That was sort of my point. The design of the STL had nothing to do with avoiding or encouraging exception specifications.
Such sweeping statements clearly demonstrate vast experience and knowledge.
The issue, as cpjust has said, is that, in C++, developers often assume that exception specifications behave in a different manner from what they actually do. Which means that developers need to better understand what exception specifications in C++ mean, or that the standard needs to be modified to comply with programmer expectations.