Rather, the administration is trotting out lawyers and other officials of the armed forces to make the case for LOST. In particular, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard are on record as favoring the treaty. Their argument has a certain superficial appeal: The treaty establishes rules of the road for littoral waters that are better than might otherwise apply and, if we are a party to LOST, we can ensure they stay that way. The alternative, we are told, is that the Navy will have to take risks to assert our rights to untrammeled innocent passage. And, frankly, we no longer have sufficient naval vessels or the political will required to undertake such potentially risky operations wherever necessary.
Sadly, being party to the Law of the Sea Treaty is not going to keep our foes from using it against us. Like those of virtually every other international organization, LOST’s institutions (executive, legislative and judicial, if you please) are rigged-games. The United States will be routinely outvoted or otherwise unable to prevent infringements on its sovereignty and, yes, in all likelihood over time even its military operations.
Some earnest officers insist that should the latter happen, America can always withdraw from the treaty. Don’t count on it. The only instance in memory when such a step occurred was the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – and that took twenty years to accomplish. Moreover, it could only have occurred because the very survival of the nation could plausibly be argued to require it.
Even if the Navy and its sister sea-services were right about the value of the treaty from their parochial perspectives, roughly 60 percent of LOST’s provisions have to do with the supranational management of two-thirds of the world’s surface and its resources. The argument about whether such arrangements will prove to be in the long-term interest of the nation as a whole should be considered on their merits, not subordinated – let alone ignored – out of misplaced deference to some in the military.
The push President Bush intends to make for the Law of the Sea Treaty will win him few friends among his enemies. It will, however, cost him dearly among those who have steadfastly supported him, but are dead-set against the Transnational Progressives and their agenda. One would think that a man with an approval rating below 30 percent would not be so cavalier with what remains of his base, especially on behalf of so dubious an enterprise as ratification of LOST. |