Fears of UNCLOS bureaucracy are overwrought and naive

The critics seem naively to believe that America can simply shoot its way around the oceans, apparently including shooting our NATO allies, such as Canada, with whom we disagree about Arctic straits. Most shamefully, the critics repeat, despite all correction, that the Convention would turn the oceans over to the United Nations. But to the contrary, in its 200 nautical mile economic zones and extended coastal state continental shelves the Convention embodies one of the greatest expansions of national jurisdiction in history and absolutely nothing is turned over to the United Nations. Moreover, the closely cabined International Seabed Authority (ISA), necessary to create bankable property rights for seabed mining, only has jurisdiction over mineral resources of the seafloor in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Far from a menacing international agency poised to take over the world, after a quarter-century of operation the ISA has a staff of 39, considerably smaller than the staff of at least one of the domestic organizations most visibly opposing the Convention. The ISA is simply a small garden variety specialized international agency similar to many in which the United States participates, for example the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. Even were the critics correct, United States non-adherence to the Convention would not in the slightest end the ISA or change the Convention which is one of the most widely adhered to in the world.