ANALYSIS – This is highly underreported. Maybe the feds were inspired or prompted by China's sea grab in the Pacific where it illegally claims almost the entire South China Sea. It may also be reacting to China's massive illegal fishing operations worldwide.
Or maybe it is due to China and Russia's threats to expand in the Arctic. Or maybe it's Canada, as I wrote about in 2020.
Russia and Canada are pushing competing and overlapping Arctic Ocean claims. Russian claims extend beyond the North Pole, while Canada's claims to 1.2 million square kilometers of Arctic Ocean seabed and subsoil, also encompass the North Pole.
There are also claims being prepared by the U.S. for territory off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mariana Islands area.
Regardless of the reason, bravo to the feds for identifying and declaring what's legally ours, as ours.
“The continental shelf is the extension of a country's land territory under the sea. Like other countries, the United States has rights under international law to conserve and manage the resources and vital habitats on and under its ECS,” the State Department said in its Dec. 19 announcement.
But there's a catch, as I will explain below. And the catch is mostly Republicans.
According to the Alaska Beacon, “The claims to extended continental shelf territory, to be asserted by the U.S. State Department, include an area within the Arctic Ocean that is bigger than California.”
This is a huge deal.
As the outlet reports:
The U.S. State Department this month announced results of a two-decade program to map the extended continental shelf areas beyond the nation's 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Much of the focus was on the Arctic Ocean, where bathymetric and geologic surveys by federal agencies produced the first detailed maps of a complex seafloor with a series of canyons, ridges and deep-sea plateaus.
A map of North America and the oceans around it shows the extended continental shelf areas that the U.S. government is preparing to claim as its national territory. The Arctic Ocean holds the largest swath of extended continental shelf area to which the U.S. plans to make claims. (Map provided by U.S. State Department)
In all, the mapping reveals that the U.S. has rights to an additional 987,700 square kilometers, an area about twice the size of California, according to the State Department. Of that, more than half – 520,400 square kilometers – is in the Arctic Ocean beyond the 200-mile exclusive economic zone off Alaska's North Slope. Another 176,330 square kilometers is contained in a triangular section in the Bering Sea that abuts the U.S.-Russia maritime border.
The Beacon adds: “Under international law, countries have the right to claim sovereignty over areas of the ocean that lie beyond the 200-mile limit, as long as those areas are physically connected to underwater shelves that extend from continental masses.”
So, what's the catch? Well, as the Beacon notes: “The U.S. Senate has not ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the treaty under which such claims are adjudicated.”
And it's mostly Republicans who have opposed the treaty, because, well, the UN, which most of us rightfully hate.
The outlet notes: “Ratification requires a vote of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate, and key Republicans, starting with then-President Ronald Reagan, have rejected the idea for decades.”
This means, says U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that the U.S. has the right to make claims, but not to mount legal challenges. Without ratification, she said, “we're limited in terms of our ability to not only defend our claim, but then to push back on others as well.”
This is why she introduced a bill in November, her third such attempt, to ratify the treaty.
“I'm really optimistic that things are different,” she said, noting that the bill has another Republican cosponsor, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana.
Murkowski added, according to the Beacon, that being part of the Law of the Sea treaty would help the U.S. assert more control in not only the Arctic, as climate warming opens up the waters to more activity, but in disputed areas like the South China Sea.
This is definitely a critical topic that should get a lot more attention in the new year. And who knows, for Murkowski, maybe the third time's the charm.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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