Revision of Customary international law is no longer sufficient to protect U.S. interests from Tue, 08/19/2014 - 23:19
Opponents of UNCLOS claim that the United States should not become a party because the United States already enjoys the benefits of UNCLOS through customary law and, therefore, should not unnecessarily incur the treaty's burdens. However, this ignores the fact that customary law can change and can also be influenced by how parties to UNCLOS decide to interpret its provisions.
Quicktabs: Arguments
The treaty would officially give U.S. fisherman priority over stocks adjacent to the American coast, and the U.S. Navy would continue to navigate the globe unimpeded. But the U.S., almost alone, has never ratified the treaty it sought and needed, despite the efforts of every President since, because the rule is so customary that it goes mostly unchallenged.
Those who oppose ratification believe that regardless of whether the U.S. is a part of it or not, the Treaty, in binding others, provides the ground rules the U.S. seeks generally and now needs in the Arctic. This is a delusion.
Without the U.S. ratification of the Treaty, which would greatly support its integrity, the agreed upon 200-mile zone deal is under great stress around the world. The South China Sea is a prime example where the 200-mile zone deal is threatened as China claims much more, and the Arctic Ocean will be another. The U.S. must be able to legitimately defend its interests; It could challenge the encroachment of others as a ratified member of the treaty.
And this expression of the national interest has been the precise locus of the isolationist backlash against UNCLOS. Treaty opponents have been unable to mount a serious challenge to the underlying substantive policy goals in favor of ratification of the Convention by the United States. The ability of the U.S. Navy to project power, under its Freedom of Navigation (FON) program as part of UNCLOS,9 has received a lot of negative attention of late, as coastal states (especially archipelagic nations and those bordering strategic straits)10 have renewed attempts to limit access by constraining the doctrines of innocent and transit passage under UNCLOS. Treaty opponents have cleverly argued that there is no need for the U.S. to ratify UNCLOS because all of its FON provisions are already reflected in customary international law (CIL). The problem – as recognized by the Pentagon – is that CIL formulations for FON are largely derived from the state practice following the 1958 Geneva Conventions (to which the U.S. is a party).11 It is not a credible international legal position, however, to rely on CIL frozen-in-time nearly a half-century ago. In order for the U.S. to effectively object to improper impositions of navigation interferences by coastal states, there must be a baseline (both literally and figuratively)12 of state behavior – and that standard is UNCLOS.
Customary international law cannot unequivocally guarantee that the same benefits the United States currently enjoys under UNCLOS can be secured for the indefinite future.194 By its very nature, customary international law is not always universally accepted and also may change over time based on State practice.194 Therefore, it is illogical to operate under the presumption that customary international law will always mirror UNCLOS. The only way to permanently retain these rights, such that they are always at the disposal of the US, is to solidify them through treaty law.195 It is almost amusing that UNCLOS opponents, of. ten the most vocal critics of the uncertainty of customary international law, are simultaneously impelling the US military and US businesses to exclusively rely on it to protect their essential interests.196
Continuing to rely on an idealistic conception of customary international law for asserting maritime navigational rights and for exploiting deep sea-bed resources, as opposed to deriving them from UNCLOS, undermines American national security objectives and deprives the US Navy of an essential tool needed for resolving disputes peacefully. Such ethnocentric derogation towards UNCLOS will inevitably expose the Navy to increased risks of military conflict.197