Posted on 08/10/2007 9:19:16 PM PDT by JohnA
The international battle for Arctic territory may look like a Wild West brawl but the real fight for supremacy is more likely to revolve around legal arguments and seismic data than showdowns between ice-breakers or submarines.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
It’s all law and technology. The media makes it out to be politics. Politics is part theater.
In case you missed it, GW Bush wants the US to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty.
oil? there is no oil, we have all been told we have past the peak oil and we are done with all oil.
Thank God Ronald Reagan prevented this atrocious “Law” of the Sea treaty from becoming law. We need that about as much as we need the Kyoto Treaty (which Vladimir Putin signed into law). President Bush also brought back the evil subversive UN organization UNESCO to the USA. Ronald Reagan was smart enough to ban this gang of vermin from the USA.
Perhaps it’s time for the U.S. to get off of it’s butt and drill ANWR?
The Law of Sea provides for a 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and a territorial sea of 12 miles. Our current territorial limit is three miles by our definition. So the LOS treaty would actually work to our advantage in the Artic.
Well there you go, eh? Why fight something like that?
I don’t think there’s much oil there.
I thought we already claimed a 12 mile territory, and Regan claimed a 200 mile economic back in the 80's.
You’re supposed to think that because the idiot enviro-whacko’s won’t let the experts take the necessary measurements, to forcast the reserves there.
If there was a lot of oil there, the bigs would have been after it some time ago. Who’s in the running? Some 2nd and 3rd tier corporations? I thought I read every time you looked at reserves determinations for that area, they were headed south.
We could bat our recollections around endlessly, so I’ll go dig up some facts.
But, the early estimates were quite high, and only minimized by the save the leichen crowd.
(They keep showing video of land rich in wildlife, that isn’t withing 100 miles of ANWR.)
President Reagan, in response to the increasing threats posed by Soviet spy ships hovering off the U.S. coast, proclaimed a twelve nautical mile territorial sea. The proclamation specifically limited its application to international law. The Proclamation specifically left undisturbed the three nautical mile territorial sea for all domestic purposes, including law enforcement. Thus, the Proclamation’s only real effect was to require the spy ships to move further offshore.
The situation has become immensely more confused with the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Section 901 of this statute declares that all of the U.S. territorial sea as defined in the 1988 Presidential Proclamation is, for criminal law purposes, part of the United States, subject to its sovereignty, and is within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States for purposes of title 18, U.S. Code (the federal criminal code). The section also amended the Federal Assimilative Crimes Act to include within its ambit the newly expanded territorial sea, while making clear that this expanded area was not within the jurisdiction of the adjacent coastal state. The legislative history of this section is sparse and the goal of Congress in this regard is unclear.
The Arctic is a diversion. Passing this treaty would turn over the South China sea to the Chi-coms and give the UN international taxing authority over the mining of seabeds. It’s a monstrosity.
That’s right and we signed Kyoto too.
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