The American Spectator

p> SEA CRAGS br> Re: Doug Bandow’s An Administration LOST at Sea : /p>

Doug Bandow’s lengthy screed defies point-by-point rebuttal in a brief letter, and so I’ll highlight an important omission. In a 6/28/07 letter to Sen. Lugar — whose Foreign Relations Committee voted 19-0 in favor of U.S. accession in the last Congress (well, OK, that makes two omissions) — former Secretary of State George Shultz supports accession, and he also sets the record straight on the position of the sainted Ronald Reagan, whose 1982 refusal to sign is often trotted out by the dwindling band of sneering treaty opponents as emblematic of conservative orthodoxy on this issue. Said Shultz: “It surprises me to learn that opponents of the treaty are invoking President’s Reagan’s name….During his administration, with full clearance and support from President Reagan, we made it very clear that we would support ratification if our position on the sea-bed issue were accepted.”

I suppose Bandow will argue about what “our position” is, was, or should be (although I’m inclined to go with Shultz). But he reveals much when he refers to the current Part XI as “redistributionist.” If some form of sharing in resources beyond national jurisdiction be “redistribution,” then he must also believe that such oceanic resources belong exclusively to those with the power and technology to snatch them first. Well, I guess it’s a position.

As general counsel of NOAA, (and a former Alternate U.S. Rep to UNCLOS), I participated in the 1982 decision not to sign the unamended text. I (and the Secretary of Commerce for whom I worked) were criticized at the time for favoring efforts to rewrite Part XI, on the oft-stated grounds that the treaty was simply “unsalvageable” (Bandow’s word). The ensuing 12 years showed that the nay-sayers were wrong, but they will never say die and admit error, and they therefore applaud politically noisy treaty opponents who spread outrageous misstatements about the I>text of the treaty, on the web and elsewhere.

p>Sincerely, br> — Robert J. McManus br> Kile Goekjian Reed & McManus, pllc br> Washington, D.C. /p>