LOST Trade Routes

There is never a good time to deny the United States Navy maximum capability to defend American interests, but now is a particularly bad time. Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons and China’s continuing escalation of its military buildup will have significant implications for key trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz (through which 20% of all globally traded oil passes) and the South China Sea (through which 50% of goods transported between continents by ship passes). We will need our Navy to deter or challenge Iran and China if necessary, to keep those waterways stable and thereby fend off further damage to the global economy. With the Navy already taking a serious hit to its abilities thanks to the Obama administration’s FY 2013 defense budget proposal, the last thing we need is a mechanism that compounds the damage to that force’s effectiveness. But that is what we would be getting with ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (aka Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST), a topic that 66 Members of the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Jeff Flake (Arizona-6^th District) and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio-4^th District), recently sought to address.