Paul Weyrich
Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2004

The first battle ended happily enough on July 9, 1982 when President Ronald Reagan made clear that we would not participate in the Law of the Sea Treaty because it would clearly undercut our sovereignty.

Then, in 1994, our then-UN Ambassador, Madeleine K. Albright, signed an allegedly amended version of the Treaty and President Clinton sent it to the Senate for consideration. The voters short-circuited President Clinton's effort that November and gave Republicans control of the Senate.

However, the Treaty is back for a third go-around and in a Senate with a very different makeup even with the GOP now holding nominal control. Gone is Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), the most stalwart Senate defender of our nation's sovereignty in the last quarter-century. In his place is Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). The ranking minority member, Joseph Biden (D-DE), is also a strong supporter of this Treaty who, during the period that his party controlled the committee a few years ago had pressed the case for having the Senate take up the Treaty.

There are good reasons why the United States Senate should not ratify this Treaty.

At heart, this is an issue of sovereignty. This Treaty would start the process to enact far-reaching changes that undercut our national sovereignty while enhancing the power of the United Nations.

A new United Nations agency would be enabled by this Treaty to collect profits made through a UN-administered enterprise with a transfer of proceeds to the Third World nations or any party this organization would chose to recognize and finance.

Translated, this means the Treaty grants the United Nations the power to regulate resources, place taxes on deep-sea mining and redistribute wealth. The amended 1994 version purported to be more receptive to allowing the private-sector to engage in mining, but the UN would still be controlling who does what and when and where.

The unfortunate events of 9/11 helped awaken Americans to the fact that we still live in a dangerous world. That realization should also make Americans very wary of this Treaty.

This Treaty puts the UN in charge of the world's oceans, to the point where our navy would be breaking our agreement if our navy stopped to search a ship chartered by a foreign nation such as North Korea.

When President Ronald Reagan made clear our nation's concerns about this Treaty, his conditions included that our participation would be premised on unequivocal changes to "unacceptable elements" such as:

· Not deterring development of any deep seabed mineral resources to meet national and world demand. · Providing a decision-making role in the deep seabed regime that fairly reflects and effectively protects the political and economic interests and financial contributions of the participating states.

· Not setting other undesirable precedents for other international organizations (in other words, other UN agencies bent on maximizing their power).

When hearings were held on the Treaty last fall before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an effective opposing voice was not heard.

With the departure of Senator Helms, the importance of having the grassroots make clear to the Bush Administration and the United States Senate what they think about this Treaty is extremely important.

Giving countries such as Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and the Sudan say over what our navy can and cannot do should give every right-thinking patriot cause for concern.

If that is not enough to convince you, let me also note that the Treaty, even with the 1994 modifications that supposedly made it more "US friendly," would require transfers of technology involving underwater mapping systems, magnetic detection, remotely operated vehicles, submersible vehicles, deep salvage technology, and undersea robots and manipulators.

The People's Republican of China has used the Treaty to their advantage by obtaining extremely sensitive deep-ocean mapping technology that can also be applied to increase their anti-submarine warfare capability and be used to disrupt ours.

Thus, as national security expert Peter M. Leitner noted, in a 1998 World Affairs article, "A Bad Treaty Returns," that "[o]cean mining activities by the Enterprise [a UN created corporation] or third world nations, such as China or India, can provide plausible justification for successfully purchasing technologies that, in the absence of ocean mining, would likely be denied on national security grounds."

Sign this Treaty and we are letting ourselves travel down a slippery path because if the UN can regulate the seas then what will be next? What else of our national sovereignty will we see chipped away by blue regulators? Will the UN become a true world's policeman, moving to operate its own navy to enforce this Treaty?

What of our sophisticated military technologies could wind up in the hands of the UN and unfriendly governments, perhaps even given to terrorist groups?

Leitner expressed such questions very well in his article which noted that "of the many precedents embodied in the existence of the ISA [the body created to enforce the Treaty], the creation of an international bureaucracy with powers to tax, regulate, and enforce its will are perhaps the most dramatic and, in the long term, the most dangerous.

The granting of what are essentially sovereign powers is unprecedented and unfortunately fits within a larger pattern of UN behavior -- that being, to free itself from the political domination of the five permanent members of the Security Council as well as to insulate itself from the uncertainties and political limitations accompanying the traditional state-sponsored financing of UN operations."

Remember it was not that long ago that Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali was hawking a plan to tax airline tickets. Thankfully, that idea crashed and burned. Unfortunately, we will not see or hear the last of this Treaty if we end up having the Senate ratify it, the President sign it, and then having it transmitted to the United Nations.

When Peter Leitner tried to testify last year before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he and other Treaty critics were blocked from doing so. The committee stacked the testimony with supporters of the Treaty.

Like the Panama Canal, the grassroots will need to make politicians feel the heat if this Treaty is going to be stopped as it must be if we are to avoid having "Big Blue" taxing us, giving away our defense technology, and whatever other provisions they can use to weaken our economy and our national security. Either we speak up and loudly or else this is one case where the ending -- the ratification of this Treaty -- will not be a happy one.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.