Set Sail on Ocean Policy

The Law of the Sea Convention has a 19th-century-sounding name and a crucial role in the 21st. If the Bush administration had its way, the United States would have passed this important agreement by now, including this nation in the international discussions and debates over ocean navigation, use of the seabed, conservation and research.

Instead, after Republican senators, most prominently Richard Lugar of Indiana, had navigated it through the Foreign Relations Committee, it ran into opposition from those who believed the United Nations’ convention would undermine U.S. sovereignty. Though a wide range of conservative lawmakers have disputed this, opponents seem unmoved. Since then a hearing before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee produced more favorable testimony.

John F. Turner, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, affirmed the convention’s advantages to the United States there, saying, “U.S. mobility and access have been preserved and enjoyed over the past 20 years largely due to the convention’s stable, widely accepted legal framework. It would be risky to assume that it is possible to preserve indefinitely the stable situation that the United States currently enjoys.”

Indeed, if the United States does not ratify the pact this year, it could be cut out of the rewriting of the convention’s rules on navigation, fishing and seabed mining, according to news reports. The pact includes 145 parties and is the accepted standard of ocean law. In the United States, it is supported by the Navy, the congressionally chartered U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, environmental groups and, Sen. Lugar notes, many ocean industries, including oil, natural gas, shipping, fishing and underwater communication cables.

Even the one area of previous conflict, over seabed mining in areas more than 200 miles from shore, has been addressed. The convention has been around since 1982, but was objected to then by President Ronald Reagan, who was concerned about provisions concerning deep-sea mining, but he supported it otherwise, according to William Howard Taft IV, legal adviser to the State Department. Those provisions have since been improved, and Mr. Taft pointed out the treaty was considered so favorable to U.S. interests that President Reagan in 1983 ordered the government to abide by the non-deep seabed provisions of the convention.

The opposition that remains seems to distrust all international agreements. That is not only a minority stance it is also an impossible one. As long as boats cross oceans and airplanes fly, isolationist policies do not help this nation’s security and they unnecessarily impede its industry.

President Bush has been patient in allowing the objections of a small number of people to be heard, but now should urge the Senate to vote on and pass the convention. A wide range of senators would support ratification of the convention; the country should not be excluded from participating in this vital agreement because of the fears of a few.