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THE SENATE MUST SINK THE TREATY THAT WILL SINK THE US NAVY |
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Written by Frank Gaffney
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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
[This is a follow-up to Frank Gaffney's Losing Our
Sovereignty with LOST of last week.
Again, I could not encourage you more to contact both your Senators and
request they vote NO on this incredibly dangerous treaty's approval. ---JW]
Irony of ironies: The principal champion of the Law of the
Sea Treaty (LOST) is the United States Navy. Yet predictably few organizations
would suffer more than America's naval forces from a supranational government
of the oceans empowered by U.S. accession to that treaty.
The absurdity of this situation was on display last week as the Navy's former
senior officer, retired Chief of Naval Operations Vernon Clark, testified
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Adm. Clark waxed on about LOST as "a Magna Carta for
the oceans that guarantees navigation freedoms throughout the world's largest
maneuver space." The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of
Indiana, declared in about as many words that, if the Navy wants the treaty,
the Senate should give it to them. Period.
Fortunately, a necessary corrective was offered the next day by another
distinguished retired four-star, Adm. James "Ace" Lyons. In an
article in The Washington Times' Commentary pages, U.S.
LOST at Sea?, the former Pacific Fleet commander in chief declared:
"It is inconceivable to this naval officer why the
Senate would willingly want to forfeit its responsibility for America's freedom
of the seas to the unelected and unaccountable international agency that would
be created by ratification of LOST."
Adm. Lyons appreciates a reality apparently overlooked by those promoting the
Navy's official line on LOST: The treaty entails obligations that are at odds
with the U.S. sea services' routine operations; involve sweeping commitments to
protect the "marine environment" the Navy will almost certainly
contravene; and institute several tribunals to prosecute complaints that arise
in these or other areas.
Of all institutions, the Navy should be alive to the dangers that such a treaty
entails. After all, the service's civilian leader, Secretary of the Navy Donald
Winter, for one has expressed grave concerns about the impact domestic
environmentalists and their litigiousness currently have on Navy and
Marine Corps' operations.
Such challenges are likely to pale by comparison with the edicts handed down by
multilateral tribunals whose deciding votes are, in every instance, selected by
international bureaucrats (in the case of one arbitral panel, by the U.N.
secretary-general himself).
A recent paper written by Dr. Jeremy Rabkin for the American
Enterprise Institute under the provocative title, Do
We Really Want to Place the U.S. Navy Under International Judicial Supervision?
makes clear that, by so doing, we would open ourselves to expanded attacks via
"Lawfare" - the technique of using treaties, courts and international
law as an asymmetric weapon against us:
"It is estimated that the United States has more practicing lawyers than
all other countries put together. Separation of powers and an active,
independent judiciary invite challenges to decisions of officials in the
executive branch, just as we scrutinize and challenge so many other
institutions in our society. What that means is that it is much harder for the
United States to shrug off international legal claims than it may be for more
centralized or repressive countries such as China."
Faced with this worrisome prospect, the Navy's lawyers blithely contend the Law
of the Sea Treaty permits "military activities" to be exempted from
the mandatory dispute resolution mechanisms. On this basis, they believe the
U.S. can continue with impunity practices flatly prohibited by various treaty
provisions.
(These include, for example, requirements that the seas be
used and marine research be performed exclusively for peaceful purposes;
submarines transit territorial waters on the surface; and no collection of
intelligence take place within those waters).
What would happen if, despite our protests, the treaty's arbitral panels wind
up being used as other LOST enthusiasts clearly intend, as a means of
interfering with the Navy's activities?
How about if the arbitrators assert their jurisdiction and
judge the Navy - or perhaps, as Adm. Lyons suggested, civilian contractors
essential to equipping its forces or their logistics - to be violating one or
more provisions of the accord? A uniformed lawyer recently had a remarkable, if
wholly impracticable, answer: "We'll abrogate the treaty."
Could it be that the Navy's official stance on LOST is less an accurate
indication of the merits of that treaty than a measure of the increasingly
parlous state of the nation's sea service?
In a characteristically insightful Sept. 21 New York Times
op-ed, Lost
at Sea, best-selling author and visiting professor at Annapolis, Robert
Kaplan wrote:
"China['s]... production and acquisition of submarines
is now 5 times that of America's. Many military analysts feel it is mounting a
quantitative advantage in naval technology that could erode our qualitative
one. Yet the Chinese have been buying smart rather than across-the-board. In
addition to submarines, Beijing has focused on naval mines, ballistic missiles
that can hit moving objects at sea, and technology that blocks G.P.S.
satellites. The goal is 'sea denial': dissuading American carrier strike groups
from closing in on the Asian mainland wherever and whenever we like."
The fact Adm. Ace Lyons felt compelled to do the almost unthinkable - break
ranks with Navy colleagues of decades duration - is a shot across the
proverbial bow:
Those in the Senate tempted to justify their inattention to
the details of the Law of the Sea Treaty on the grounds that the military
"wants" it now must fulfill their constitutional responsibility to
provide rigorous quality control on this accord.
If they do so, they are bound to act as Ronald Reagan did
and reject this defective treaty, sparing both the Navy and the nation its
negative repercussions.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for President
Ronald Reagan. He is president of the Center for Security Policy.
His testimony at last week's Foreign Relations Committee hearing can be
reviewed at www.RejectLOST.org.
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