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Sunken Efforts? Legal Hurdles To Stemming Maritime Cbrne Proliferation, Arjun Banerjee

International Journal of Nuclear Security

For four centuries, the law of the sea has rested on the principle of mare liberum or the freedom of the high seas. The oceans have traditionally been regarded as areas over which no state could claim dominion or sovereignty. Nations desirous of countering security threats have found that their efforts are curtailed by the traditional paradigm, partly because of the resistance from other states to permit further derogation. Several extant laws aim to contain the spread of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) material through a variety of measures. Certain bilateral agreements between nations exist, but the foreign vessel …