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Oct
31
Action Alert: Contact Your Senator to Stop the Law of the Sea Treaty
Filed Under Conservative Side of the Story, International News
- Scott Miller
In an effort similar to this summer’s Amnesty plan, the Bush administration, a handful of RINOs, and Senate Democrats are going try to sneak through Senate ratification of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).
If your puzzled right now because you never heard of LOST before, your not alone. This treaty has been around for decades. Ronald Reagan refused to sign it. The Clinton administration tried to revive it, but met opposition in the Republican controlled Senate. Now for some inexplicable reason, the Bush adminstration wants to sign it.
So what’s the problem with LOST? I’ll recap the major problems with the treaty, and then link to some great articles that take you into the treaty more indepth. Lost would:
- establish a new U.N. controlled bearacracy with taxation power over all resources in the sea and beneath the sea bed… in essence a global tax going to the U.N.
- The United States will have to cede it’s sovereignty over sea bed claims, and a myriad of other maritime issues, to a U.N. organization which has historically been hostile to American interests
Giving up American sovereignty to a U.N. tribunal, and a global tax on Americans… how stupid can these politicans be?
John Fonte writing for NRO lays out the most cogent case against LOST:
Let us examine the details. Under UNCLOS, disputes between the United States and other parties are settled by “mandatory” (i.e., forced) arbitration. The final decisions are made either by a permanent International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg or by an ad-hoc court. The Hamburg tribunal consists of 21 judges chosen by member nations, many of them unfriendly to the United States. An ad-hoc court would consist of five judges, two chosen by the U.S., two chosen by the other party. The crucial fifth judge is chosen either by the secretary general of the United Nations or the Hamburg tribunal. The decisions are “final” and “binding” with no appeal.
International-law professor Jeremy Rabkin points out that when the Cambodian communists seized the USS Mayaguez in Cambodian waters in 1975, President Ford responded with military force to rescue American sailors and free the ship. He notes this type of action would be problematic under UNCLOS. For example, if a treaty signatory (e.g., China, Burma) seized a U.S. ship in its home waters, under the terms of Law of the Sea Treaty, the U.S. could not free her sailors by force, but would have to submit to mandatory arbitration by the Hamburg tribunal or an ad-hoc court, where the U.S. could very likely lose the case. In any event, vital decisions over American security and American lives would not be made by Americans, but by foreign judges, many of them unsympathetic to American interests (coming as they often do from third-world regimes or EU legal elites).
Retired (and therefore free to speak his mind) admiral James “Ace” Lyons (former Pacific Fleet commander) declared that it is was “inconceivable” why the “Senate would willingly want to forfeit its responsibility for America’s freedom of the seas to . . . [an] unaccountable international agency.” At the philosophical level, Admiral Lyons speaks for the “warrior ethic” that is currently battling with the “lawyer ethic” for the soul of Navy (and the other armed services).
Indeed, the essential arguments of treaty supporters are pure international lawyerese —we are told that UNCLOS will somehow “guarantee” our maritime rights. Meanwhile the State Department would have a seat at the table with 155 other nations in a “one nation–one vote” situation at the International Seabed Authority. We would have as much influence as we do in the U.N. General Assembly, where we are constantly outvoted.
The ultimate question of democratic politics is who “decides.” If LOST is ratified, the “deciders” will be foreign courts, not American elected leaders. At the deeper level, the battle over the Law of the Sea Treaty is another round in what promises to be a century-long conflict over the meaning of democratic decision-making between the forces of American self-government and the supporters of “global governance,” the so-called “transnational progressives.”
Then we have this from Newsmax:
U.N. Wants to Tax World with Sea Treaty
Among other provisions, UNCLOS would levy a tax on members’ undersea operations, requiring nations to pay up to 7 percent of their sea-mining revenues.
There are some 400 million barrels of oil and large untapped reserves of natural gas and crystallized methane in underwater areas claimed by the U.S., and the taxes levied by the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority (ISA) would soar into the billions of dollars, according to Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.
That kind of cash flow would make the U.N. less dependent on member dues, and less vulnerable to countries that withhold payment to protest U.N. actions.
“This is just one more bad thing to come out of the U.N.,” Inhofe declared. “They are desperate for a way to collect global taxes so they don’t have to answer to us every time they do something that’s bad.”
The U.S. currently pays 22 percent of the U.N.’s budget, the largest portion paid by any country. America contributes more than $440 million in regular dues, plus $1.1 billion for U.N. peacekeeping efforts and $480 million to U.N.-affiliated agencies such as the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
OK, so today LOST passed the Senate committee and is being sent to the floor of the full Senate for ratification. They need 67 votes to ratify the treaty, and the vote is scheduled for next Monday. The vote will be close. Conservatives need to call and email their Senators to oppose this deeply flawed treaty. Links to your Senators office below… call and email now (be polite please).
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[...] Scott Miller over at The Conservative Post offers a great explanation of what the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is and why you should oppose it. [...]