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Panel debates sea treaty impact

A three-person panel debated Tuesday whether the Senate should ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international maritime treaty the United States has yet to sign.

An American Enterprise Institute panel, called “The Law of the Sea Treaty: Help or Hindrance?” discussed how U.S ratification of the treaty could affect the military’s ability to execute the war on terrorism and how the agreement might affect U.S. sovereignty and security.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Crowley, the State Department’s Susan Biniaz and Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at George Mason University’s law school, spoke on the topic and took questions from the audience. Biniaz and Crowley support the treaty, while Rabkin fervently argues against the United States signing the pact.

The lengthy treaty covers myriad issues related to the world’s oceans, including fishing, mining, navigation, shipping and other activities. The Bush Administration has said the treaty would enhance security on the high seas, and says it hopes the Senate approves it. Critics, however, including some conservatives, argue that ratifying the treaty could hinder naval counterterrorism efforts by subjecting U.S. military personnel to review by foreign magistrates.

Crowley, a lawyer and commander of the Coast Guard’s 9th District, encompassing the Great Lakes, said the treaty brings a “framework” to conduct conversations at sea in the same language — the language of warships and flag state responsibility on the high seas, he explained.

“We must be able to hold nations accountable for their own flags,” the admiral said.

He added that the treaty has “no intention” to govern military activities at sea.

However, Rabkin argued that what constitutes a “military activity” at sea is hard to define, especially if the definition is decided by an international tribunal.

In a July 2 Washington Post column, Rabkin and coauthor Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general and now a Harvard law professor, wrote that U.S. support for the treaty will hurt existing counterterrorism efforts on the high seas.

Under the terms of the treaty, the legality of seizures made by Coast Guard and Navy ships would be subject to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, based in Hamburg, Germany, and a five-person international arbitration panel. The United States and the flag state of the seized vessel would have input in selecting some of the arbitrators. However, Goldsmith and Rabkin write that the U.N. secretary general or the president of the Hamburg tribunal would select the key fifth representative. This system, they argue, “would pose awkward questions to the United States about the evidence behind a seizure, how we gathered it and who vouches for the information.”

But Biniaz, the State Department’s assistant legal adviser for oceans, international environmental and scientific affairs, responded to Rabkin’s arguments by saying that the treaty is the “most manageable” option to get the necessary rights at sea that are in the best interest of the United States. She explained the United States, as the largest maritime power and as a coastal state itself, should have a stake in the agreement.

In a column published in the New York Times July 14, retired Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark and former chief U.N. delegate Thomas Pickering voiced their support for the treaty’s ratification.

Clark and Pickering argued that U.S. military and economic interests will benefit from ratification.

“We can guide and influence the interpretation of rules, protecting our interests and deflecting inconsistent interpretations,” they wrote.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on the treaty sometime this fall. Ratification of the agreement requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate.