By Paul S. Giarra
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea is as much as anything else about fundamental disagreements between the U.S. and China. The U.S. shouldn’t sign up.
UNCLOS is deeply flawed. The U.S. Senate should be deeply skeptical of claims that, because it’s an international agreement, we should therefore accede as a matter of course. One can be all for the rule of law, yet conclude that United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas has complicated rather than simplified maritime law and security.
UNCLOS enshrined customary maritime law, but it also contradicted it by extending national claims far to sea, well beyond traditional claims, in the form of sui generis Exclusive Economic Zones. By fiat, this creation of EEZs established new claims and conflicts that never before existed. This strikes me not as smart lawyering, but rather as quite a bad idea.
Somewhere along the line, proponents of UNCLOS have adopted the argument that accession itself is the standard of behavior, and that having a seat at the table is of paramount importance. This becomes particularly problematic where the United Nations is concerned.
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