Two Treaties To Watch In The Senate

There are two treaties coming up for a vote in the Senate in the near future. The first is the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. That treaty is expected to be finalized by July 27.

On Wednesday, an article in the Washington Times detailed some of the details of the treaty:

The criteria that arms should not be used to “prolong” or “aggravate” instability is troubling. China could use such a provision to label U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as a violation of international law. In 1941, such a treaty would have made illegal the U.S. lend-lease program to aid Britain before Pearl Harbor.

The implication is absurd: If giving arms to an ally fighting a tyrant prolongs the conflict, the only “legal” option for the ally is to surrender.

Another problem is the draft’s invocation of “international human rights law.” Unfortunately, liberal activists often claim that strict gun control is a “human right.” This reference, then, could be interpreted in ways that infringe on Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms.

Why should we care what some U.N. treaty says? Just ignore it, you say, because our Constitution trumps everything. Well, not if the U.S. signs and the Senate ratifies it. At that point, the treaty carries the weight of U.S. domestic law.

The second treaty coming to the Senate is the Law Of The Sea Treaty (appropriately called LOST). Forbes Magazine posted an article about both treaties on Tuesday.

In discussing the LOST treaty, the article states:

Then there’s the currently proposed, Obama-endorsed, Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) which would subordinate U.S. naval and drilling operations beyond 200 miles of our coast to a newly established U.N. bureaucracy. If ratified by Congress, it will grant a Kingston, Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) the power to regulate deep-sea oil exploration, seabed mining, and fishing rights. As part of the deal, as much as 7% of U.S. government revenue collected from oil and gas companies operating off our coast will be forked over to ISA for redistribution to poorer, landlocked countries.

The U.S. would have one vote out of 160 regarding where the money would go, and be obligated to hand over offshore drilling technology to any nation that wants it… for free. And who are those lucky international recipients? They will most likely include such undemocratic, despotic and brutal governments as Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe…all current voting members of LOST.

Does either one of these treaties represent the country you want your children to inherit? Is American sovereignty important to you? The Senate switchboard telephone number is 202-224-3121. If you believe in upholding the Second Amendment of the Constitution and if you believe America should be able to control its own offshore waters, please call your Senator and ask him to vote against both of these treaties.

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Retired Military Speak Out Against The Law Of The Sea Treaty

This is the letter sent to Senator John Kerry by a number of retired senior military leaders regarding the Law Of The Sea Treaty:

June 14, 2012
 
Hon. John Kerry
444 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0802
 
Dear Chairman Kerry:
 
Much is being made at the moment of the support of the U.S. military for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). In your Foreign Relations Committee hearings to date, you have invited testimony from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and six other serving four-star commanders. We wish respectfully to challenge the perception that military personnel uniformly support this accord by expressing our strongly held belief that LOST’s ratification would prove inimical both to the national security interests and sovereignty of the United States.
 
This conclusion is ineluctable given five facts about the Law of the Sea Treaty:
  1. President Ronald Reagan recognized that the terms and institutional arrangements inherent in the treaty—including, but not limited to, seabed mining—were adverse to this country insofar as they were intended and designed to establish and empower a supranational government. For these reasons, he refused to sign this accord. And, as his Counselor and Attorney General, Edwin Meese, has observed, those defects continue to afflict LOST—despite suggestions to the contrary, based on false claims that a separate agreement signed by some but not all LOST signatories satisfactorily addressed Mr. Reagan’s concerns.
  2. There is already ample reason for Americans—in and out of uniform—to be leery of entrusting more power and authority to the United Nations. Yet, our membership in LOST would dangerously empower that organization. After all, this treaty creates an executive, legislature and judiciary that are supposed to govern seventy-percent of the world’s surface. And LOST’s institutions are intertwined with the UN system and would be capable of raising revenues. Given the UN track record of corruption and hostility to America and its allies, it would be reckless to endorse such arrangements, let alone subject ourselves to them.
  3. Of particular concern is the obligation under LOST to submit any and all disputes to binding arbitration or judicial action by entities that are inherently rigged against us. The treaty’s expansive mandate is so broad—involving virtually anything affecting the world’s oceans—that it is an invitation to UN and other nations’ interference in our affairs on an unprecedented scale.
  4. That prospect has particular implications for the national security were the United States to become a party to the Law of the Sea Treaty. As such, we would be required to make myriad commitments at odds with our military practices and national interests. These include agreeing to reserve the oceans exclusively for “peaceful purposes.”  Contentions that we need not worry about such formal commitments because we, as a maritime nation with a powerful navy, are not expected to be bound by them will surely prove unfounded.
  5. The same is certain to apply to assurances that the exemption of “military activities” will preclude LOST from having harmful effects on our armed forces and their necessary operations on, over, under and from the seas. Since the treaty does not include an agreed definition of what constitutes such activities, disputes are sure to arise—disputes we will be obliged to resolve through one LOST mechanism or another. [In the attachment, Judge Advocate General Captain Vince Averna (USN, Ret.) lays out a number of the treaty’s provisions that may invite such challenges.]   
One example of how untenable such assurances will prove can be found in the area of anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Of necessity, ASW training to be effective must necessarily replicate actual combat operations and thus involve the periodic use of high-power sonars and explosives. Unfortunately, some assert that these training activities cause harm to ocean wildlife, like dolphins and whales, and have sought to use judicial means to restrict or preclude them.
 
We must, therefore, recall that, during the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Warren Christopher called LOST “the strongest comprehensive environmental treaty now in existence or likely to emerge for quite some time.” That being the case, the U.S. armed forces must reckon with the prospect that what they consider to be essential and exempted military activities will be treated under LOST as environmental predation very much within the jurisdiction of its Tribunal and arbitration panels. The effect of adverse rulings, especially if enforced by federal judges, could prove devastating to our power projection and other defense capabilities.
 
For all these reasons (among others), it is our considered professional military judgment that the United States should remain unencumbered by state-party status in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—free to observe those provisions we chose to and unencumbered by the others. We have demonstrated in the three decades since President Reagan refused to sign LOST that as a non-party great power we can exercise great and essential influence on matters involving the oceans without being relegated to one vote among 160-plus, obliged to abide by the will and whims of a generally hostile majority without the benefit of a veto to protect American national interests. There is no basis for contending that we will be better off if we have a so-called “seat at the table” under such circumstances.
 
We hope our insights and conclusions will be made part of the record of your Committee’s deliberations on this matter and would welcome an opportunity to participate in such deliberations if that would be helpful to you and your colleagues.
 
Sincerely,
 
Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, USA (Ret.)
Former Commanding General, U.S. Army Special Forces Command;
Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence
 
Adm. Thomas B. Hayward, USN (Ret.)
Former Chief of Naval Operations
 
Adm. G.E.R. Kinnear II, USN (Ret.)
Former U.S. Member of the NATO Military Committee
 
Gen. Richard L. Lawson, USAF (Ret.)  
Former Deputy Commander-in Chief, Headquarters U.S. European Command
 
Adm. James “Ace” Lyons, Jr., USN (Ret.)
Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet
 
Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, USAF (Ret.)
Former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, USAF
 
Vice Adm. Robert Monroe, USN (Ret.)
Former Director of Navy Research, Development Testing and Evaluation
 
Gen. Carl E. Mundy, Jr., USMC (Ret.)
Former Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps
 
Adm. Leighton “Snuffy” Smith, USN (Ret.)
Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Navy Forces Europe and
NATO Allied Forces Southern Europe
 
cc:  Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
 
The letter and more information on the letter are posted at the website of the Center For Security Police website.
 
 
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Two Different Opinions On A Treaty

Yesterday Politico posted an article by Senator John Kerry giving his views on why America needs to ratify the Law of The Sea Treaty (LOST). On Monday, the Center for Security Policy posted an article on why America should not ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty. I suggest you read both and then draw your own conclusions.

There are, however, a few things I would like to point out. This treaty has been kicking around since the 1980’s when President Reagan strongly opposed it because of its negative impact on American sovereignty.

Some basic problems with the LOST treaty (aptly named):

 “Article 81 of the treaty would require the US. and all nations to pay a
 portion of royalties from the use of the sea’s natural resources to the
 International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica. If ratified this
 nation would be required to transfer part of any royalties realized from
 the drilling of oil resources found on the U.S. continental shelf —
 defined as 200 nautical miles or more from shore — for redistribution to
 poorer, landlocked countries. This could amount to billions of dollars.”

The treaty would give a U.N. body veto power over the use of U.S. territorial
water and to which we’d be required to give half of our offshore oil
revenue to third world countries.”

I don’t claim to be unbiased in this discussion, but there are a few obvious things going on here. This is an election year. There is a very good chance that the Senate that would  be voting on the LOST treaty will not be the same Senate that will be in Washington in January. Why is the Senate voting on this now? It is not a time-sensitive issue and should not be voted on in what will most certainly be a lame-duck Senate. There is also a strong possibility that as Americans make plans for their summer vacations, they are not paying attention to what is going on in Washington. This is the Senate equivalent of the Friday afternoon document dump–the Senate wants to do this while no one is looking.

This treaty needs to be voted down. Hopefully, the Senators in Congress will realize that.

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What Would LOST Mean ?

Frank Gaffney posted an article at Townhall.com about the Law Of The Sea Treaty (LOST) which may come up in the lame-duck session of the Senate at the end of the year. The treaty essentially will give the United Nations control over all waterways and set up a justice system at the United Nations that all nations would be under. In a few words, it is a direct threat to American sovereignty.

The article reports:

First, as Senator Lott once warned, ratification of LOST would commit the United States to submit to mandatory dispute resolution with respect to U.S. military and industrial operations. While LOST proponents argue that the United States will choose available arbitration mechanisms to avoid legal decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), such arbitration panels are no-less perilous for U.S. interests as the decisive, “swing” arbiters would be appointed by generally unfriendly UN-affiliated bureaucrats. The arbitration panels can also be relied upon to look to rulings by the ICJ or ITLOS to inform their own decisions.

Furthermore, while there is a LOST provision exempting “military activity” from such dispute resolution mechanisms, the Treaty makes no attempt to define “military activity,” virtually guaranteeing that such matters will be litigated – in all likelihood to our detriment – before one or another of LOST’s arbitration mechanisms. And the rulings of such arbitrators cannot be appealed.

I don’t think this is what our founding fathers had in mind.

The article concludes:

Of particular concern is the fact that LOST creates an international taxation regime. It does so by empowering the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to tax Americans for the purposes of meeting its ownadministrative costs and of globally redistributing revenue derived from the exploitation of seabed resources.

It is a travesty to portray atreaty with such clearly sovereignty-sapping provisions as an enhancement to our national sovereignty. LOST should be rejected this time – as President Ronald Reagan did thirty years ago and as Senator Lott urged twenty-five years later.

The UN has shown a definite lack of wisdom in selecting members of its Human Rights Commission, do we really want them to exercise any control over America?

 

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