After fifteen years of intensive effort, the nations of the world, with full participation by the United States, produced a comprehensive Convention on the Law of the Sea. In 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States would not become a party to the Convention. But formal abstention from the Convention is hardly a complete national oceans policy for the United States. Indeed, that abstention compels the United States to attend carefully to its posture, in law and policy, toward the Convention itself and to each of its many provisions on matters of major interest to the United States.