deep sea mining because it believed that the provisions were not consistent with its view on the appropriate role of private enterprise in deep sea mining. However, the Conference was not willing to accede to what many countries regarded as America’s “last-minute” demands for major changes to one part of the draft convention given that from the outset it was agreed upon that the entire convention would be negotiated as a “package deal”. The Conference decided to proceed to formally adopt the text of UNCLOS on 10 December 1982.