Wes Vernon
Tuesday, Feb 22, 2005

Story Continues Below

  Those words by American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman David Keene drew the unmistakable line in the sand, speaking for the organized conservative movement with a warning to politicians who want conservative backing in the future.

Moreover, the very people who whose support was crucial to re-electing President Bush last year have united in a break with his administration on a highly charged foreign policy matter. The issue is the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which raises a myriad of sovereignty, taxation and defense-against-terrorists issues.

At least 27 conservative organizations – ranging from economic to social issues activists – released a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind. It was he who did in fact ram LOST through his committee last year "in the dark of night," when no one was looking.

The letter's none-too-subtle finger-wagging reprimand (when read between the lines) really meant, "We caught you, and don't try that again because we'll be watching."

Its actual words were "Regrettably, the Committee did not take testimony from any witnesses opposed to this convention, also known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) – a fact that almost certainly contributed to the unanimous support LOST enjoyed when the vote to report out the resolution was taken."

The full Senate failed to act on the measure after NewsMax blew the whistle on the "dark of night" operation. Now, with a new Congress, a new resolution would have to be introduced before the Senate could act on the treaty.

"We believe that before the Foreign Relations Committee takes any further steps in that direction, a fresh set of hearings should be convened at which opponents, as well as proponents, will be afforded an opportunity to testify," the conservatives said.

Reagan Refused to Sign LOST

At a news conference during the just-completed annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, the letter was announced and/or signed by a Who's Who in the conservative movement, including – but by no means limited to – Keene (ACU), Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), Frank J. Gaffney Jr. (Center for Security Policy), Fred Smith (Competitive Enterprise Institute), Richard Viguerie (Conservative HQ), Kevin Kearns (U.S. Business and Industry Council) and Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform). Also represented in the letter were Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and the Objectivist Center (of Ayn Rand origins).

The letter cites President Ronald Reagan, who "wisely refused to sign LOST in 1982, on the grounds that it was the product of an unfriendly international agenda that aimed to redistribute the world's wealth from developed nations like the United States, to developing ones."

Among those at the news conference in the Ronald Reagan Center, site of this year's CPAC gathering, was Reagan-era Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, known far and wide for having drawn a rhetorical bead on the "Blame America First" crowd.

Kirkpatrick recalled that when President Reagan took office, he was confronted by a LOST that had been signed by his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Some Reagan advisers, Kirkpatrick said, tried to convince Reagan that as long as Carter had signed the treatu, "we might as well make the best of it and move on."

Reagan, who had a sixth sense about threats to the best interests of America, would have none of that. He saw LOST as "fundamentally open-ended."

Not so incidentally, it is relevant to mention here that one of the "undeveloped" nations that would benefit from this wealth transfer would be Communist China, which has been building a war machine that could turn on us someday. Do you like the idea of your hard-earned tax dollars going toward that dangerous nonsense?

U.N. Would Control 70 Percent of Earth

Not only is the treaty's International Seabed Authority (ISA) empowered to regulate activities "on or under" the seven-tenths of the globe's surface that lies beneath international waters (a fact brought out last year by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe at an Armed Services Committee hearing), the ISA is also authorized to levy taxes on Americans, with none of those pesky elected congressmen or senators having anything to say about it.

Senator Inhofe participated in the CPAC coalition news conference and said he was very busy these days refuting misinformation peddled by LOST advocates. For example, he said, the apologists are trying to convince people that the U.N. would have nothing to do with implementing major portions of the treaty. Not so. The treaty spells it out in black and white. And yes, "on or under" does include flights over the oceans.

Another of President Reagan's concerns back in 1982 was that the Soviet Union and so-called non-aligned nations dominated the negotiations that gave the ISA international taxing authority.

David Keene – the head of ACU – said the issue could resonate politically in a big way.

"Ask yourself this question," he said. "If you asked the American people how many people believe that Kofi Annan and his United Nations ought to be able to collect a tax from us, what would the answer be? If you asked people if you agree or disagree with the proposition that control over 70 percent of the surface of the earth should be turned over to Kofi Annan and the United Nations, how many people would agree with that? That's what this issue is about. The issue is about whether the United States stands up for its own rights, or whether we acquiesce in a sort of mushy world domination by a bunch of crooks."

That, of course, is another way of saying if you like the Oil-for-Food Scandal, you'll love the U.N. running LOST.

ATR's Grover Norquist objected strenuously to the international taxing authority. "Some may say, well, this just starts in the water. But so do amphibians and reptiles. At some point, the United Nations will start getting those little gill things and start getting out on the land, and you would see an expanded ability to tax. This is a 'foot in the door' to tax people directly rather than going to member states. This is a bad idea on its own. It is a particularly bad idea because it would grow and the United Nations would have its own taxing source and it would figure out ways to expand that. We should kill this now."

In answer to a question, the coalition identified supporters of LOST as including "radical environmentalists, one-world government types, some business interests, quite frankly, who believe that this will advance their particular commercial interests."

Breaking With the Bush Administration

Patrick J. Buchanan, author of "The Death of the West" and former third party presidential candidate (though he supported George W. Bush's re-election in 2004), defined LOST as "a transfer of sovereignty, a transfer of taxing authority [and] it creates another instrument of world government, and I cannot understand – speaking personally – how any conservative who believes in the sovereignty of this country and its continued independence can sign on to a treaty which helps construct a new world order and a world government of which this International Seabed Authority is a critical part."

One reporter asked if this meant the conservative movement had made a clean break with the Bush administration. Keene responded that "the conservative movement is opposed to the Law of the Sea Treaty and is opposed to the administration's support of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Does that mean we're breaking with the administration? It does with the Law of the Sea Treaty."

Again harking back to her own experiences with this treaty during the Reagan days, Ambassador Kirkpatrick said, "We thought that we had killed it." She compared LOST to "one of those snakes with a large number of heads, and those heads just keep reproducing themselves after you cut one off. The Law of the Sea Treaty, in my opinion, would be nothing but a problem for the United States."

Right. That problem could manifest itself in a showdown with terrorist or enemy nations. They could use LOST authority to block our right to interdict ships heading for our shores with weapons of mass destruction.

The letter to Senator Lugar notes that LOST "compels parties to submit to mandatory dispute resolution, something the Senate has traditionally rejected," and that "the U.S. would be committed to transfer potentially militarily relevant technology to possibly unfriendly hands."

Authority on matters vital to U.S. interests would rest with a 35-memebr body, Kirkpatrick warned. "At least we are guaranteed a seat on that 35-member body. But then we're guaranteed a seat on the [U.N.] Security Council too. We also have a veto on the Security Council. We wouldn't have a veto on the Law of the Sea so-called executive authority."

And in case anyone thinks that is not serious, the former ambassador cited the inability of Ppresident Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to persuade the Security Council to adopt a crucial second resolution on Iraq's aggression, back in 2003.

The coalition letter to Chairman Lugar concludes: "Senators Jon Kyl, James Inhofe, and Jeff Sessions have requested that the Government Accountability Office [GAO] update its past, comprehensive assessments of the Law of the Sea Treaty and provide its independent analysis of a number of important questions that have arisen in the course of hearings to date. We would respectfully suggest that any hearings your committee and its counterparts might hold on LOST await the completion of the GAO's report."

It takes only 34 senators to defeat a treaty. I asked how close the opponents were to getting that. The Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney, who has repeatedly testified and worked against LOST, said he does not have a head count. "My guess is that at the moment, most senators don't know anything about this treaty. Our purpose, particularly through this hearing process, is to make sure that's not the case if and when they are asked actually to vote. Because of the defects we have talked about here, I am confident there will be enough senators to defeat this treaty."

But only if you and your neighbors contact your senators and supply them with information on LOST, let them know that you hope they will work against it and that you will be watching their moves on this issue.

Treaties in the past have managed to slip through because the public was not alerted to what was in them. The conservative movement has sounded the alarm, and it is being picked up by grass-roots activists all around the country. The rest is up to you.

Editor's note: