Senator John Kerry Wants U.S. to Get ‘L.O.S.T.’

by BMCWrites | May 8, 2009 at 09:10 am

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It appears Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) wants the United States to get “L.O.S.T.” Today, he’s pushing for quick passage of the controversial United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty.

According to a report published yesterday in The New York Times, Senator Kerry — who, by the way, served in Vietnam — is busy crafting a strategy to ratify the long-stalled measure this year and using the ruse of melting sea ice as a reason to justify acting quickly on the measure.

Rather than reinvent the “wheel” of explanation about why L.O.S.T. is a bad idea for this country, I refer you to an effort by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. In the conclusion of his August 2006 article on the subject, Ridenour summed up the terms of L.O.S.T. that will do more than simply impact lawbreakers on the high seas:

Sufficient concerns about the implications for U.S. national security and U.S. environmental policy exist that the United States should be wary of acceding to the Law of the Sea Treaty.

These concerns, in summary, include:

Article 20 would extend the surfacing requirement to vessels not covered under previous conventions, including those that would otherwise qualify for innocent passage such as unmanned vessels used for mine detection and other purposes.

The Law of the Sea Treaty would impede the U.S.’s ability to capture international terrorists and confiscate weapons of mass destruction through detention of ships on the high seas. The treaty specifies that the boarding of ship is not justified except when a ship is believed to be engaged in piracy, unauthorized broadcasting, drug trafficking, is obscuring its nationality or shows no nationality. Detention of ships in a manner other than those prescribed in the treaty would subject such actions to the judgment of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany.

Article 88’s stipulation that “the high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes” and Article 301’s requirement that parties to the convention refrain from “any threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” may be used to impede U.S. military operations at sea. The Treaty’s opt-out provisions for military activities would only free the U.S. from the requirement to participate in a specific dispute resolution process, not dispute resolution itself.

Need to know more about L.O.S.T? Check out previous BMW posts on the subject below: