By Peter Hannaford on 12.5.07 @ 12:07AM
Ronald Reagan rejected the Law of the Sea treaty as far back as 1978. So should the U.S. Senate today.
Ronald Reagan thought a "law of the sea" treaty was a bad idea
in 1978. As a private citizen, he devoted one of his daily radio
commentaries to it. Four years later, as president, he refused to
sign off on it because, in effect, it would have put sovereignty
over more than 40 percent of the Earth's surface in the hands of an
international body, accountable to no one.
As Third World countries gained the majority in the United
Nations General Assembly, the notion of controlling the world's
seabed took flight, so to speak. Let the industrialized nations use
their know-how and resources to mine trillions of tons of minerals
on the world's seabeds, with half the proceeds going to a new
international organization which could, in turn, distribute the
money to all its members. Voila! they thought: instant
redistribution.
Reagan thought otherwise and the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST)
languished until 1994 when amendments were made with the intention
to make it more palatable to the United States. Now, by 2007, 154
countries have joined LOST. Advocates for it claim we are
"isolating" ourselves by not signing on to LOST. That's the same
argument that was used for the Bush Administration's refusal to
sign on to the deeply flawed Kyoto treaty.
The Bush Administration now supports LOST, partly because the
Navy likes the fact it sets up a legal framework for navigational
rights. Oil and gas interests like its provision for creating
"exclusive enterprise zones" 200 miles out from U.S. shores.
Despite these attractions, there are plenty of detractions. The
size of the treaty is one of them. The LOST has 320 articles and
nine annexes. Many of them are objectionable, such as Article 20,
which requires that submarines operating in anyone's territorial
waters must do so on the surface, showing a flag. How will this
affect our intelligence-gathering by submarine? Similarly, the
treaty could sharply affect the Navy's use of its sophisticated
Sonar equipment.
Article 213 could have the effect of enforcing Kyoto standards
on the U.S. It states that participating states, "shall adopt laws
and regulations and take other measures necessary to implement
applicable international rules and standards applied through
competent international organizations."
Perhaps the most odious feature of LOST is one that motivated it
in the first place, 30 years ago: taxation. Article 12 contains a
number of "production" charges, as well as an annual million-dollar
"administrative" fee. This fee will go to the International Seabed
Authority, a body created by LOST to administer it. One does not
have to be clairvoyant to see that this stew of fees can easily
lead to the kind of skimming, bribery and corruption that has
afflicted the United Nations.
Last month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to
approve LOST. It is now on the Senate floor for an "up" or "down"
vote. The Senate should vote "down" and let LOST slip beneath the
waves of history -- permanently.
topics:
Law, United Nations, Oil
