LOST (Law of the Sea Treaty)

LOST is a fittingly descriptive acronym for the Law of the Sea Treaty — an international treaty by which the traditional concept of freedom of the high seas is being lost — and it's also a good word by which to describe our nation. The nation that our founders established was lost a long time ago. The nation of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, et. al., no longer exists by any meaningful measure. Even the "Union" Lincoln "saved" through fratricidal warfare no longer exists. The nation that once again stood "united" in 1865 is gone. Government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" has long perished from the earth — most particularly in that part still billed as "the land of the free and home of the brave."

Yet, our leadership is never satisfied with how much we've lost — in fact they believe we gain by giving away more.

As politicians, economists, and media pundits are fond of telling us, times have changed. We must adjust to new realities.

An editorial in "Investor's Business Daily" of February 11th, 2005 (Issues & Insights), brought LOST again to Pridger's attention. It asked a salient question, "Why does an administration that says we don't need a 'permission slip' to defend ourselves seem determined to sign away our freedom of the seas to the U.N.?"

While John Kerry and the Democrats were declaring that the U.S. should subject itself to some sort of "global test," Bush said that our national security was too important to be left to bodies such as the United Nations. But while Bush would preemptively attack a non-belligerent nation under the guise of national security, he is nonetheless more than just eager to continue selling the American people out, and into international subject status.

Why indeed! Because both major parties have become internationalist parties but with apparently conflicting agendas. The Democrats play the role of the good cops, and the Republicans play the role of the bad cops. But both have a gentleman's agreement to transform the nation and the world, whether by hook or crook.

Pridger, as an American seaman (another of those vanishing breeds nearing extinction), has for the past decade worked under the increasingly burdensome yoke of UN regulation. Pridger now serves "our" nation in the capacity of "American" merchant mariner by the regulatory leave of unaccountable foreign bureaucrats. This, of course, in addition to the increasingly oppressive machinery of U.S. governmental regulatory control, given a super dose of hormones by the advent of the war on terror and the Office of Homeland Security.

Our Washington brain trust long ago signed huge chunks of regulatory control of the nation's merchant fleet and seagoing personnel to the United Nations. This regulatory control is in the guise of SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) rules, a body of international rules which were once the positive forum that developed the international Rules of the Road for ships at sea. SOLAS rules have been expanded into a huge international regulatory bureaucracy and body of sovereignty-robbing law under the auspices of IMO (International Maritime Organization), and in the guise of ISM (International Ship Management) Codes.

This international regulatory monolith now presumes to micro-manage the merchant marines of the world — including that of what was once the greatest maritime power in the world. Professional standards for seamen, including American seamen, are now regulated by STCW (Standards for Training and Competency of Watchstanders) Codes. American seamen now have to be UN certified and documented in order to serve on American ships, even as American ships and the American flag continue disappear from the high seas, thanks to the natural metabolism of free trade policy which is also gutting the entire industrial base of the nation.

This increasing regulatory subservience of one of the nation's primary national security assets to an international bureaucratic monolith is particularly ironic in this day of "We've got a duty to democratize the world" presidential rhetoric. The merchant marine, of course, has always been referred to as the nation's fourth arm of defense. Not only is the nation's merchant fleet supposed to carry our foreign trade, it is indispensable for providing logistical support to our military forces abroad in times of war.

Unfortunately, the carriage of more than 95% of our continuously mushrooming volume of foreign trade has already been outsourced to the foreign competition. Our merchant marine is the ghost of what it once was, even though foreign trade has literally become the nation's economic (and thus, strategic), life line. We have a subsidized Maritime Security Fleet of a mere 47 ships, which is in the process being increased to 60 ships, thanks to the war on terror.

The Maritime Security Fleet (MSF), is comprised of "militarily useful" ships which continue to operate in commercial trade routes, but are contractually available for military purposes when needed. But in spite of the military purpose of the MSF program, and its purpose of maintaining at least a ghost of an American flag presence on the high seas, most of them have come under the ownership of the foreign competition. They are American in flag only — the profits from the trade they engage in goes directly to the competition, while the ships enjoy an American taxpayer subsidy.

In other words, the American merchant marine has been LOST already, even as the subsidy for it is increasing. Meanwhile, even as he declares "our duty" to remake the world in our own image by force of arms if necessary, president Bush pushes for early ratification of LOST, a further abridgement of national sovereignty and what was once known as the freedom of the high seas.

But, since the nation we once had has already been lost, none of these further losses are as significant as they may appear. The Washington brain trust has literally given America away to the world. There is no national sovereignty that amounts to anything any more. Except for the police powers that continually increase, the State has no meaning in Washington. The focus is on the world, and forcing freedom and democracy on others, elsewhere.

China and other foreign labor markets are viewed as our suppliers and manufacturing base. The Middle East is viewed as our source of petroleum. The U.N., as unruly, corrupt, and incompetent as it is, is viewed as our international regulatory agent. The world, in fact is "ours." All of mankind is our responsibility, for the world is "ours." The American leadership intends to impose freedom and democracy in every corner of it.

The president made it clear that only by doing so can we hope to continue to have freedom at home — meaning here in the continental United States, which has become the global eco-military headquarters and the enforcer of corporate hegemony, billed as "American interests abroad."

John Q. Pridger