Getting LOST

by Senator Jim Inhofe

What if I were to tell you that at this very moment in the halls of the Senate, legislation is being considered that will govern 70 percent of the earth’s surface, threaten the very sovereignty of our country and, worse, without the efforts of a select few, would have become law years ago? What if I added that our enemies are waiting in the wings for us to make this historic blunder by accepting legislation that effectively cedes our autonomy to international organizations such as the United Nations?

If you are of the small percentage of Americans who has heard of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or simply the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), I congratulate you on being ahead of the curve. If you have not heard of LOST, you soon will, as we are gearing up in the Senate for a fight against one of the most far-reaching international challenges to American sovereignty we have ever faced.

LOST was conceived in the late 1970s as a way of governing all activities that occur on and beneath the surface of the world’s oceans. The treaty’s central aims, those of defining the corridors of water surrounding a country and standardizing the rules of navigation through these corridors, are innocent enough and are probably needed to govern and safeguard the ever-increasing use of the high seas.

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