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jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
"Since the founding of the nation, the United States has asserted a vital
national interest in preserving the freedom of the seas and necessarily called
upon its military forces to preserve that interest. One of the first missions of a
young U.S. Navy was to protect the safe shipping of U.S. commercial vessels
through the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and adjoining seas, against
pirates and other maritime threats. Similarly, in President Woodrow Wilson's
famous Fourteen Points speech, he told Congress that one of the universal
principles for which the United States and other nations were fighting World
War I was "Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas." And three months
before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt
delivered one of his fireside chats to the American people, in which he declared,
"Upon our naval and air patrol ... falls the duty of maintaining the American
policy of freedom of the seas." As history shows, this U.S. national interest and
policy for preserving the freedom of the seas are long-standing in nature and
global in scope."