Republicans sink law of the sea,
for now By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Defying the wishes of both
the US Chamber of Commerce and the US Navy,
Republican senators have effectively halted for
now an effort by the administration of President
Barack Obama to gain ratification of the
30-year-old Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).
Republicans opposed to the treaty
announced late Monday that 34 senators had
committed themselves to oppose it if it came to a
vote, thus depriving the treaty's supporters -
Democrats and a dwindling number of moderate
Republicans - of the two-thirds majority needed to
ratify treaties.
"This is Victory Day for
US sovereignty in the senate," exulted Oklahoma
Senator James Inhofe late on Monday. "With 34
[senators] opposed to
LOST, this debate is over."
But Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry
has suggested that he may push the treaty again
after the November elections in hopes that it can
be ratified once partisan passions subside.
"Senator Kerry has been here long enough
to know that vote counts and letters are just a
snapshot of where our politics are in this
instant, and it's not news to anyone that right
now we're in the middle of a white-hot political
campaign season where ideology is running in
overdrive," Kerry's spokesperson, Jodi Seth, told
the influential "Cable" blog on the
foreignpolicy.com website.
"That's why
Kerry made it clear there wouldn't be a vote
before the election and until everyone's had the
chance to evaluate the treaty on the facts and the
merits away from the politics of the moment," she
added.
Treaty advocates believe that
several of the Republicans - including a couple
who are reportedly being considered by Governor
Mitt Romney as his vice-presidential running-mate
in November - may be persuaded to change their
view after the election.
In particular,
Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who served as US Trade
Representative under former President George W
Bush, has long enjoyed the strong support of the
Chamber of Commerce, which has also been among the
most important proponents of the treaty.
"Once we're out of election mode, I
believe there will be a greater appetite to
consider the treaty again," said Don Kraus, who
heads Citizens for Global Solutions, a grassroots
group that promotes US engagement with
international institutions. "A final vote will be
close, but we won't know until it comes to the
floor."
The product of some 15 years of
negotiations, LOST, which has been ratified by 161
countries and the European Union, sets rules
governing most areas of ocean policy, including
navigation and over-flight rights, exploitation of
the seabed, conservation and research.
Successive administrations - both
Democratic and Republican - have led negotiations
for the treaty from the late 1960s onward. But
when completed in 1982, then-president Ronald
Reagan, under pressure from big US mining and
energy companies, rejected it, citing its
provisions for deep-sea mining, particularly its
requirement that mining claims be regulated by a
Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority
(ISA).
Nonetheless, Reagan ordered the
government to abide by all other sections of the
treaty, which amounted essentially to a
codification of existing international customary
and maritime international law.
In 1994,
the seabed provisions of the treaty were amended
to satisfy Reagan's objections. Both Bill Clinton
and George W Bush - the latter in his second term
- subsequently supported its ratification. In
2007, it was approved by the Foreign Relations
Committee by a lopsided 17-4 vote but was never
sent to the floor for final action.
After
Obama took office in 2009, his administration
listed LOST as one of a half-dozen treaties,
including the 1979 Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - on
which Kerry is holding hearings - as priorities
for ratification.
None, however, have yet
made any headway on Capitol Hill due to opposition
by Republicans, a growing number of whom have
argued that international treaties unduly
constrain Washington's freedom of action in the
world and threaten its sovereignty.
That
was the major theme of letter written by Inhofe
and signed by 30 other Republican senators to
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Monday.
"We are writing to let you know that we
believe this Convention reflects political,
economic, and ideological assumptions which are
inconsistent with American values and
sovereignty," the letter asserted.
On the
same day, a 32nd senator announced his opposition
to the treaty, while Portman and New Hampshire
Senator Kelly Ayotte - both considered possible
vice-presidential candidates - sent their own
letter in which they stated, "We are simply not
persuaded that decisions by the International
Seabed Authority and international tribunals
empowered by this treaty will be more favorable to
US interests than bilateral negotiations,
voluntary arbitration, and other traditional means
of resolving maritime issues."
Romney
himself has so far not yet taken a formal position
on LOST, although in his 2008 presidential
campaign he had "concerns" about the treaty
"giving unaccountable international institutions
more power".
At that time, he was running
as a Republican moderate but has since adopted the
more-unilateralist and militarist positions
reminiscent of those of Bush's first term when
Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief
Donald Rumsfeld dominated foreign policy.
Indeed, the star witness for the
opposition during the committee's hearings on the
treaty was Rumsfeld himself, while David
Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, played a key
role in organizing the opposition from his base at
the right-wing Heritage Foundation.
John
Bolton, Bush's former UN ambassador who joined the
the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute
after leaving government, has also written
prolifically against the treaty.
What is
particularly remarkable is the fact that many of
the treaty's supporters, notably the Chamber of
Commerce and major oil, gas, and mining
corporations, represent traditional strongholds of
the Republican Party.
"US businesses from
shipping to telecommunications to offshore energy
production cannot plan and invest as needed
without the legal certainty that comes with Law of
the Sea Treaty ratification," warned Thomas
Donohue, the Chamber's powerful president in a
full-page ad co-sponsored by the Chamber, the
National Association of Manufacturers, and the
American Petroleum Institute that ran in major
publications last month.
Similarly, the US
Navy, traditionally the most conservative of the
armed services, has long championed the treaty
because of its recognition of navigation rights
for warships. Its appeals on behalf of the
ratification have grown increasingly urgent as a
result of growing tensions between China and its
neighbors in the South and East China Seas, as
well as the burgeoning interest in territorial
claims in the Arctic.
The treaty's foes
have argued that the enforcement of navigation
rights ultimately depends on the strength of the
US Navy and "not on paper treaties signed at the
United Nations", as Addington recently put it.
"Americans who seek to preserve the
advance the rights of Americans to use the seas
should support a strong national defense,
including a strong Navy that can project American
power across the globe in defense of American
interests," he wrote on Heritage's "The Foundry"
blog Tuesday.
Jim Lobe's blog on
US foreign policy can be read at
http://www.lobelog.com.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
