Bottom-of-the-sea treaty

(Washington, D.C.): Below is an important editorial from the 29 March 2004 edition of the Wall Street Journal outlining many of the ways in which the Law of the Sea Treaty is inimical to American interests.

The Law of the Sea treaty, deep-sixed long ago by the Reagan Administration, has resurfaced and is now steaming toward a ratification vote on the Senate floor. If it gets there, we hope that body will send it back to the bottom.

Launched by the United Nations in 1982, the Law of the Sea Convention was a grand scheme to create “an oceanic Great Society,” we said at the time. The pact is designed to place fishing rights, deep-sea mining, global pollution and more under the control of a new global bureaucracy, with disputes adjudicated by a new world court. Twenty years ago the U.S. objections centered on the seabed mining provisions, which were aimed at making sure the Third World got its “fair” share rather than ensuring a free market. President Reagan decided the U.S. didn’t need to be part of this global resource-grab.

Today treaty proponents argue that the Reagan objections have been fixed. The first Bush and Clinton Administrations negotiated modifications, and President Clinton signed a revised agreement in 1994. It’s been ratified by 145 nations, with the U.S. one of the few holdouts.

But the treaty’s central flaw remains unfixable: It is not in the best interests of the U.S. to have its maritime activities — military or economic — subject to the control of a highly politicized U.N. bureaucracy. That was a bad idea in 1982 and it’s even worse today, as we fight the war on terror. It’s also a terrible precedent, especially as we do more in space.

The Navy and U.S. shipping industry support the Law of the Sea because it codifies traditional navigational rights such as the right of passage through international straits. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vern Clark, has repeatedly expressed his strong support, as has virtually every former CNO. But navigational rights already exist in the form of “customary” law, which has evolved over three centuries into universally recognized rules of the maritime road. If this system somehow broke down, the world’s pre-eminent naval power shouldn’t have trouble enforcing it. In any case, interpretation is better left to the U.S. than to a supra-national legal body.

In the Senate, the Law of the Sea’s biggest booster is Richard Lugar, who pushed it through his Foreign Relations Committee in February after a hearing last year at which only supporters were invited to testify. This galvanized the opposition, and now other Senators are beginning to pay attention. The Environment and Public Works Committee held a more balanced hearing last week, and the Armed Services Committee is expected to hold one soon. The Defense Department has been asked to send someone to testify but is having a hard time finding anyone who wants to go on the record as supporting it.

The Bush Administration has painted itself into a corner on this one. After allowing itself to be led by the State Department, the Navy and environmentalists into backing the treaty, the White House is finding it hard to back down. After Iraq — and after rejecting the ABM Treaty and Kyoto — the last thing it wants is a public fight over an American boycott of another international treaty. A senior Administration official told us Friday that “the Administration fully supports the treaty.”

The solution that seems to be emerging is for Majority Leader Bill Frist to conclude that there’s no room on the tight Senate calendar to bring up the treaty this year. If President Bush won’t follow Mr. Reagan’s example and sink the pact, we hope he’ll at least let Mr. Frist maroon it.