Law of the Sea Convention (LOST) would undercut U.S. sovereignty.

As Arctic Opens Up, Unlikely Alliance
Helps to Persuade Senate Skeptics

By NEIL KING JR.
August 22, 2007; Page A6

WASHINGTON -- What do the Nature Conservancy, Exxon Mobil Corp., offshore oil drillers, the fishing, shipping and diamond industries, President Bush and the U.S. Navy have in common?

Answer: They all support a little-known but highly contentious international treaty -- set to come before the U.S. Senate next month for ratification -- that governs nearly every aspect of ocean law, from underwater mineral rights to access to shipping lanes.

The 208-page Law of the Sea Convention, debated since the 1930s and sealed in 1982, has stirred passions for decades in Washington. Critics in the Senate have repeatedly blocked its ratification, saying the pact would undercut U.S. sovereignty. Supporters tout the treaty as a pillar of international law and key to long-term U.S. security. The U.S. is now one of fewer than 40 countries, and the only significant power, not to have joined.

That is now almost certain to change, for three reasons: scarce energy sources, the thawing Arctic ice cap and the U.S. Navy's desire for unfettered access to the world's seaways. These motivations have helped galvanize an odd coalition of environmentalists, oil interests and military brass to persuade enough senators to back the treaty.

The renewed interest has grown more intense amid a scramble to claim undersea territories in the resource-rich Arctic.

Looking to buttress its legal case for ownership of a massive undersea ridge, Russia planted its flag earlier this month on a seabed more than 15,000 feet below the North Pole. Canada, asserting its disputed rights, plans a new fleet of ice-breaking ships and a deepwater Arctic port; yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper asserted his country's claim to the so-called Northwest Passage along its northern coast during a meeting with Mr. Bush in Quebec. And Denmark is sending a research team to push its own claim to undersea holdings that extend far from Greenland.

All this has put the U.S. in a jam. The Law of the Sea Treaty allows countries -- even nonsignatories -- exclusive rights to the seabed extending 200 nautical miles from their shores. Countries can then present evidence to claim rights to any of their continental shelf beyond that. Claims and disputes fall to one of several arbitration bodies established by the treaty. Without being a party to the treaty, the U.S. has no clear way -- short of threatening force -- to assert its claims.

U.S. officials said the stakes are literally vast. In the Arctic alone, the U.S. could lay claim to more than 200,000 square miles of additional undersea territories. The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy is in the region to continue mapping the ocean floor to help strengthen the U.S. case. By some estimates, the country's total additional undersea holdings, including extensions off the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, could exceed 300,000 square miles, or roughly twice the size of California.

Recent estimates have found the Arctic could contain the equivalent of more than 400 billion barrels of oil and gas and massive amounts of another potential energy source, crystallized methane. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the amount of carbon found in hydrate form world-wide is "conservatively" twice the amount found in all the world's fossil fuels.

Increased thawing of the Arctic ice cap is also beginning to open up seaways, such as the long-heralded Northwest Passage that is expected to revolutionize shipping. Still blocked by ice much of the year, the polar pathway linking China to Northern Europe and the Northwest U.S. is about 5,000 miles shorter than routes through the Suez or Panama canals. Canada for years has asserted its sovereignty over the passage, a claim the U.S. and other countries dispute.

Environmentalists back the Law of the Sea Treaty because of its provisions for controlling pollution, from ships and underwater exploration.

Policy makers in Washington have generally been slow to champion the treaty. President Reagan opposed the original pact's undersea-mining rules as biased against U.S. interests, a position that still carries much weight with many conservatives. President Clinton signed the treaty after those rules were amended, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to go along. In 2004, the measure withered again on Capitol Hill.

Under pressure from oil groups and diplomats in his administration, Mr. Bush in May endorsed the pact's ratification for the first time. The heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines followed suit with an unusual joint letter urging Senate passage.

The pact still has some vocal critics in Washington. Former Reagan adviser Frank Gaffney calls it "a socialist manifesto for the redistribution of wealth." Now the head of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank in Washington, Mr. Gaffney says "no senator who has actually read this treaty would vote for it."

Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, one of at least a dozen conservatives who oppose the treaty, calls it "a disaster" and vows to work to block it from a full Senate vote. Other critics say the treaty will weaken U.S. efforts to interdict illicit shipments of nuclear materials and entangle the armed forces in a web of international regulations. As for the Arctic's resource potential, they say the U.S. could work out an accommodation with the half-dozen other nations with a stake there.

The Navy, the pact's most ardent supporter, dismisses such claims. "This for us is global mobility. That's what it's all about," says Rear Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the Navy's judge advocate general.

The treaty is now the world's primary legal blueprint for what constitutes international waters and airspace. It grants all navies the right to "innocent passage" through the world's seaways. Yet dozens of countries, from Ecuador and Somalia to China, South Korea and Vietnam, continue to try to limit the rights of warships to pass through their waters.

Joining the pact, Adm. MacDonald said, would give the U.S. a forum to contest such claims. "We need this treaty to lock in the rights we already have."

Administration officials also argue that Washington's failure to sign on to the treaty has, in fact, undercut the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S. effort to enlist international help to cut off shipments of nuclear and missile technology to countries such as Iran or North Korea.

Two countries that have declined to join PSI, Malaysia and Indonesia, recently cited Washington's spurning of the Law of the Sea Treaty as their main reason.

Others argue that the U.S. is already losing out in what promises to be a multibillion-dollar opportunity: the undersea mining of copper, zinc, cobalt and even diamonds. John Norton Moore, a top legal expert on the law of the sea at the University of Virginia, said Russian and Chinese firms have already laid claim to some of the biggest undersea mines in the world. Without joining the treaty, the U.S. has no forum in which to stake a claim.

"Our sitting on the sidelines all these years has already cost us," he said.