Washington's Night Of The Living Dead: The Law Of The Sea Treaty Stirs

Like a zombie rising from the grave to stalk the living, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) has haunted Washington for the last 30 years. President Ronald Reagan refused to sign and seemingly killed the omnibus agreement. But his successors revived the misnamed “constitution of the oceans.” There is talk of a renewed push for ratification by the Obama administration and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.

LOST is one of the more obscure panaceas sold in Washington. If the issue is Chinese maritime assertiveness, Arctic oil exploration, or other maritime disputes, the answer is supposed to be LOST. Ratify the convention and international controversies will be magically resolved.

The convention is a complex, unwieldy document joining diverse ocean-related measures. LOST was fashioned when communism claimed to be gaining on capitalism, dictators of newly independent states asserted the international moral high ground, and income redistribution characterized Washington’s domestic policies.

Indeed, the convention was but one element of the “New International Economic Order” designed to promote global income redistribution, taking money from productive First World democracies and giving it to collectivist Third World autocracies. To this end, LOST established the International Seabed Authority (ISA), currently located in the hardship post of Jamaica, to regulate private ocean development, mine the seabed through an entity called “the Enterprise,” and subsidize favored nations and groups.

The ISA is a Rube Goldberg creation, with Assembly, Council, Tribunal, and assorted committees, commissions, and chambers. Most important are the rules. Complicated and seemingly endless, they were drafted to limit access to international resources and force the West to give money and technology to members of the so-called G-77, the once influential international lobby for Third World dictators (a few democracies lurked among the developing nations at the time, but not many).

Negotiations proceeded under Richard Nixon, who cared little about economics, and Jimmy Carter, who cared little about redistribution. But Ronald Reagan worried about both and refused to sacrifice U.S. sovereignty for the privilege of creating a mini-UN to mulct the American people. To the horror of international diplomats, bureaucrats, and activists, President Reagan refused to sign the final agreement in 1982.

Filled with moral indignation about capitalist outrages, the Soviet Union denounced the U.S., but also refused to sign. The Europeans emphasized their enduring love for their former colonies, which then dominated the G-77, and signed LOST—but refused to ratify the convention. Then, as collectivism collapsed throughout the communist and developing worlds, even Third World states increasingly admitted that President Reagan had been right. Private markets, not government diktats, were the key to prosperity.

Unfortunately, treaties attract U.S. diplomats like flames attract moths. It’s hard for the State Department to imagine an international agreement to which America is not part. So the Bush and Clinton administrations renegotiated the convention. The result was a set of amendments approved in 1994, which led most nations to accept the treaty.

Advocates spoke of having “fixed” the treaty. But they had not.

The document isn’t as terrible as before. However, only in Washington does “less bad” count as “good.”