Issue linkage in the Law of the Sea

Haas (1980) writes, when considering the difference between regime construction around money and around the Law of the Sea (LOS) that

The LOS negotiations... constituted a case of 'premature' issue-packaging. The package was the result of a negotiating strategy adopted by the weak - first in UNCTAD and later in all international economic forums. ... Ocean-related resources constitute a very heterogeneous group of concerns, united only by the fact that they are situated on or under the water. 

[Ernst Haas, "Why Collaborate?: Issue Linkage and International Regimes," World Politics, v. 2, n.3 (Apr. 1980)]

This is actually wrong - I mean, really wrong. It's true that LOS issues - which included everything from deep-sea mining rights to fishing rights to rights of passage to pollution - seem very heterogeneous at first glance. But they're all inextricably interlocked because they were all seen as having bearing on the issue of expanding territoriality. There was an increasing trend toward nations with coastlines claiming ever-expanding sections of the adjacent seas, and ever-expanding rights over it. A lot of the LOS negotiations were driven by the desire by some states to get this trend under control and set stable limits on it.

This is precisely why some of the early compromise plans - which tried compromising on allowing partial or specific rights over expanded coastal ocean areas but stopped short of giving territorial control over them - didn't satisfy people. Partial or specific rights were seen as stepping-stones to real or de facto territorial claims. ("Why, Mr. President, I just have to have my war fleet patrol these seas and hassle your nation's ships! It's to protect my seabed mining rights! You wouldn't want me to allow manganese poaching, would you?") Therefore, you couldn't satisfy states that were worried about territorial claims creep without negotiating all these things together and settling them as a package.

Haas seems to be suggesting that when issues were added, they were added not because they were a natural part of the bundle of issues but because states decided to add them strategically, to get leverage on something. That's not so - there were issues added, but largely, I think, because they were previously unrecognized issues that fit naturally into the existing bundle but which states only became aware of part-way through.

This is not to say there was nothing strategic going on - there was. But what was going on was the recognition and intentional exploitation of useful pre-existing reciprocalities in desires within sets of issues that did naturally go together - not the random addition of "stuff that has to do with the sea" in order to change the playing field.