U.S. Sovereignty Threatened by U.N. Treaty, Critics Charge

ARRA Comment: President Ronald Reagan was against this treaty and understood that it would reduce American sovereignty. Now President George W. Bush appears to support this treaty. What is wrong with this picture - or with "conservatives" today? Why would a president subject the US Navy - the most powerful Navy in the world - to control by the UN? Examples listed in article.
by Chris Gonsalves: The U.S. is poised to turn much of its authority on the high seas over to international arbiters by ratifying a long-controversial United Nations sea treaty. Approval of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a 25-year-old international treaty regulating use of the world's oceans, is steaming full speed ahead in the Senate, where committee hearings are set to begin Sept. 27. The full Senate is likely to ratify the treaty -- which would link U.S. naval actions to those of 155 other member nations -- by year's end. For decades, critics have derided the 182-page Law of the Sea pact as a threat to U.S. sovereignty and naval independence.

“This is nothing less than a raid on our sovereignty,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). “I objected to it when it resurfaced in 2004, and I object to it now as I see it sneaking up on us again. What is this obsession we have for surrendering our jurisdiction to this international body? Nobody can give me a reasonable answer.” Despite those concerns, however, support for the measure has never been stronger. The treaty has garnered a letter of support from President Bush, favorable testimony from the Navy and Coast Guard, and the backing of at least a dozen oil, gas, and environmental groups . . .

The most controversial provisions are expected to relate to military sea travel. For example, UNCLOS places tight restrictions on how ships must exercise their right to “innocent passage” in territorial waters, most notably requiring certain submarines and unmanned vehicles to operate on the surface and show their nation’s colors. Opponents say the restrictions would jeopardize U.S. counterterrorism efforts by limiting the boarding of vessels to only those suspected of drug trafficking, piracy, slave trading, and illegal radio broadcasting. They fear provisions stating that “the high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes” and that signatories must refrain from “any threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” could be used to thwart U.S. naval operations. “If we had info that some terrorist threat was heading our way on a ship, we would be restricted in what we could do in terms of search and seizure,” says Inhofe. “We would have to go through this international body to do that.” David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy in Washington, D.C., said: “The treaty could complicate our efforts to apprehend terrorists or ships our intelligence believes are carrying WMDs by subjecting our actions to review by an international tribunal, a body that is unlikely to be favorable to the United States.”

George Mason University law professor Jeremy Rabkin . . . cites several historical examples of U.S. naval actions that he suggests would be compromised by the Law of the Sea treaty . . .:
- The October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when President Kennedy ordered the Navy to blockade vessels coming in and out of Cuba.
- The U.S. response to the 1975 Cambodian seizure of the American vessel USS Mayaguez. President Ford declared the seizure an act of piracy and dispatched Marines to force the ship's release.
- In the 1980s, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi demanded that foreign vessels obtain his permission before entering the 300-mile-wide Gulf of Sidra. Reagan directed that a carrier task force enter the waters in 1986. Two Libyan patrol boats tried to resist, and were destroyed. . . . [Read More]

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