不得不说这是超级大国才能干的事情。
How the U.S. Gamed the System
Here is where it gets legally creative. The United States has never ratified UNCLOS, the 1982 treaty that established the ECS rules. The Senate has considered the treaty multiple times since 1994 but never given its advice and consent. A detailed Congressional Research Service report from January 2026 outlines the full history.
Despite that, the U.S. spent nearly two decades and more than 100 million dollars collecting geological data to define its ECS limits using the exact formulas laid out in the treaty. Then, in December 2023, the State Department simply announced those coordinates without submitting them to the UN commission for review, as treaty members must do.
“It was a very unconventional and surprising move,” Rebecca Pincus, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center, told Radio Free Europe. “The U.S. has claimed a million square kilometers of territory, which is great, but we have done so in a way that raises some questions about international law.”
The advantage is clear. Treaty members who mine their ECS must pay royalties to the International Seabed Authority. The United States, as a non-party, does not. “Apparently America can have its cake and eat it, too,” The Atlantic wrote in January 2025.
“This erodes credibility of an international system the West has worked tirelessly to achieve, promote, and protect,” Elizabeth Buchanan, an expert on polar geopolitics with the Modern War Institute at West Point, told RFE/RL.
