Permission Slip for the Sea

By Oliver North

WASHINGTON — In his 2004 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country." Members of both parties and both houses of Congress applauded. But if the Senate votes to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — known as the Law of the Sea Treaty — or its appropriate acronym — LOST — he and his successors are going to need lots of permission slips.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan, concerned about the treaty's implications for our sovereignty and national security, formally rejected LOST because it did "not satisfy the objectives sought by the United States." In 1994, William Jefferson Clinton, eager to appease One World Government advocates in his own party and at the United Nations, negotiated a parallel "agreement" that purported to address Mr. Reagan's concerns — and urged ratification. Since then, LOST has gathered dust in the bowels of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. All that may be about to change. The deeply flawed, Soviet-era agreement giving unelected, unaccountable international bureaucrats control over 71 percent of the Earth's surface is now on a fast track to ratification.

Before casting a vote to ratify LOST, all 100 senators should read Article 314 of this onerous treaty and Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The U.N.-crafted document specifies that amendments to the treaty can be adopted — and therefore enforced — without the consent of any signatory. Yet our Constitution requires that two-thirds of our Senate concur in any treaty. Do 67 members of this Senate now want to surrender that authority to foreign governments?

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