Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Wednesday that the freedom of the sea once guaranteed by the British Royal Navy and then the U.S. Navy should be in the hands of United Nations bureaucrats in Montego Bay, Jamaica, enforcers of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) he said we must ratify.
It used to be that a carrier battle group led by 90,000 tons of American diplomacy was sufficient to ensure that no nation could threaten our freedom of navigation and that of other countries.
But the nation whose motto was "we win, they lose" under President Reagan is replacing it with President Obama's "mother, may we?"
"If we are not a party to this treaty and can't deal with it at the table, then we have to deal with it at sea with our naval power, and once that happens, we clearly increase the risk for confrontation," Panetta told members of the committee.
Once upon a time, other nations were afraid of us; now we're afraid of them.
LOST would codify the "global test" Kerry uses to assess the validity of U.S. activities. For example, Communist China, a LOST signatory, contends the treaty bans the Proliferation Security Initiative under which we can stop and search ships on the high seas suspected of transporting WMDs on behalf of or for use by terrorists.
What would we do if China's claim to undisputed sovereignty over the 1 million square miles of the South China Sea were honored by this new international body to which we would be subservient? Would the U.S. Navy quietly keep off their grass?
LOST establishes an International Seabed Authority with the power to regulate 70% of the earth's surface, placing seabed mining, fishing rights, deep-sea oil exploration and even the activities of the U.S. Navy under control of a global bureaucracy.
It even provides for a global tax that would be paid directly to the ISA by companies seeking to develop resources in and under the world's oceans.
The treaty was originally finalized in the 1980s but rejected by Reagan over concerns it would cede U.S. sovereignty to the ISA and could force the United States to hand over sensitive technology to Soviet-allied states.
"One of the more nefarious and insidious of its provisions is Article 82, which requires the U.S. to forfeit royalties generated from oil and gas development on the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles — an area known as the 'extended continental shelf,'" notes the Heritage Foundation's Mike Brownfield.
Treaty opponent Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., cited the work of the U.S. Interagency Extended Continental Shelf Task Force — a government group whose mission is to map the area off U.S. coasts beyond 200 nautical miles — that estimates mineral wealth in the billions to trillions of dollars. Included are supplies of rare earths required by high-tech and military applications.
That wealth and technology would be turned over to a U.N. body whose mission would be to redistribute it to thugs, tyrants and postage-stamp countries of the world.
"This is the first time in history that an international organization — the U.N. in this case — would possess taxing authority over this country," Inhofe says.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Kerry committee that opposition to LOST is based in ideology and mythology, not in facts, evidence or the consequences of our continuing failure to accede to the treaty."
Fact is, LOST would be an incalculable loss of wealth and sovereignty. Those who wish to plunder our wealth and neuter our power should be told to get lost.
SOURCE: INVESTORS.COM
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