The US State Department has arbitrarily announced expansion of outer limits for the country’s continental shelf in the Arctic, Bering Sea, Atlantic, Pacific, two sections of the Gulf of Mexico and the Marians. This directly applies to the Arctic and the Bering Sea, where Russia does also have its finger in the pie, as the United States extends its claims to an area of a million square kilometers. Washington is preempting the global seabed without regard to other states or international agreements, as has always been the case, though. This is also part of the American-invented so-called rules-based order.
Speaking about the Arctic and the Bering Sea, Bloomberg refers to this as "an area of increasing strategic importance where Canada and Russia also have claims." Meanwhile, the State Department’s official statement reads that the zone of America’s "extended continental shelf" only overlaps those of Canada, the Bahamas and Japan. " In these areas, the United States and its neighbors will need to establish maritime boundaries in the future. In other areas, the United States has already established ECS boundaries with its neighbors, including with Cuba, Mexico, and Russia," the Department’s website features.
The "extended continental shelf" (ECS) is an area covering a territory beyond 200 nautical miles from a country’s coast to embrace both the seabed and earth crust interior, though the sea above it remains international waters. The continental shelf is defined in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), with ECS outer limits determined by complex rules set out in its article 76. The Americans claim to have been collecting data to fix their country’s ECS boundaries since 2003, which represents a major effort on mapping the shelf ever carried out by the United States. Allegedly, this resulted in the State Department’s release of a map with border coordinates for the US "extended continental shelf".
Justifying its claims, the State Department refers to UNCLOS the United States has never ratified. The decision to unilaterally designate shelf boundaries instead of ratifying the Convention and filing a claim through relevant UN structures is quite understandable — this could cause objections with other countries. Notably, Bloomberg also recognizes this, writing that the unilateral decision of the United States to expand its shelf " may reduce the likelihood of the US ever ratifying the law".
None of the parties concerned has ever checked the veracity of US-collected ECS data, because Washington never presented those to anyone. The way the United States is now laying its claims to the "extended continental shelf" is an outright appropriation of territories out of tune with international law.
The State Department writes the following in its official statement: "The United States, like other countries, has an inherent interest in knowing, and declaring to others, the extent of its ECS and thus where it is entitled to exercise sovereign rights. Defining our ECS outer limits in geographical terms provides the specificity and certainty necessary to allow the United States to conserve and manage the resources of the EC." That is, the United States has virtually declared the boundaries of "its" shelf beyond the 200-mile zone, even though this may overlap with claims by Russia or Canada. The United States has simply staked out and declared jurisdiction over this underwater territory. "The United States also has jurisdiction over marine scientific research relating to the ECS, as well as other authorities provided for under customary international law, as reflected in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea," the State Department goes on to say.
Bloomberg recognizes this as an intent to lay hands on a variety of offshore resources, as the abovementioned piece’s title is "US Claims Huge Chunk of Seabed Amid Strategic Push for Resources." In an article this week, Professor of International Maritime Law at the US Naval War College James Kraska points to the 50 minerals contained in continental shelf area surrounding the United States, including lithium and tellurium, and 16 rare earth elements. Lithium is deemed strategic as regards both producing electric car batteries and the entire IT industry. Besides, as various researchers have asserted, the Arctic is rich in oil and gas, with its shelf potential not exactly studied and therefore considered a nearly inexhaustible energy storehouse.
Chair of the Federation Council’s Committee on Foreign Affairs Grigory Karasin told RIA Novosti that Russia has been taking all the necessary moves to safeguard its national interests in the Arctic. "We have taken and will continue to take all measures that are necessary for our national interests in this geographical area," the senator said. He called statements by the State Department utterly worthless and serving yet another manifestation of the United States’ aggressive nature for over 200 years now.
