Peter:
> But to expand the
> thing from the terr. waters to EEZ's is really expanding the notion
> in order to feel more at ease, at the expense of pouring even more
> water into the sovereign wine.
The flip side is that we shouldn't make ourselves uneasy in order to
hang on to a maritime/terrestrial analogy that's far from perfect.
And there are certainly significant aspects of sovereignty embedded
in the EEZ's concept of an "exclusive right to explore and exploit
the sea-bed and water column".
I didn't make it clear in my original posting, but I didn't pick the
EEZ just because it made for a pretty map that suited my
preconceptions (though that's always good :-) ). I think the EEZ is
the size it is because it acknowledges the practical limits to any
nation's ability to explore and exploit on the high seas. So the EEZ
much more reflects the *scale* of national enterprise and
communication, whereas the 12nm limit is a mere decorative fringe to
the continents. So I'm suggesting we draw an edge to "sovereignty" at
the point where it fades to be indistiguishable from background noise
(200nm), rather than at the rather arbitrary point at which weakens
for the second or third time (12nm).
This policy is supported by the fact that archipelago nations in the
Pacific tend to coalesce naturally at the 200nm level, while islands
we think of as "isolated", like those in the Southern Ocean, stay
isolated even on that scale. (Not perfect, I know, and with many
exceptions, but the split works better than it does with the 12nm
rule.)
Grant