In signing statements, US has explicitly declared right to determine venue for settling disputes involving military

From the outset the United States has insisted that a system of compulsory dispute settlement be a part of any comprehensive convention on the law of the sea.45 The US delegation, in the person of the late Louis Sohn, took the lead in the negotiating group that developed the final package, which became Part XV of the Convention and its related Annexes. It is incongruous that the flexible provisions of Part XV, worked out under the leadership of the United States, should now be the basis of objection to the Convention. The objectors suggest, without basis in fact, that the United States might be dragged against its will into the jurisdiction of the Law of the Sea Tribunal, particularly with respect to our military activities.46 They ignore the terms of the Convention that provide, with respect to compulsory procedures entailing binding decisions, an opportunity for States, upon signing, ratifying or acceding to the Convention, "or at any time thereafter," to choose the binding procedure it will accept from a menu of settlement mechanisms. 47 The United States has indicated that it will choose arbitration under Annexes VII and VIII upon ac- cession.48 Further, the criticism ignores the provisions of Article 298 that provide that State parties may exclude from the applicability of "any" of the compulsory procedures providing for binding decisions, interalia,"disputes concerning military activities." One of the declarations that will accompany any US accession to the Convention will state that its accession "is conditioned upon the understand- ing that, under article 298(l)(b), each State Party has the exclusive right to deter- mine whether its activities are or were 'military activities' and that such determinations are not subject to review."