The Source Of Marine Enclosures Movement After World War Ⅱ: The Origins And Influence Of The Truman Proclamations

At the height of World War II in 1943,the fear of the oil shortage swept the Roosevelt Government, and at the same time, the threat from the overfishing behavior in the American offshore of other foreign countries and the intensification of fishery conflicts prompted president Roosevelt approved a proposal on the development of the United States’ continental shelf policy to ensure that the United States has the right to take possession of natural resources on the continental shelf by the interior minister Harold Ickes. And then, the new marine policy statement has drawn up through the concerted efforts of several departments of the State Department, Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice and so on, which made the proposal of the Truman Proclamations. The United States has consulted with more than 10 countries on the proclamation itself privately, but the new marine policy has not received much support as most of the countries did not show attitude, especially Britain’s attitude was quite cautious. Finally, under the pressure of domestic interest groups and with the great sea power and sea dominance establishment, the government of the United States issued the Truman Proclamations unilaterally in 1945 which announced that the United States enjoys the jurisdiction of natural resources of the subsoil and sea bed of the continental shelf and coastal fisheries in certain areas of the high seas.Although the United States has carefully chosen to express its requirements with limited and ambiguous wording and hope it does not undermine the principle of freedom of the sea. However, what was unexpected was that it directly induces the struggle for 200 marine rights of nautical mile by the Latin American countries, and promotes the seabed which originally belong to the high seas scrambled and preempted by many countries and the continues expanding of scope of the territorial waters of the countries. But, as the pioneer of this policy, the United States cannot stop other countries to expand the territorial jurisdiction, and the United States was reaping the consequences and has no way to prevent a further weakening of the principle of freedom of the seas. Therefore, the Truman Proclamations is not only a turning point in the marine policy of the United States, but also becomes the prelude of the postwar marine enclosure movement.