US Secretary of State in the context of "Joseph Nye"

65°30′00″N 168°58′37″W / 65.50000°N 168.97694°W / 65.50000; -168.97694

The Russia–United States maritime boundary was established by the June 1, 1990 USA/USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement (Russian: Соглашение между СССР и США о линии разграничения морских пространств). The United States Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification as early as on September 16, 1991, but it has yet to be approved by the Russian State Duma. This delimitation line is also known as the Baker-Shevardnadze line agreement (Russian: Соглашении о Линии Шеварднадзе-Бейкера), after the officials who signed the deal, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker. The 1990 Agreement has been provisionally applied by the two countries since its date of signature. (The Russian Federation is the successor of the USSR with respect to the 1990 Agreement and the agreement to provisionally apply it.)

The Welles Declaration was a diplomatic statement issued on July 23, 1940, by Sumner Welles, the acting US Secretary of State, condemning the June 1940 occupation by the Soviet army of the three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – and refusing to diplomatically recognize their subsequent annexation into the Soviet Union. It was an application of the 1932 Stimson Doctrine of nonrecognition of international territorial changes that were executed by force and was consistent with US President Franklin Roosevelt's attitude towards violent territorial expansion.

The 1940 Soviet invasion was an implementation of its 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, which contained a secret protocol by which Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR agreed to partition the independent nations between them. After the pact, the Soviets engaged in a series of ultimatums and actions ending in the annexation of the Baltic states during the summer of 1940. The area held little strategic importance to the United States, but several legations of the US State Department had established diplomatic relationships there. The United States and the United Kingdom anticipated future involvement in the war, but US non-interventionism and a foreseeable British–Soviet alliance deterred open confrontation over the Baltic states.