“Law of the Sea” would profoundly impact U.S. sovereignty

By Marilyn M. Brannan, Associate Editor

Unravelling The New World Order

May 24, 2004

The people who want to destroy American sovereignty and replace it with global governance never let up. Their strategy for achieving their one-world goal is to work toward it by increments, through United Nations treaties.

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum reminds us that President George W. Bush saved us from two treaties that would have drastically undercut our American sovereignty. He withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty (signed by Richard Nixon) that prevented the United States from defending our cities against incoming nuclear missiles. Then he “unsigned” the International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty (signed by Bill Clinton) that would have subjected U.S. troops to political prosecution in a foreign court.

Now, Schlafly says, we need President Bush to “unsign” another dangerous UN treaty that would massively invade American sovereignty:  the UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

The Heritage Foundation offers some solemn warnings about LOST, as well.  According to a Press Release from The Heritage Foundation in April of this year, “The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea will be the first international organization with the ability to levy taxes upon the U.S. while also engaging in economic activity on its own account. Becoming party to such a treaty would have a profound impact on America's sovereign rights, national security, and economic interests. Before consenting to ratify the convention, the Senate must address such critical issues as what authorities should the treaty's institutions be granted, and to what extent will the treaty interfere with U.S. military operations.”

Overview

The Law of the Sea Treaty was conceived in 1982 by the United Nations as a means for governing activities on, over, and beneath the ocean's surface. It focuses mainly on navigational and transit issues, but also includes sections regarding marine trade, pollution, research, and dispute resolution.

The main “sticking points” in the view of critics of the Treaty are in the provisions on regulation of deep-sea mining and the redistribution of wealth to underdeveloped countries.

-- The LOST cedes sovereign control over practically all the mineral wealth at the bottom of the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority. Its one-nation, one-vote governing setup virtually assures control by Third World countries, while the United States would be expected to pay all the technology and investment costs to bring the sea's minerals to the surface.

-- The Treaty gives the International Seabed Authority the power to set production controls for ocean mining over more than three-fourths of the earth's surface, to control ocean exploration through permits and regulations, and to adjudicate disputes. Worse yet, the Seabed Authority claims direct global taxing power and is touted as a model for other resource-related treaties that aspire to levy taxes.

-- The LOST would compel the United States to pay billions of private-enterprise dollars to an international authority, while other nations—many of them socialist and anti-American—harvest the profits. Its international control and regulations would deny U.S. companies’ access to strategic minerals that we need for industry and military defense

Additionally, the International Seabed Authority under this treaty can impose rigid production ceilings so the United States could never become self-sufficient with respect to strategic materials.

We’ve Been Down This Road Before

During Jimmy Carter’s term, his administration agitated for passage of LOST, but alert Republicans condemned the Treaty in the 1980 Republican Party Platform.  Their concern was the adverse effect it would have on American access to raw materials and energy resources.

In 1981, LOST was examined and emphatically rejected by President Reagan.  He discovered the Treaty was due for signing right after his inauguration, and he repudiated the Treaty and fired the U.S. State Department staff that had negotiated it.

President Clinton signed the Treaty in 1994, but the Senate did not ratify it.

Now, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) is pressing to get the Senate to ratify the LOST. Such a giant giveaway of U.S. power can't be publicly defended; so Lugar held a quiet hearing at which only LOST proponents were permitted to testify, and he has refused to allow other relevant Senate committees to hold their own hearings.

Lugar managed to get the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to unanimously vote LOST out of committee in March of this year. The next step is to present the Treaty to the Senate for ratification.

President Reagan’s Objections

Several of former President Reagan’s original objections to the Treaty—which has since been modified—still hold true.

His first objection to the Treaty was the Principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” which dictates that oceanic resources should be shared among all nations and that they cannot be claimed by any one nation or people. In order to achieve this goal, the Treaty creates the International Seabed Authority to regulate and exploit mineral resources. It requires a company to submit an application fee of $250,000 (down from $500,000 originally), an annual fee of $1 million, and a percentage of its profits (increasing annually up to 7%).  

Technology sharing is not mandatory, as was the case originally; however, there are “principles” that guide its use and distribution. The decision to grant or to withhold mining permits is decided by the Seabed Authority, which consists disproportionately of underdeveloped countries.

Another of Reagan’s objections—still valid today—is that the treaty’s mandatory dispute resolution restricts autonomy. Either a UN court or tribunal must mandate maritime issues involving fisheries, marine environmental protection, and preservation, research, and navigation. Reagan believed, and we agree, that submitting to external jurisdiction creates a dangerous precedent.

Furthermore, external jurisdiction over such a wide range of issues weakens the U.S. argument of autonomy when it refuses to submit to the International Criminal Court.

National Security Issues

The LOST establishes a 12-mile territorial sea limit and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), creating a definitive limit on the oceanic area over which a country may claim jurisdiction.

Innocent passage, including non-wartime activities of military ships, is protected.  Even in the absence of this treaty, however, these boundaries and the precedent of safe passage are protected under multiple independent treaties and under traditional international maritime law. In view of the United States' naval superiority, few countries would attempt to deny safe passage. However, under the Treaty, intelligence gathering and submarine maneuvers in territorial waters would be restricted and regulated.

Environmental and Economic Issues

Former President Reagan refused to sign the Treaty in 1982 because of its innate conflict with basic free-market principles such as private property, free enterprise, and competition. Twelve years later, the Clinton Administration submitted to the U.S. Senate a revised version of the Treaty. This revised version allegedly corrected many of the original objections to the Treaty, but it still failed to get Senate ratification. Therefore, the United States' provisional participation expired in 1998.

The Treaty still requires adherence to policies that regulate deep-sea mining and force participants to adopt laws and regulations to control and prevent marine pollution. Further, a corporation cannot bring suit under the Treaty, but must rely upon its country of origin to address the corporation's concerns before the UN agency.

A Giant Sellout of U.S. Sovereignty

The LOST would be a sellout of American interests even greater than Jimmy Carter's giveaway of the Panama Canal. It would be a cave-in to the world-government advocates who want to integrate American prosperity with Third World poverty in the great leveling-out process known as socialist world control.  As Dr. Larry Bates frequently reminds us, the goal of the socialists is to level us all out and make us equal—equally poor.

The United States is a giant island of freedom, achievement, and prosperity in a world that is increasingly hostile to our values. We have almost everything we need to maintain our safety and economy, but we lack some items that are essential to us, both in time of war and in peacetime.  We must protect our access to the resources needed to maintain our economy, our capacity to defend ourselves, and the ability of our ships and submarines to gather intelligence necessary for our national defense. Urge your U.S. Senators to vote No on LOST.

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Sources:

Carrie E. Donovan, “The Law Of the Sea Treaty,” Heritage Foundation, Just the Facts, No. 4, April 2, 2004

Phyllis Schlafly, “We Should Drown Law Of The Sea,” Eagle Forum, March 17, 2004.

The Heritage Foundation, “The Law Of the Sea Treaty: Myth and Reality,” Press Release, April 2004.