I confess I don’t understand the fervor of proponents and opponents of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which is still awaiting Senate ratification and has been since 1982. The former seem to imagine that it will be a vast advance for American interests; the latter that it will be a vast infringement on American sovereignty. Both views seem overblown to me. I have no problem with ratifying the treaty, but at the same time I have no great expectations for what ratification will achieve.
Case in point: the South China Sea, the subject of a long New York Times article today. China has actually signed the Law of the Sea Treaty, but that is not preventing it from asserting a cockamamie “right” to do what it wants within 200 miles of its coast–and within 200 miles of each group of tiny rocks and islands in the South China Sea that Beijing implausibly claims as its national territory. If taken seriously, China’s claims would give it access to the entire sea, even though those waters are also claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Brunei. The Law of the Sea Treaty, by contrast, recognizes freedom of navigation for any nation only 12 miles beyond a country’s shoreline.
This is more than an academic dispute–armed with its off-the-wall legal theories, China is sending its naval ships and paramilitary “fishing trawlers” to assert ownership of disputed territories such as Scarborough Shoal, where a group of Chinese ships have recently been in a standoff with the Philippine Navy. The stakes are high. As the Times notes: “Two-thirds of the world’s natural gas trade passes through the waters of the South China Sea” and “the sea itself is believed to hold a substantial reservoir of energy, with some experts predicting that under the seabed lies as much as 130 billion barrels of oil and 900 trillion cubic feet of gas.”
China seems bent on laying claim to those resources, no matter what the Law of the Sea Treaty says, which highlights the chief problem with international law: the difficulty of actually enforcing it. That will require the U.S. to take an increasingly assertive stance to back up, with naval and air power if need be, the rights of our allies against China’s resources-grab. Sending a U.S. Navy cruiser or destroyer to Scarborough Shoal to support our Philippine friends would have sent a far more powerful message of compliance with international law than Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
The issue of the 12 mile limit goes back to before the 1980's. In 1974 (or late 1973" I was navigator of a destroyer. We were ordered to parallel the coast of China fifteen miles offshore at several locations during a transit to Hong Kong from the Gulf of Tonkin.
Look up the Bricker Amendment, wikipedia is decent for the overall argument. Then you might understand opponents, and if you knew what the 'treaty' does. Funny isn't it that all agreements are simply referred to as "treaty". The globalists, or whatever term you prefer, want full control and they try to do that via many avenues, one is Water (all types). Just investigate the World Bank, coercion by finance, for "management". n nAs for using China, a communist nation (that's attempting fascism), is amusing. China does not care about what is not in China's interest. We on the other hand honor agreements, even the Geneva Convention which conflicts with Congress' Powers, or better to say, supplants.
China's actions in the SOuth China Sea springs of several issues. First, the disputes with the Philippines and Vietnam arise due to conflicting claims over sovereignty over the islands in the Spratleys and Paracels. This dispute is not a law of the sea issue. Second, there is dispute whether individual islands are habitable or can support economic life. This is addressed under the convention and has been addressed elsewhere in the world. It is an issue that could be addressed through the LOS Convention's dispute settlement mechanisms (one of those, the ICJ, has been called upon by parties to address such cases in the past. The third issue, harassment of US surveillance vessels in the Chinese EEZ, is clearly a LOS issue and, equally clearly, China has overreached both in its claims (high seas navigational freedoms are protected by the Convention) and in its actions (the harassment has exceeded anything allowed in the Convention and in treaties related to safety of navigation. However, as China's navy follows its critical trade routes it will be joining the US and Russia in support of the navigational freedoms of the Convention. A fourth issue, legal resource of US flagged or owned ships for cargo or laying of undersea cables, is one that needs the Convention in order to force China to address rights of commercial firms to operate in the EEZ and on the continental shelf.
This Treaty deserves an overwhelming amount of DAYLIGHT to be shed on it. n n KILL this virus with SUNSHINE. AND THE TROJAN HORSE IT RODE IN ON!
LOST will be used more harshly against America for Global Warming Damage to Asian sea beds than it will every be used to effectively manage brutal dictatorships like CHINA. n nThis thing is designed to supercede the American Constitution, and NOTHING less, and LITTLE ELSE!
Increasing economic activity on the seas after World War II overwhelmed the old customary law of the sea as high tech factory fishing ships moved into coastal fisheries and offshore drilling technology made exclusive access to the seabed essential for development. Unilateral extensions of the territorial sea from three to 12 miles and even as far as 200 miles threatened both military and civilian use of the seas and led to the effort to codify a modern law of the sea that protects both coastal state rights and high seas freedoms. The Convention is an agreement that builds upon customary law and early efforts to codify new law in an agreement among its parties. The convention protects our military navigation and mobility rights and locks in the agreement, it provides the order and protection needed for commercial activity on the seabed beyond the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone, and it provides – and limits – processes to resolve disputes short of force. It recognizes national sovereignty in the territorial sea and sovereignty over the resources of the 200 mile EEZ and even over the part of the slope and rise beyond the EEZ (a region never before claimed by the US) while protecting navigation and other commercial activities on the high seas and in foreign EEZs. The Convention is a long and complicated document, not surprising given the breadth and interconnectedness of the issues it addresses. American diplomates, military officers and business advisers invested 10 years in its negotiation. It deserves more consideration than unsupported accusations of threats to sovereignty or environmental lawsuits that were actually considered and addressed in the convention in response to US interest at the time of the negotiations.
Regarding JohnKettlewell's earlier reference to the Bricker Amendment, it is worth noting that the proposed resolutions of advice and consent in both times it has been considered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have declared that, with the exception of a handful of articles clearly in the realm of the executive branch, the Convention is NOT self-executing and will require US legislation to implement if such legislation is not already in place. Non-self-execution was a key part of the Bricker's proposed amendment. This provides the clarity of intent to apply the Supreme Court decision in the Medellin case that unless a treaty provision is clearly self-exectuing, domestic legislation must be enacted to implement the convention. Some of that legislation is already in force (US laws on fisheries, continental shelf, and piracy for example), but clearly additional legislation will need to be approved by congress to implement other parts of the Convention.