On eve of U.N. push for global government, advocates urge Senate to approve a building block: The Law of the Sea Treaty
Posted on 09/05/2005 8:59:17 AM PDT by Paul Ross
| Decision Brief | No. 05-D 44 | 2005-08-31 |
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On eve of U.N. push for global government, advocates urge Senate to approve a building block: The Law of the Sea Treaty
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(Washington, D.C.): As concern grows that the United Nations is intent on replacing what the National Security Guidance calls "an orderly arrangement of sovereign states" with a proto-world government - complete with the ability to impose international taxes, a new push is being made for a treaty that would advance that purpose: the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).
This sovereignty-sapping agenda is at the heart of a dispute now playing out in Turtle Bay, where U.S. Permanent Representative John Bolton is resisting an initiative pushed by governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who are hostile to the United States and/or champions of a supranational government. Amb. Bolton is being savaged by the latter for wisely seeking over 500 changes to a draft Outcome Document envisioned for signature by heads of state and government at a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly next month.
Yesterday, French President Jacques Chirac underscored his government's intention to push forward with one such tax - on international airline travel, both as a unilateral initiative and together with Germany, Spain, Algeria, Brazil and Chile at the UN meeting. According to the Associated Press, "French authorities said a tax of about $6 per passenger worldwide, with a $25 surcharge for business class, would generate about $12 billion a year. The contribution could be adjusted in poorer countries, so passengers there were not penalized."
The Establishment Strikes Back
It is against this unlikely backdrop, that a group of prominent former and present officials released today a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist urging him to facilitate the "expeditious" ratification of a treaty that would help establish precedents useful to opponents of the Bush Administration at the UN and elsewhere: the Law of the Sea (LOST).
Despite the highly generalized praise for LOST offered by its proponents in the letter dated 31 August, the Treaty is problematic in a number of respects. For example, its governing body would be empowered to impose what amount to international taxes on resources extracted from the ocean floor and subsurface. Parties to the accord, moreover, are compelled to submit to what will, inevitably, be politicized tribunals like the World Court, whose decisions are binding and unappealable. It contains sweeping environmental obligations that make those entailed in the Kyoto accords pale by comparison - especially insofar as the Law of the Sea Tribunal has established that it believes its jurisdiction extends to activities on land and in the air if they might affect the world's oceans.
Perhaps most worrisome is the fact that LOST was shaped by individuals, NGOs and regimes that have sought to use such international agreements governing the so-called "common space" to constrain America's freedom of action and military power. This could be accomplished, were the United States to become a party to LOST, by the use of the Treaty's tribunal and/or arbitration panels to encumber U.S. intelligence collection and submarine activities, by insisting upon the transfer of militarily significant technology and information, and even by prohibiting the interdiction of vessels believed to be engaged in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Second Opinions
Opponents of the Law of the Sea Treaty have their own roster of influential figures who can go toe-to-toe on the implications of this accord with those who lent their name to the letter to Senator Frist. In fact, earlier this year, an array of organizations and individuals representing virtually the entire conservative movement joined a press conference at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to release their own letter to Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Among those who participated were Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick; David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union; Patrick Buchanan, author and commentator; Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform; Fred Smith, President, The Competitive Enterprise Institute and Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President, Center for Security Policy.
Incredibly, the voices of such critics were not afforded an opportunity to be heard when, in the Fall of 2003, the Foreign Relations Committee last considered the Law of the Sea Treaty and approved a resolution of ratification. In the intervening period: serious opposition has emerged; the Treaty was returned to the Foreign Relations Committee with the end of the last session of Congress and must be considered by that panel, and others, afresh; and the Bush Administration has had to confront new realities. Of these, the most immediate is the fact that the sorts of problems inherent in this Treaty are of a piece with those it is currently confronting in the draft Outcome Document for the UN General Assembly meeting next month.
The Bottom Line
For these reasons, if Senator Frist feels the need to respond to the LOST proponents' new letter, it should be with an assurance that any further consideration by the Senate of this flawed treaty will be done in a manner that assures its defects as well as putative merits are carefully and deliberately examined. And, just as the United States must oppose global taxes and world-government-advancing programs at the UN this fall, it should do as Ronald Reagan did in 1982 - namely, reject the Law of the Sea Treaty.
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Interesting how the socialists in the State Dept. and Senate are so quick to try and ram these through while the nation is distracted by a disaster....
Isn't that what disasters are for? They're great distractions to allow Big Government statist enslavers to do their work.
Isn't President Bush in favor of this treaty?
Everyone needs to contact their congress critters to let them know how bitterly opposed to this thing we are. In light of the recent betrayal by the Supreme Court, George Bush, and our "Congressional leaders", it's impossible to trust any of them. They are slowly selling us down the river!
I am with you on that one!
Just saw last night an interview that C-SPAN's Brian Lamb did with Arlen Spectre The Defector. I could not believe my ears when I heard Arlen brazenly castigating Rumsfeld during his trip to South America, for pointing out that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez was instigating destabilizing revolutions, and undermining the region's governments.
Spectre had the audacity to say, (paraphrasing): "
Well let's have a hearing first, before Donald Rumsfeld goes and creates a furor with these allegations, let's see the documentary evidence of what Chavez is doing."
Spectre is a complete fool. Who needs Kennedy and Byrd when this clown pretends to be an American Senator?
After opposing it prior to 9-11, the globo-socialists claimed it would improve "security" and moved it back into consideration, and a couple bad-actor admirals vouched for this. Last I hear, I believe he is calling it "a good bill". Any questions?
Anyways, there is no amount of lipstick that can dress up this pig. It's still a pig.
Reagan set the Gold Standard on this issue. He not only formally rejected the State Dept. recommendation to submit the Law of the Sea Treaty. A
REAGAN FIRED EVERYONE IN THE STATE DEPT. WHO HAD WORKED ON IT, AND WAS PUSHING IT.
Ed Meese: Reagan Would Still Oppose Law of the Sea Treaty
by Edwin Meese III
Posted Apr 25, 2005 The so-called Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is a bad idea whose time should never come up -- at least for the United States and for those who believe in economic liberty and national security. That was the view of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and would remain his view today if he were with us to express it.
The actual title of the treaty is “the United Nation’s Convention on the Law of the Sea.†As its name suggests, it gives to the United Nations, through its subordinate organizations established in the treaty, unprecedented economic powers and expansive authority over the commercial and maritime interests of the nations of the world.
As Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former Defense Department executive and President of the Center for Security Policy, has stated, “…it is unimaginable that the United States would choose to expand the power and influence of the United Nations at a time when evidence of the latter’s corruption, malfeasance and inherent anti-Americanism is growing by the day.â€
How did such an idea get started? It began in the 1970s, when Socialism was still raging and considered by some elitists as “the wave of the future.†The United Nations still wore the mantle of hope. Jimmy Carter claimed that the world’s energy supplies would be diminished in just 20 years. Time spent in our cars waiting for rationed gas gave some the sense that perhaps the world’s resources should be subject to greater regulation.
No doubt that to diplomats in Foggy Bottom or Manhattan’s East Side, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) that they painstakingly negotiated, complete with its 17 Parts, 320 Articles, and nine Annexes, was the answer to their dreams.
Proponents of this giant step toward world-level bureaucracy probably could not imagine that the new American president, Ronald Reagan, could reject the treaty and fire the people responsible for negotiating it. But he did. LOST was the creature of a negotiation process dominated by the Soviet bloc and the “non-aligned movement.†It placed its hope on the United Nations bureaucracy. And it was out of step with the concepts of economic liberty and free enterprise that Ronald Reagan was to inspire throughout the world. Time has proven President Reagan right.
Less imaginable is that 23 years later LOST is again being seriously considered by a Republican president and a Republican Senate. It was a bad idea in 1982; it is an unconscionable one now as we protect against new enemies and the internationalist whims of our Supreme Court. A 1994 limited agreement pertaining to deep-sea mining, negotiated by the Clinton administration, but not part of the treaty itself does not make the treaty as a whole any more acceptable.
America’s adherence to this treaty would entail history’s biggest transfer of wealth and surrender of sovereignty. LOST vests in the new international entity the power to regulate seven-tenths of the world’s surface area; to impose production quotas for deep-sea mining, oil production and other harvesting; and to regulate ocean research and exploration.
LOST creates a multinational court system to render and enforce its judgments. This is particularly alarming after a majority of the United States Supreme Court, in Roper v. Simmons, included an unratified international convention as justification for the judicial revision of a portion of our Constitution. Soon the high court will decide whether to honor a decision by the International Court of Justice, under another treaty, that would challenge the conviction of 51 convicted felons and murderers in our prisons who are foreign nationals.
Significantly, LOST creates the authority for an international authority to levy taxes against member countries, ultimately to be paid by taxpayers. This brings the world closer to what United Nations bureaucrats have long wanted -- a source of unlimited income.
Most importantly, the treaty was drafted at a time when positions and actions of nations were relatively predictable. But today new enemies are involved. The sorts of at-sea interdiction efforts central to our new Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) would be prohibited under LOST. The treaty effectively prohibits two functions vital to American security: intelligence-collection in, and submerged transit of, foreign territorial waters. Mandatory information-sharing would afford enemies data that could be used to facilitate attacks. Obligatory technology transfers would equip adversaries with sensitive and militarily useful equipment and knowledge.
Why has a bad idea, once thought to be dead, now again raised its ugly head? Unfortunately, misguided internationalists have teamed with unrealistic business interests to support the resurgence of LOST.
Some advocates believe that this giant step toward the rigidity of world government would be beneficial for mankind. They minimize the importance of national sovereignty and the value of free market economic decision-making and individualized business negotiations.
There are those in the American oil industry who believe that an international organization will fairly allocate permits for the exploration and exploitation of undersea deposits and they like the idea that the U.S. taxpayers will pay the associated costs.
But experience and common sense demonstrates that whatever inconvenience and expense may be involved in negotiating drilling rights with individual governments on straight business principles cannot justify the creation of a massive international authority susceptible to ideological pressures and potential corruption.
Moreover, much of what the oil industry needs can be achieved through bilateral treaties and the involvement of the international financing system.
Representatives of the U.S. Navy claim that LOST would provide navigation rights that would benefit our country. But the existing 1958 Law of the Seat Treaty already provides such rights without subjecting our naval forces to the compulsory dispute resolution by a UN tribunal, as required by the new treaty. Indeed, LOST provides the opportunity for legal mischief by those forces, both foreign and domestic, who would seek to limit the Navy’s activities.
In short, LOST is an invitation to trial lawyers and their environmentalist front groups to go international, not only against the private sector but also against our military.
The challenge should be clear for those who would follow the principles and implement the vision of Ronald Reagan. The best interests of the United States and of global freedom and opportunity demand that the Law of the Sea Treaty proposed for ratification be sunk, never to surface again.
Thanks for the ping!
I am afraid you are right. The price of liberty is eternal vigilence.
It is difficult to see how he could overlook the progeny of this treaty, or of Reagan's clear, definitively correct stance. Either GWB is untrustworthy in his actual motivations, or he is a captive pawn of advisers who are untrustworthy, and he doesn't know enough to thwart them.
Whereas Reagan clearly did. And did so with relish.
I suspect we need look no further than Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice for this debacle.
Amen to that. I recall Senator Jeff Sessions saying that if he had anything to do with it, the LOST would never see the light of day. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a man like Ronald Reagan in the WH to back him up.
Our Navy goes where it pleases already. LOST will not improve on that. My opposition to LOST will be added to the letter I am sending to my congress critters.
Thank you for posting this. This is an issue being flown under the radar of the American People for obvious reasons. They would reject it.
DICK Lugar is one of the leaders in the LOST push.
One of the main advocates for world government is President Bush. His father, Gush the Elder was shouting for a "New World Order" years ago.
The key is the United Nations through which the world goverment will be administered. Get ready.
Can anyone post a picture of Senator Lugar? He is the RINO poster boy with that stupid grin he wears on his face.
Seems like this point keeps getting lost somewhere in the DOD.
We need to go over those two Admirals heads, and nail Rumsfeld and Cheney with the hard-hitting questions.
"...Either GWB is untrustworthy in his actual motivations, or..."
A look at the open southern border answers that question.
Global government will lead to a horrific nightmare world.
What round it this now? 6? 7?
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