IMO, we should be making a few territorial seabed grabs of our own. Treating them as a commons has been a disaster environmentally. Seabed mining is very expensive and there are increasing substitutes for what were once thought irreplaceable elemental resources. There are also hazards that would be very difficult to mitigate. Meanwhile, a lot of the rationale for that maritime mining effort has originated because of environmental exclusions on land that need to end.
Moreover, a lot of the problems with maritime wildlife productivity originate because we allow other countries to extract at will as a sweetener for holding our inflated bonds. Many of the agencies supposedly dedicated to protecting maritime wildlife actually have a demonstrable interest in failure. Those two combine into an ugly picture.
That said, I'm talking a larger principle here: Natural Law competition. America has been propping up socialism for nearly 100 years, especially during the Roosevelt era. The cost of doing so has abetted its metastacizing on our shores. If Europe had paid for its defense, would the left be citing it as such a model to emulate? Yet the big gains we have made against socialism were when we allowed it to fail by unshackling ourselves, particularly because the rest of the world saw it fail. Reagan deregulated the oil market and cut back on regulatory suppression and the resulting fall in oil prices collapsed Soviet cash flow. Yet if we prop up socialism, as the EU has done in Greece, look what happened to Greece. It is exactly analogous to how welfare destroyed the black family.
On the domestic side, that "Pax Americana" has operated as a subsidy by which to export American jobs and technology. The beneficiaries do not pay for that protection. Those who developed that technology in expectation of continued employment bear that exclusive and disproportionate burden of paying taxes to subsidize the export of their jobs. The extremely wealthy use tax-exempt "charitable" foundations to fund said green groups lawyers to sue a complicit agency for control of the resource by which to improve the tax-sheltered returns on their foreign investments. So you can see that said "Pax Americana" is more than just a financial burden.
I'm not talking about a complete withdrawal, but I promise you: Letting Europe for example defend itself would wake those babies up in a hurry. "Nation-building" was a success there and in Japan, but it backfires way too often as we move down the cultural ladder to the point that it is an exercise in futility in an Islamic country, central Asia (but I repeat myself), or in most of Africa. We should have stomped Iraq and gone home. Had Iran attacked them, stomp them too, quickly and cheaply, and then go home ala Barbary Pirates. They will learn how to act very quickly. I frankly think that the world would accelerate faster toward peace and civility with a better example of leadership.
Wow, that's a tough one. Give up access under Admiralty Law to all the seabeds and sea lanes of the world, in order to "nail down" one little patch of it? I don't think that's a good swap. We are the ones with the 1-1/2-ocean navy.
That said, I'm talking a larger principle here: Natural Law competition.
But the biggest champions of Natural Law in history have been the British, proud and successful operators of the East India Company and the Royal Navy. It still seems to me that open sea lanes protected by Admiralty Law and an English-speaking navy are still the way to go. This other scenario sounds like Marxist-Leninists offering us Esau's mess of pottage for our birthright.
On the domestic side, that "Pax Americana" has operated as a subsidy by which to export American jobs and technology.
No, it hasn't. It didn't in the 19th century, when the pax Britannica protected the sea lanes from piracy and claims of "closed seas" all alike. We prospered then, and our industries prospered then, and having a Navy and open sea lanes did not detract from our happiness one whit. Instead, open and protected sea lanes accelerated commerce worldwide and prospered many peoples, some of whom had lived in utter rudeness and darkness of mind as recently as 250 years ago.
Letting Europe for example defend itself would wake those babies up in a hurry.
Letting Europe defend itself will result in a rapidly overwhelmed and occupied Europe. They will not change their bad habits of mind, so carefully nurtured by schoolhouse Reds all these years. They need a long period in intellectual intensive care, protected by us from parties interested in making of Europe a trophy.