Conservative critics of UNCLOS fail to understand that failure to ratify the treaty will subject U.S. to even worse regulations and restrictions

The drama so far is thick with irony. These criticisms from the political right have not grasped the real threat to U.S. oceans interests, which is the relentless campaign by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace, in conjunction with certain coastal states, including some of our closest allies such as Canada and Australia, to unilaterally impose maritime rules to restrict international shipping on the oceans and aircraft overflight of the seas for purported environmental reasons. John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, describes the partnership between NGOs and some like-minded governments as “norming,” in which “civil society” combines its efforts with the most politically liberal governments to develop international law in opposition to U.S. interests. Many of the most progressive maritime rules emerging from this process are inconsistent with the navigational freedoms protected in the convention, and the U.S. relies on those freedoms to ensure submarines can transit through the world’s chokepoints and launch military operations from ships serving as “sea bases” in the littoral regions of the world. Similarly, less well-intentioned nations such as North Korea, China and Iran have sought to impose control over the ocean out to 200 miles by establishing security zones. Both types of coastal state regulations place at risk American economic prosperity and national security by attempting to close off to U.S. ships and aircraft vast swaths of ocean, allowing the whim of coastal states to deny the use of the global commons.