However, when countries perceive their vital national interests to be at stake—Great Britain in World War I and Iran during its war with Iraq in the 1980s, for instance—they rarely allow juridical niceties to stop them from interdicting or destroying international commerce. In a crisis, most maritime nations are ready to sacrifice abstract legal norms in pursuit of important policy goals. Indeed, LOST membership has not pre- vented Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, North Korea, Pakistan, and others from making ocean claims deemed by others to be exces- sive—and, thus, illegitimate—under the treaty. In testimony last October, Admiral Mullen warned that the benefits he believed were derived from treaty ratification did not “sug- gest that countries’ attempts to restrict navigation will cease once the United States becomes a party to the Law of the Sea Convention.”55