On the surface, the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico paints a black picture for the drilling rights and profit lines of big oil. However, when one dives deep beneath the obvious surface tensions, the rising turbulence of a new international order threatens to draw America’s national sovereignty into a vortex of punishment.
The oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and sinking is seen in the lower right area of this April 27, 2010 NASA photo in the Gulf of Mexico, around 20 miles of barrier islands and beaches in Louisiana. The U.S. Coast Guard announced plans to begin setting fire to the leaked oil to reduce the amount that can contaminate ecologically sensitive areas. Although the slick is less obvious than it was in earlier images, that is not necessarily a sign that it is smaller or more dispersed. UPI/NASA
Editor’s Note: Read the VI’s Fact Sheet on the Law of the Sea Treaty
Last November, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” He qualified it of course, saying that you never want a crisis to occur, but if one does, then “it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”
President Obama and virtually every member of his cabinet has stated unequivocally that the federal government has been on site and in charge of the clean-up operation since “Day 1.” Within the first two weeks of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, Obama imposed a moratorium on deep sea drilling permits. Fending off criticism of incompetence and fecklessness, Obama has extended the permit moratorium from coast to coast for six months, suspending oil lease sales in Alaska and has canceled all lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, until such time as the results of a presidential commission’s investigation into the situation could be reviewed.
With over 20,000 employees working around the clock, and countless miles of boom laid, with BP continually berated from all sides for its failure to “fill the damn hole,” with the Gulf of Mexico effectively poisoned for a generation, with countless square miles of precious bayou wetlands of Louisiana already impacted, and with fishing “disaster areas” declared across the Gulf states, it is safe to say that this national disaster qualifies as a “serious crisis.”
39 days and counting – the serious crisis is about to reach and surpass biblical proportions.
Turning on to C-SPAN, the vitriol from Capitol Hill is striking. Congressman on both sides of the isle are denouncing the $75 million liability cap on clean-up operations as a paltry sum, comparing the figure to the over $90 million single-day profits of the oil giant and shaking their heads in exasperation.
Officials at BP have claimed responsibility and have spent several million dollars above and beyond their liability cap in a frantic drive to stem the flow of oil and garner a touch of PR sympathy as Senators and Congressmen wag their fingers at the BP off-shore drilling safety practices, saying that the company will be forced to pay all legitimate claims of loss by the people and businesses of the Gulf.
Environmental protection advocates are beside themselves on how to respond. No one knows exactly how many millions of gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf. Live cameras are filming the debacle as the memory of eleven lost souls falls to the sludge.
So, what possible good can come of this “serious crisis” for the Obama administration? What kind of things can they do now that they couldn’t do before?
Enter the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
On Thursday, Obama took questions in his first press conference since July, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to the Brookings Institute about the release of the 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS).
Major news outlets on Thursday evening were mum on the 52-page report’s release as pundits analyzed the ins and outs of Obama’s nebulous answers. The NSS report was old news. The previous day, the Obama administration’s chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan had already let the cat out of the bag: the United States is no longer fighting a delusional war against the tactic of terror, we were now fighting the concrete target of al Qaeda and its affiliates. When combined with Brennan’s commentary, Secretary Clinton’s steadfast focus on a “Smart Power” agenda providing “whole of government” solutions, utilizing the full breadth of the three pillars of U.S. statecraft – Defense, Diplomacy and Development – promised a Muslim engagement-oriented NSS report filled with talk of transnational partnerships and pragmatic assessments.
Moreover, the majority of the press corps, locked into a deadline, didn’t have a chance to do any more than skim the NSS, much less have time to work-up a serious analysis. It was almost a certainty that no one would realize the importance of the phrase ““International Order,” which was repeated ad nauseum throughout the document, until long after the Memorial Day weekend.
American leadership, according to the text of the NSS, was challenged by the proposition of assuming a primary role in shaping the international order of an increasingly globalized horizon. Sustaining “broad cooperation on key global challenges” in the international order, by page 50, included working with partners to “safeguard the sea, air, and space domains from those who would deny access or use them for hostile purposes.” And then, a new sort of boom is lowered: “As one key effort in the sea domain, for example, we will pursue ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOST).”
Did the media focus on President Obama’s handling of the Gulf slick cover over critical analysis of the national sovereignty issues at play in the 2010 NSS’s endorsement of LOST?
Could it be that the US Congress, in a frenzy to punish BP in the near term, harrying to punish the whole of the oil industry in the long frame were now, after countless purely partisan votes, in a position of bi-partisan support? Indeed, wasn’t the primary reason that President Ronald Reagan originally refused to sign onto LOST in 1982 was his concern over the deep-sea drilling issue?
During the confirmation hearing of Hillary Clinton, when Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska asked if pursuing ratification of the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea will be figuring prominently in her agenda, the incoming Secretary of State responded “Yes, it will be, and it will be because it is long overdue, Senator. The Law of the Sea Treaty is supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, environmental, energy, and business interests. I have spoken with some of our — our naval leaders, and they consider themselves to be somewhat disadvantaged by our not having become a party to the Law of the Sea.”
In addition, last May, the Council on Foreign Relations released an 80 page report by Scott G. Borgerson, a Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance, entitled The National Interest and the Law of the Sea which laid out the complete rationale for why National Sovereignty was somehow no longer an issue that America should concern itself over in the ratifying of the UN Convention – that assuming a leadership role in the LOST would guarantee a powerful position of multilateral engagement for the Obama Administration.
Add to this momentum, the fact that a few months ago, with virtually zero notice in the main, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review endorsed LOST.
When adding all of these factors, the equation produces a simple reality: the Obama Administration is committed to ratifying LOST without giving the American people ample opportunity to discuss the ramifications.
In this, the NSS concludes, with an appeal to bipartisan cooperation that is “at times lacking in our national security dialogue.” Appealing to the Cold War days, when American leaders differed on the means but shared common goals, the 2010 NSS urges a polarized Congress “to embrace our common purpose as Americans.”
So, in full, while the serious crisis in the Gulf may negatively effect the Obama administration’s approval ratings, it has presented the White House with an opportunity to do what it wasn’t necessarily able to do before – pass LOST on a bi-partisan basis before the November mid-term election cycle begins.
Gary H. Johnson, Jr. is the Senior Advisor for International Security Affairs at the Victory Institute. His works can be found at the VI’s International Security Affairs Desk
