The US Should Reject the UN Law of the Sea Treaty

http://www.coin.dk/default.asp?aid=1406



By Simon Espersen,



Candidate, Political Science,



Administrative Director, Copenhagen Institute, Denmark





October 28, 2007





The United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea that, allegedly sets up a system to manage navigation and explore the oceans should be firmly rejected by the US senate, if it is put to the vote.


For the moment the Senate foreign relations committee is, according to the British newspaper the Guardian (October 25), likely to approve the treaty during the coming week. If this happens two-thirds of a full Senate chamber must then vote in favor to ensure US ratification.


But doing so would be a disastrous and harmful political act. The United Nations is an institution that should have been abolished many decades ago. Any ratification of UN laws are therefore equivalent of policy, that enhance the power of a corrupt institution even more - to the detriment of all freedom loving people.


Anti-freedom and anti-reason-states as members of the UN


Any moral institution must be based on moral values. But the United Nations is based on the opposite: these are "values" that invite every kind of regime to participate in policymaking, no matter whether it is a communist dictatorship; a theocracy; some populist regime ruled by a “junta” or by some charismatic cult figure. They are all there - in the UN.


These un-free states are in fact in the UN exactly because of a "UN-value", which is the tolerance of what is malevolent: In the UN there are in accordance with the tolerance for dictatorships and collectivism no respect for the values that allow men to be free; to use their minds freely; and to prosper in doing so.


The "UN-tolerance" does simply not allow defending the values of freedom and reason that have to be upheld by the defense for private property rights, the freedom of information and all the other individual freedoms that has ensured the wealth of the west. This is why it is very disconcerting, that there is to be voted on a law of such a disreputable institution as the UN in the United States in particular, where the respect for the freedoms of the individual and upholding private property rights historically have been quite entrenched.


The environmentalism of the UN


The tolerance of anti-reason and anti-freedom is nevertheless not only to be observed in the all-inclusive approach toward membership of the UN, including the free participation of representatives of these un-free states in the workings of the UN. The same kind of tolerance of non-reason and non-science may be found in a newer phenomenon which is “environmentalism”.


Environmentalism may be described as the idea that all existing species have a value-in-them-self; and furthermore that the existing state of affairs with respect to nature should be kept in a sort of stasis or at “best”: that man changing the environment to suit his own needs should be a phenomenon that is “rolled back” and for some environmentalists should even be reversed.


- This is what “conservation” is all about; and the increasing strength of conservationism may be observed in the fact that a greater part of the planet is selected by institutions such as the UN for “conservation” and “preservation” to the detriment of the needs of human beings.


Why are old-time leftwing dictatorships, Islamic theocracies and the green movement then to be found in the same global institution? The obvious answer is that there is a common enemy: The shared-in "value" in the tolerance of anti-reason and anti-freedom, that make the various participants who are to be found in the UN stay there has also a common opponent, and that is precisely the value of the freedom of the individual, that is also the freedom to use ones mind to improve on ones own life (and thus the freedom to change ones surroundings in the process).


The system that ensures such freedoms is the system of capitalism. And anyone who studies the UN dutifully will not be able to conclude that it is not for the market economy but is in fact an institution working against it.


The environmentalists are therefore opposed to and fighting the same thing that the older type of actors in the institution are combating as well; and that is the freedom of people in the pursuit of happiness and wealth. Fortunately no matter what the US senate will be voting, the goals and aspirations of individuals who understand that reason, freedom and the institution of private property is a precondition to living and improving on ones own life will not disappear alongside any disgraceful voting behavior on behalf of the US Senate.