Originally Posted by
A_Van
You are omitting a well-known issue concerning prior notification. As there is nothing said clearly about this in the Convention, many countries in the world interpret in different ways. E.g., some UK Scandinavian neighbours require prior notification for warships:
Uncharted Waters: Non-innocent Passage of Warships in the Territorial Sea (sandiego.edu) page 641
AFAIK, a good friend of the US and UK, Saidi Arabia, clearly rejects any kind of innocent passage of warships.
I am sure that if the UK authorities "concerned with the issue" would behave as gentlemen and request such a passage, they would get "go ahead" no problem.
Another obvious point is "Ukrainian waters". Of course if anybody considers these waters as Ukrainian, it's their choice, but then get ready for tough attitude.
Imagine that a Russian sub appears near Falklands and "say" that "Argentinian government allows us to sail near Islas Malvinas". What would happen?
See that’s where your going wrong. It isn’t about any one country saying this belongs to me. Unless the international community recognise, and it falls within international law then it doesn’t exist.
Russian can scream to the heavens that it is their water, but nobody in the international community recognise it as such. Same with the falklands. Argentina can talk as much as they want but the falklands are internationally recognised as UK territory.
It’s the same with the Chinese and their home built islands in the South China Sea.