The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)is the biggest giveaway of American sovereignty and resources since Jimmy Carter’s Panama Canal Treaty. It creates a global tax on American companies and turns the riches of the oceans, including oil, gas and minerals, over to the United Nations.

 

Defending America? The U.S. Navy is now committed to a "global maritime network" under "hundreds of flags."

The 202-page treaty document was described by the late leftist Senator Alan Cranston as "the most far-reaching and comprehensive system created thus far by the global community." UNCLOS mandates a global tax on corporations which exploit ocean resources, an International Seabed Authority to collect the revenue, and an International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea to govern ocean affairs. It also:

• Provides a backdoor for implementing the global warming treaty.
• Permits U.N. bodies to regulate and restrict U.S. military activities on the high seas.

UNCLOS was written by members and supporters of the World Federalist movement, a group dedicated to world government through passage of treaties and expansion of the U.N. They included Harvard Law Professor Louis Sohn, socialist Elisabeth Mann Borgese, the U.N.’s "Mother of the Oceans," and Sam and Miriam Levering of the "Neptune Group."

UNCLOS was negotiated under the Jimmy Carter Administration and one part of it was renegotiated by the Clinton Administration. Some supporters of UNCLOS insist that while President Ronald Reagan rejected the treaty in 1982, the measure was "fixed" by Clinton’s 1994 side agreement on seabed mining. But the new book on Reagan’s diaries includes an entry from the former president in which he talks about refusing to sign UNCLOS "even without seabed mining provisions." He opposed UNCLOS on broad grounds.

James L. Malone, speaking as Reagan’s special representative for Law of the Sea negotiations, delivered testimony in 1995 rejecting UNCLOS as badly flawed. It is not true that Reagan rejected the treaty only because of the controversial seabed mining provisions, he said. Rather, "The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign," Malone asserted.

Reagan rejected the socialist concept behind the Law of the Sea Treaty.

The treaty has never come to the Senate floor for a vote because of strong opposition from conservatives. Senator Jesse Helms, longtime chairman of the Foreign Relation Committee, blocked it for many years. Then-Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist also kept it away from the Senate floor, insisting that its flaws be exposed and studied by the Senate. The liberal Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 moved the measure up for action. Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and his advisor and staff director, Antony Blinken, a former Clinton Administration official, have decided that now is the time to act. Biden is also being pressured to move the International Criminal Court treaty forward.

The Bush Administration has supported UNCLOS for several years, but its decision to back the pact is shrouded in controversy. President Bush was asked about the White House position on the treaty in 2004 and he then expressed surprise that the State Department had maneuvered Vice President Dick Cheney into endorsing it. This year, however, he issued a statement in support of it.

As indicated, UNCLOS establishes a new international legal regime, including an International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and an International Seabed Authority, to govern activities on, over, and under the world's oceans. Also regarded as an environmental treaty that provides a backdoor for implementing the unratified Kyoto Protocol or global warming treaty, the provisions of UNCLOS would permit international rules and regulations governing economic and industrial activities on the remaining land area of the world in order to combat perceived pollution dangers. The treaty’s provision for taxing U.S. and other corporations which mine the ocean establishes the first independent source of revenue for the U.N.

ASI President Cliff Kincaid was in contact with Reagan’s UNCLOS negotiator James L. Malone into 1996, as he continued to warn against acceptance of the pact.  He passed away several years ago.

While recognizing the work of those who negotiated the pact, Malone said that:

• UNCLOS is "potentially hostile to American interests" and "sets up yet another complex and troublesome U.N. bureaucracy to administer the oceans."
• Its provisions give Third World countries "preferential treatment at the expense of American interests and force U.S. mining firms to share their profits and provide free mine sites to a new U.N. agency."
• The seabed mining provisions were "inadequately corrected" and the "collectivist ideologies of a new repudiated system of global central planning" are "still imbedded in the treaty…"
• The "bankrupt" concepts of the New International Economic Order are still "maintained" in the treaty.
• The U.N. bureaucracy created by the treaty will inevitably "grow" over the years.
• The designation of international waters as the "common heritage of mankind" reflects the "collectivist structure" of the treaty.
• The "dispute resolution" provisions of the treaty are defective.
• Ultimately, it is the U.S. Navy, not a treaty, "that will guarantee American interests." The U.S. has "protected its navigational interests for over 200 years without a comprehensive law of the sea treaty."

Malone told Kincaid in correspondence that he was very concerned about the looming issue of "global taxation" and warned that radical environmentalists were anticipating "new taxes" for organizations like the U.N. coming from ocean fishing and transportation and seabed mining. He warned about the "anti-capitalist, socialist underpinnings" of UNCLOS and other U.N. initiatives.

America’s Survival, Inc. President Cliff Kincaid

An official U.N. brochure for UNCLOS states that, "The greatest threat to the health of the marine environment comes not from oil spills at sea or ocean dumping, but from human activities on land." It adds: "Oils from land-based sources, such as refined petroleum products or their derivatives, are equally harmful. They enter the marine environment by various routes from a variety of sources, including discharges and emissions from oil wells, refining and storage facilities, and from industrial and agricultural run-off. Ingested or absorbed through skin or gills, these oils are toxic to marine life and cause lasting damage to the fur and feathers of many marine species. They can also be harmful to human health, tainting seafood and contaminating water supplies." ^[1]

One former Law of the Sea Treaty negotiator told us: 

"There are a lot of pollution provisions in the convention. It sounds like they can do more with it than the negotiators intended. Since they didn’t get their global warming treaty (ratified by the U.S.), I worry about treaty provisions on emissions and anthropogenic (human-caused) inputs into the ocean that cause pollution. They could turn this into a global warming issue. Could they bring a case against us because we have pipes that put out sewage or air pollution that finds its way into the ocean?"

As a treaty which covers over 70 percent of the world’s surface, as well as "human activities on land" which can affect the oceans, UNCLOS can be used by the United Nations and other governments and non-governmental organizations to try to force the U.S. to implement the provisions of the unratified global warming treaty by reducing the discharge of industrial carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This legal strategy could dramatically affect the industrial, economic and military activities of the U.S. 

Radical activists have already announced that they intend to use UNCLOS to sue the United States on the grounds that the U.S. emits too many greenhouse gas emissions which they say have polluted the oceans of the world. The use of UNCLOS for this purpose was openly advertised by Dr. Williams C.G. Burns in the article entitled, "Potential Causes of Action for Climate Change Damages in International Fora: The Law of the Sea Convention."  Litigation against the U.S. is "unavoidable," it argues, and UNCLOS "may prove to be a primary battleground for climate change issues in the future." The use of UNCLOS for this purpose was the subject of a panel at the March 28-31 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law.

America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) requested the opportunity to testify about the insidious origins of UNCLOS before Senator Joseph Biden’s Foreign Relations Committee, in a hearing scheduled on September 27, 2007. ASI can testify as to the background of the treaty and who actually wrote it, after having researched the matter at the U.N. in New York City and at the Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College in North Carolina, where the personal papers of World Federalists Sam and Miriam Levering are housed. However, Biden responded with a letter ignoring the request and restating his support of the treaty. ASI sent a follow-up letter to Biden asking for the opportunity to testify. ^[2]

Americans, not Russians, were the first to the Pole.

The World Federalists, who played a key role over many years in drafting and promoting the treaty, admitted the obvious in 1997 -- that UNCLOS brings into being "the elements of a limited world government." [3] The World Federalists declared that, by "establishing global governance" over the seabeds of the oceans and by stipulating that mining of those areas beyond national jurisdiction "should require payment of royalties" to a United Nations body, UNCLOS has created "a funding resource that would be independent of voluntary contributions by the treaty member nations."

Hence, through UNCLOS, global taxes on the U.S. would come into effect.

In the World Federalist Association booklet, "The Genius of Federation: Why World Federation is The Answer to Global Problems," the group describes how UNCLOS and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are both important steps on the road to world government. It says that a "world federation," a euphemism for world government, can be achieved by advancing "step by step toward global governance, using the U.N….Let the U.N. establish new agencies such as an International Criminal Court (which can try individuals for violations of international law) or a U.N. Arms Control and disarmament Agency (which can set up a program for arms reduction with certification capabilities and punishments for individuals who try to defy it." The booklet goes on to say that "An organization is already in the process of being developed to control the exploitation of ocean resources, and similar agencies could be created to govern Antarctica and the moon." (emphasis added). This is a reference to UNCLOS.

By adding more power, authority and functions to the United Nations, "national sovereignty would be gradually eroded until it is no longer an issue." ^[4]

Elisabeth Mann Borgese was one of the socialist authors of UNCLOS.

ASI discovered, by examining original source material in the United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, that the critically important groundwork on the treaty took place in "Pacem in Maribus" (Peace in the Oceans) conferences organized by the German-born activist Elisabeth Mann Borgese. A radical socialist who admired Karl Marx, Borgese is also credited with helping to write the pact.

Borgese’s role deserves special scrutiny. The youngest daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann,^[5] Borgese was a member of the World Federalist Movement, openly favored world government, wrote for The Nation magazine, and was a member of a "Committee to Frame a World Constitution." She served as Director of the International Center for Ocean Development and Chair of the International Oceans Institute at Dalhousie University in Canada and was Honorary President of World Federalists of Canada.  

In TheOceanic Circle, still available from the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Borgese wrote about how she and Arvid Pardo wrote a chapter for Reshaping the International Order: A Report to the Club of Rome,  compiled under the direction of Jan Tinbergen.^[6] The Borgese-Pardo chapter was entitled, "The New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Law of the Sea," and "tried to indicate how the emerging law of the Sea Convention could reinforce the goals of the developing countries in a new international economic order."

Borgese identified several "major issues" on which UNCLOS and the NIEO "could reinforce each other." These included:

• Probably the "most important [concept] of all" – UNCLOS’s recognition of the oceans being the "Common Heritage of Mankind," thereby placing poor countries on an "equal" relationship with advanced countries and "a right to share in the resources that had been declared to be the Common Heritage of Mankind."
• Creation of Exclusive Economic Zones, giving coastal states control "over all resources and economic uses in a 200-mile zone."
• Establishment of the International Seabed Authority, giving developing countries a role in "financial decision-making" on a global level.

The evidence that ASI brought back from the U.N. in New York includes that:

• The treaty was designed to counter "a new thrust of imperialism" and result in the "redistribution of the wealth created by the development of ocean resources…"
• The "Ocean Development Tax," proposed by the Peace in the Oceans conference, would be imposed on offshore oil, minerals, shipping, fish, ocean technology, prospecting, the laying of communications cables on the ocean floor and ocean dumping.
• The treaty’s declaration of the oceans being the "common heritage of mankind" is a socialist or communist concept that involves "social property" and can be found "in the works of Marx and Engels."
• Part XI of the treaty, devoted to the concept of the "common heritage of mankind," was considered by Borgese to be able to make a contribution to "generating new financial means for the eradication of poverty and of achieving an equitable distribution of the benefits of growth."
• The International Seabed Authority of the treaty was considered by Borgese to be "the first institutional embodiment of the principle of the common heritage of mankind," is "a new type of international organization which is itself economically productive and generates an international income," and "introduces the principle of international taxation, not only on activities in the international arena but even on activities in areas under national jurisdiction…"
• Developing countries would be "entitled" to their "fair share of the common heritage of mankind…"
• Borgese said the Law of the Sea Convention "was and remains the only global legal instrument where the international community agreed on the implementation of international taxation."
• Borgese viewed international taxation as "part of the new economic system needed for the implementation of sustainable development in the oceans and the global economy," and the Law of the Sea treaty "can be considered a model for far wider application."
• Borgese believed that the treaty was a "precedent for the imposition of an international tax" and that, "If international agreement could be reached on this form of taxation, agreement might be reached on other forms as well."
• Borgese and one of her co-authors, David Krieger, envisioned the treaty creating "a new kind of international organization" that could lead to global management of outer space and satellite technology, energy technologies, and weather control and modification.
• Borgese and Krieger believed that the principle of the "common heritage of mankind" could also be applied to "the earth and its resources" and ultimately result in "a system of world communities which will cement world peace in a way not known in past centuries."

Louis Sohn of Harvard helped write UNCLOS.
He favored world government financed by a U.N. "revenue system."

The Guilford College papers demonstrate the activities that engaged Sam and Miriam Levering as they wrote and promoted this treaty. The Leverings,a husband and wife team, both of them World Federalists, helped draft UNCLOS and lobbied for it through a non-governmental organization called the Neptune Group. The Friends Committee on National Legislation reports, "During the 1970s, Sam and Miriam worked out of FCNL's office as they diligently and patiently advocated to keep the oceans part of ‘the common heritage of mankind’ and negotiated with governments on the treaty's final language." ^[7]

Significantly, FCNL reports that the Leverings "entered the fray in 1970 as Congress debated the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources bill that promoted a nationalistic approach" to mining. The amazing story of their lobbying effort is told in the book, Citizen Action for Global Change: The Neptune Group and the Law of the Sea by Ralph B. Levering and Miriam L. Levering, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1999.^[8]

The book  describes how Sam and Miriam Levering decided decades ago that because most countries "strongly opposed giving the UN supreme power in the military area," they had to work in "areas such as law of the sea that were less subject to appeals to compatriots based on fear and national pride than military security was."

In other words, because the subject of the oceans seemed so divorced from traditional military matters and less controversial, there was more opportunity to use this issue to advance their cause of world government. Their plan has borne fruit, as the Pentagon now finds itself in the uncomfortable and strange position of backing this world government initiative.

Finally, ASI uncovered information that Harvard Law Professor and international lawyer Louis B. Sohn,who himselfbelieved in and advocated world government, was a key author of UNCLOS. He offered a detailed proposal to transform the United Nations into  a world government in his book, World Peace Through World Law. He declared that he wanted this world government to maintain hundreds of thousands of troops, military bases and be armed with nuclear weapons. The purpose, he said, would be to disarm "each and very nation and to deter or suppress any attempted international violence."

Of course, this "world authority" would also require a "United Nations Revenue System," drawing taxes from "each nation" of the world, he said.

He viewed UNCLOS as a major step down this road.

U.S. Navy and Coast Guard officials claim the treaty is necessary to protect navigational rights. But as James L. Malone countered, "Ultimately, the global protection of U.S. navigational rights depends upon the perceived capability and will of the United States to protect those rights." But does the U.S. still have the perceived capability and will to protect those rights? Since Malone’s testimony, we have witnessed a dramatic decline in the number of Navy ships, from 594 under Reagan to only 276 today. 

Making a pitch for UNCLOS at the American Enterprise Institute on July 17, 2007, Susan Biniaz of the State Department let the truth slip out. "We don't have the capacity to be challenging every maritime claim throughout the world solely through the use of naval power. And [we] certainly can't use the Navy to meet all the economic interests," she said. With comments like these, it is not surprising that some U.S. corporations have decided to support the pact. They figure the U.N. is better than nothing. But can the U.S. remain a superpower by passing a treaty and hiring more lawyers to defend America before international panels and tribunals?

The U.S. Navy’s 2007 "Strategic Communications Guide," or Playbook, talks about getting up to a 313-ship U.S. Navy. At the same time, it proposes a "global Maritime Security network rooted in a strong partnership of like-minded nations." This would be, it says, a 1,000-ship Navy "under hundreds of flags" and designed to "maintain an increased level of international security…" It declares one of the Navy’s "focus areas" to be securing the "global community" and outlines a "vision" that includes enduring "international naval relationships."  ^[9]

The Pentagon is obviously not immune to the influence of international lawyers. Navy Commander James Kraska, who handled oceans policy on the Joint Staff of the Pentagon, was among those who paid tribute to Louis Sohn of Harvard, the UNCLOS writer who co-authored World Peace Through World Law, the plan for transforming the U.N. into a world government. A thesis written back in 1996 by a student at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, was on the subject of establishing a U.N. Navy. British Professor Gwyn Prins, who served as a consultant in the Office of the NATO Secretary-General, has long advocated such a force. 

This kind of thinking is why many conservatives argue that the Pentagon has gone dangerously off-course. They say the answer to UNCLOS is building up the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard and making our military once again into the "Law ON the Sea."  On the other hand, if we want America to be defended by international lawyers and a U.N. Navy, rather than U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, UNCLOS makes perfect sense.

For her part, Borgese didn’t buy U.S. military arguments that UNCLOS guarantees freedom of navigation on the high seas. In fact, her position was that "the doctrine of the freedom of the seas has been replaced by that of the common heritage of mankind" in the treaty. ^[10]Stated another way, the concept of "High Seas Freedom," ^[11]she said, has been superseded by UNCLOS, which regulates access to the oceans in "the area beyond national jurisdiction."

Borgese believed that UNCLOS prohibits the ability of nuclear submarines to rove freely through the world’s oceans and that the measure could be used to "eliminate the nuclear denizens of the deep and to protect the oceans as our common global heritage."

In an article co-authored with an international lawyer, ^[12]Borgese noted how UNCLOS stipulates that the oceans "shall be reserved for peaceful purposes." (emphasis in original) ^[13] and that "any threat or use of force, inconsistent with the United Nations Charter, is prohibited." ^[14]

She added, "In 1982, when UNCLOS was opened for signature, it was not certain how this applied to the deployment of nuclear weapons. However, since then, the International Court of Justice, in its historic advisory opinion of 1996, determined that ‘the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.’  Nuclear weapons deployed on submarines are in a state of readiness to use and are thus a threat of use, according to the definition given by the ICJ, and illegal." (emphasis added).

The Russian claim to the North Pole started a panic among some politicians and the press, who think the U.S. response should be to dicker with the Russians over Arctic riches before a United Nations panel established by the Law of the Sea Treaty. The United States must ratify the treaty quickly, they say, so we don't get left out. In fact, the U.S. already has valid claims to the North Pole region, under the "Doctrine of Discovery" legal principle, and accession to UNCLOS could sink any chance of America ever cashing in on the black gold.

The Russian ploy was old-style disinformation that shows President Vladimir Putin hasn't forgotten his old KGB days. As part of his effort to resurrect Russia as the superpower it was during Soviet times, he sent an expedition to the Pole to stake a claim.

In fact, Russian scientists have themselves conceded the Americans were there first, in 1908 and 1909, depending on which American team one believes actually physically reached the Pole. Russell W. Gibbons of the Frederick Cook Society notes that Soviet/Russian encyclopedias and authorities give Cook credit for discovering the Pole. The website of the Cook Society features a quotation from Dr. V.S. Koryakin, Polar historian of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as saying in 1993, "There is no ground to question the validity of Dr. Cook's assertion that he reached the North Pole" in 1908. Robert E. Peary, a U.S. Navy commander, led a mission that reached the Pole in 1909. On the Peary mission, it was his aide, Matthew Henson, a black explorer, who planted the American flag in the ice. A website in his honor refers to him as the co-discoverer of the North Pole and a U.S. postage stamp recognized their achievement.

The bogus Russian claim to the North Pole is modeled after Stalin’s claim to the region. This is a publicity poster from the USSR Pavilion on the Arctic at the 1939 World’s Fair. It is from the book, Red Arctic, by John McCannon.

The point is that the Russians have conceded that Americans were there first! And the Americans even planted an American flag there. U.S. nuclear-powered Navy submarines traveled under the Pole in the 1950s, also claiming the territory for America. All this is a matter of official and public record, though the U.S. State Department does not seem to recognize it.

But when Russia staked a claim there in August, the American explorations were quickly forgotten and supporters of UNCLOS suddenly declared Russia would get the Arctic riches unless we quickly ratified the treaty. This claim is as bogus as the Russian expedition.

As to what the Russians actually did on their North Pole visit, we saw photos and video of Russian mini-subs and a Russian flag on a seabed. But it is not at all clear any of this occurred under or near the Pole. Russian television channel Rossiya aired the footage, only to have it backfire when a 13-year-old Finnish boy noticed the subs looked like those in James Cameron's movie about the Titanic. Reuters used the Russian TV clips, later acknowledging they were of the search for the Titanic and had nothing to do with the North Pole visit. NBC Nightly News used one of the clips as well, but didn't acknowledge making an error. So was the Russian flag planted under the Pole? It's hard to know.We do know Rossiya came under the control of Putin's regime when he installed Alexander Zdanovich, spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), as deputy director of the company that runs the channel. The FSB, of course, used to be known as the KGB, notorious for disinformation operations designed to confuse and mislead the world about Soviet intentions.

Confusion is exactly what has occurred after the Russian claim. Many papers, including the New York Times, have said we must ratify UNCLOS to get in on the Arctic action. Never mind that the Times even opposes limited drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But how exactly does passing UNCLOS cut us in on the action anyway? It would effectively undercut our historic claims to the region and turn the matter over to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). This body, created by UNCLOS, has 21 members from various countries.

It's true the CLCS rejected some Russian claims to the Arctic region in 2002. It did so with information provided by the United States, proving we didn't need to be a treaty member to play a role. But if the Senate ratifies this treaty in September and a decision subsequently goes against our interests, there will be enormous pressure for the U.S. government to comply. Indeed, the United States would be accused of violating international law if we rejected an UNCLOS finding.

Perhaps this is the trap Putin has set for us.