Opponents who argue UNCLOS would impose U.N. law on U.S. ignore long negotiation history and U.S. leadership in writing treaty

In their letter to Senator Reid, the thirty-one signers were concerned with subjugating U.S. sovereignty “to a supranational government that is chartered by the United Nations.”¹⁰ Leading conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly described the conservative perspective on the treaty as follows:

LOST [UNCLOS] is the globalists’ dream bill [because] it would put the United Nations in a de facto world government that rules the world’s oceans under the pretense that they belong to the ‘common heritage of mankind.’ That is global speak for allowing the United Nations and its affiliated or- ganizations to carry out a massive unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the United States to other countries.¹¹

This perspective ignores the fact that the United States had been in- volved in negotiations on the wording of UNCLOS since the time of Presi- dent Nixon.¹² In 1983, during the Reagan administration, the United States supported the convention with the exception of the deep seabed provisions. President Reagan stated that the United States would recognize the rights of other states in the waters off their coasts as reflected in the convention.¹³ After President Reagan refused to endorse ratification due to the deep seabed issues, additional negotiations in the United Nations took place, resulting in the “Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of UNCLOS,” dated 28 July 1994, which satisfied the Reagan conditions. After a yearlong inter-agency review, the Bush administration concluded that all of the concerns raised by President Reagan were addressed by the 1994 Amendments.¹⁴ Thus, rather than UNCLOS being forced on the United States by the United Nations, it was instead negotiated with the full participation of the United States, and later specifically amended to answer the objections of President Reagan.