Law of the Sea Up for Vote Soon

Top Five Reasons to Oppose the Law of the Sea
1. The treaty will undermine U.S. Sovereignty
2. The Treaty will become a back dloor for environmental activitists.
3. America should not participate in yet another U.N. Bureaucracy.
4. American participation will undermine U.S. military and intelligence operations.
5. The U.S. does not need the convention to guarantee navigation rights.

The Law of the Sea will give the U.N. the power to raise funds through a de facto international tax.

Sea Sickness in the Senate

LOST would create an International Seabed Authority (ISA) with the power to regulate and tax things like seabed mining, fishing rights and deep-sea oil exploration. The ISA would decide who gets access to the sea's resources, and the companies granted these rights would pay a royalty to the ISA. When he refused to sign ISA in 1982, President Reagan rightly decided the U.S. shouldn't be a part of this global resource grab and redistribution of wealth.

It's in the area of national security that LOST is most dangerous. The administration cites military support for the treaty because of its uniform limit on territorial waters and its establishment of "rules of the road" for littoral waters. But current international law already protects nonaggressive passage of military ships.
When Reagan vetoed the treaty, the U.S. Navy had 594 warships. We could protect our own right of passage. Today the fleet has withered to 276 vessels. Is that why we need the treaty?

The answer is to build more warships. Our access to the seas should be guaranteed by the Navy and not a U.N. bureaucracy.

Rubber Stamp by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

Come Thursday, the future of the United States Senate will begin to take shape. On that day, the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee will begin the first of two days of hearings on the ratification of one of the most momentous international agreements in memory: the United Nation’s Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

If all goes according to the proponents’ plan, few Senators will have any idea what LOST entails before they are asked to vote for it. The working assumption is that many legislators will be inclined to do in this case what the Senate has done too often in the past with respect to arms control and many other, complex multinational accords: fail to read the text; forego serious deliberation, let alone debate, about it; and rubber-stamp its approval in a matter of days, if not hours.

At the moment, the Treaty’s supporters expect to secure far more than the needed two-thirds vote required by the Framers. Senators are encouraged not to spend precious time worrying about an accord that the United States Navy strenuously supports, the Bush Administration wants promptly ratified, various mining and energy interests and environmental groups (however implausibly) agree is desirable and the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a couple of years ago.

There will be a special irony, however, if Senators fall prey to this seduction and fail in the weeks ahead rigorously to perform their constitutional responsibility for quality control over treaties: Should they superficially consider, and then consent to, ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, they will be accelerating dramatically the permanent erosion of their own authority – and that of the Congress more generally.

The reason? LOST was designed three decades ago by the Soviet Union and its so-called “non-aligned” allies to foster supranational entities at the expense of nation states, particularly those with representative governments. The Senate of the United States would be as irrelevant to that sort of world order as national parliaments in Europe have already become, thanks to the transfer of virtually all rule-making authority to the European Union’s bureaucrats in Brussels.

The piece of the world in question starts with its oceans, which the Treaty calls an “international commons” and part of “the common heritage of mankind.” The immediate focus of the socialist, redistributionist agenda shared by many of LOST’s principal architects is evident in the mandate given to the organization charged with exercising control over the seas and the resources that lie beneath them. It entails, among other things, ensuring the just and equitable dispersal of the wealth of the seabeds to the world’s developing and land-locked nations.

To accomplish these lofty goals, the Treaty creates entities with all the trappings of a government – an executive, a legislature and a judiciary. Unlike our constitutional republic, however, such institutions are run by the unelected and the unaccountable. This is all the more worrying insofar as the Treaty reposes in one or more of these institutions the authority to: make binding and un-appealable decisions in case of disputes; levy what amount to international taxes; and “protect the marine environment,” a license to engage in unprecedented, sweeping world-wide regulation.

Make no mistake, though. The seas are only the starting point. For one thing, the internal waters and even land masses are claimed as within the jurisdiction of LOST agencies since what emerges from them in the air and water inevitably affects the “marine environment.”

In addition, the UN and its anti-American majorities are keen to establish similar arrangements with respect to other so-called “international commons,” such as Outer Space and the Internet. They seek to institutionalize “self-financing” arrangements (read, international taxes) that will allow supranational organizations to become even less transparent and accountable. They are determined to impose rule-making authority over national governments, including U.S. Senators.

Attributes of the Law of the Sea Treaty such as these prompted Ronald Reagan to oppose its ratification in the 1970s. After he became President, he officially repudiated all but its acceptable navigation provisions (which the U.S. has voluntarily observed ever since). While the Treaty’s proponents profess that President Clinton’s administration “fixed” what Mr. Reagan found objectionable, rigorous congressional scrutiny would confirm the views of such Reaganauts as Attorney General Ed Meese, National Security Advisor Bill Clark, the recently departed Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and LOST negotiator James Malone: This treaty remains irremediably defective.

Starting with Thursday’s GOP presidential candidates debate at American University, those who would occupy the White House next should be asked: Do they stand with President Reagan on the Law of the Sea Treaty, or with President Clinton?

Meanwhile, given the potential for LOST’s arbitral panels and regulatory bodies to infringe massively upon the prerogatives of the Congress – to say nothing of the constitutional rights of millions of Americans – it would seem only natural for myriad Senate (and, fort that matter, House) committees to want to hold their own hearings about this accord. Toward this end, the new, informal Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty has written the Congress’ armed services, intelligence, energy, finance, homeland security, judiciary and environment committees laying out aspects of the Treaty with direct relevance to their respective areas of jurisdiction. (To see these letters, visit www.RejectLOST.org.)

If Senators wish to avoid a fiasco that would make immigration “reform” look like a day at, well, the beach, they better do their job on LOST – or risk losing their jobs.

Opposing Opinion: Why the 'Law of the Sea' Is a Good Deal

The Convention of the Law of the Sea is back. It will be the subject of Senate hearings this week. If the U.S. finally becomes party to this treaty, it will be a boon for our national security and our economic interests. U.S. accession will codify our maritime rights and give us new tools to advance national interests.

The convention's primary functions are to define maritime zones, preserve freedom of navigation, allocate resource rights, establish certainty necessary for various businesses that depend on the sea and protect the marine environment. Flaws in the deep-seabed mining chapter that prevented President Reagan from supporting the convention were fixed in 1994. Both President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have supported accession. Yet, the U.S. remains one of the few major countries not party to the convention.

Our participation would increase our ability to wage the war on terror. The convention assures maximum maritime naval and air mobility, which is essential for our military forces to operate effectively. It provides the stability and framework for our forces, weapons and materials to be deployed without hindrance -- ensuring our ability to navigate past critical choke points throughout the world.

Some say it's good enough to protect our navigational interests through customary law. If that approach fails, then we can employ the threat of force or the use of it. However, because customary law is vague, it does not provide a strong foundation for critical national security rights. Meanwhile, the use of force can be risky and costly. Joining the convention would put our vital rights on a firmer legal basis, gaining legal certainty and legitimacy as we operate in the world's largest international zone.

This is why the U.S. military has been a strong advocate of joining the Law of the Sea Convention. This point was reinforced in a recent letter sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calling on the Senate to support U.S. accession because "[i]t furthers our National Security Strategy, strengthens the coalition, and supports the President's Proliferation Security Initiative."

The convention also provides substantial economic benefits to the United States. It accords coastal states the right to declare an Exclusive Economic Zone -- an area where they have exclusive rights to explore and exploit, and the responsibility to conserve and manage, living and non-living resources extending 200 nautical miles seaward from their shoreline. Our nation's EEZ is larger than that of any country in the world -- covering an area greater than the landmass of the lower 48 states. This zone can be extended beyond 200 nautical miles if certain geological criteria are met. This has potentially significant economic benefits to the U.S. where its continental shelves may be as broad as 600 miles, such as off Alaska, an area containing vast natural resources.

Further, as the world's pre-eminent maritime power with one of the longest coastlines, the U.S. has more to gain and to lose than any other country in terms of how the convention's terms are interpreted and applied.

Accession would increase our influence by allowing us to nominate experts for the technical bodies that apply the convention's terms, address proposals to amend the convention from within (rather than from the sidelines), and increase our credibility as a leader in international ocean policy.

As we speak, international deliberations for rights to energy- and mineral-rich areas in the Arctic beyond the traditional 200-mile EEZ are proceeding without U.S. input. Just recently, Russia placed its flag on the North Pole's ocean floor. While seen as largely symbolic, the part of the Arctic Ocean claimed by Russia could hold oil and gas deposits equal to about 20% of the world's current oil and gas reserves. If the U.S. was party to the treaty, we would strengthen our capacity to influence deliberations and negotiations involving other nations' attempts to extend their continental boundaries.

As a non-party, however, the U.S. has limited options for disputing claims such as these and is stymied from taking full advantage of resources that could be under U.S. jurisdiction. Similarly, lack of participation in the convention is jeopardizing economic opportunities associated with commercial deep-sea mining operations in international waters beyond exclusive economic zones -- opportunities currently being pursued by Canadian, Australian and German firms.

The continuing delay of U.S. accession to the convention compromises our nation's authority to exercise its sovereign interests, jeopardizes its national and economic security, and limits its leadership role in international ocean policy.

Given President Bush's public statement of support for the convention, the support of prior presidents and their administrations and the strong, bipartisan and diverse support it has from all major U.S. ocean industries, the environmental community and national security experts, it is clearly time for the Senate to act by supporting accession to the Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Messrs. Baker and Shultz are former secretaries of state.

Read Law of Sea Travesty, interview with Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival, Inc. (www.usasurvival.org) to find out "why Reagan was right and President Bush is wrong about LOST.