Closed Frist

How's this for a once-in-a-blue-moon scenario? Six major environmental groups endorse a sweeping international treaty strongly supported by the American Petroleum Institute and other industry groups.

On May 12, top dogs from the Natural Resources Defense Council, National Environmental Trust, Ocean Conservancy, and three other green organizations put their names on a political ad [PDF] published in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call appealing for ratification of the U.N.'s Law of the Sea treaty -- an international accord that the American Petroleum Institute hails as "important to our efforts to develop domestic offshore oil and natural gas resources," according to a large pull quote featured in the ad.

The oil and water folks, as it were, who have long refused to mix, have since been working alongside a broad range of other interest groups to convince Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to schedule a Senate vote on ratification of the Law of the Sea before Congress goes into summer recess.

The agreement establishes rules governing uses of the world's oceans -- specifically, waters that are more than 200 nautical miles off coasts (waters closer to shore are considered an "exclusive economic zone" governed by the coastal country). The treaty charts out the jurisdictions, rights, and controls each coastal country has vis-à-vis the military navigation, commercial exploitation, and environmental conservation of these far-flung seas, which are increasingly trafficked by the fishing, shipping, and energy industries, not to mention naval vessels.

Of particular interest to environmentalists are the treaty's oversight laws for pollution and waste dumping, guidelines against overfishing, and protections for whales, dolphins, and other creatures of the deep.

What appeals to the petroleum and mining industries is the right of access afforded by the treaty to mineral-rich nether-regions; U.S. companies can't compete against foreign competitors for drilling and mining rights in international waters until the U.S ratifies the treaty.

More pressing still are the interests of the military: Officials from both the Defense Department and the State Department have testified on behalf of the Law of the Sea during Senate hearings, arguing that it's vital for national security.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee gave unanimous approval to the treaty in February, but since then it's made no progress toward full Senate approval.

Mark Helmke, an aide to the committee's chair, Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), put it to Muckraker this way: "Any rational Beltway official -- including the president, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice -- will tell you that ratification of the treaty is critical to the strength of our Navy, our national security, our economy, and the global environment, and that the failure to ratify signals to the world that the United States flouts multilateralism." Currently, 145 countries have signed onto the Law of the Sea, including every other member of the U.N. Security Council.

But there's one U.S. constituency that doesn't like the treaty -- arch-conservatives who reject multilateralism in all its forms on ideological grounds. "Basically, we have a bunch of fringe, armchair, isolationist ideologues who are holding up this treaty, and the Bush administration's political office has made a calculated decision to let them have their way," Helmke said.

These right-wingers -- who include Frank Gaffney, a darling of the arms industry who heads up the Center for Security Policy, and Phyllis Schlafly, director of the Eagle Forum and a longtime pillar of the U.S. uber-nationalist movement -- are well-organized politically. "They get picked up by all the conservative radio talk-show hosts who fan the flames on this thing and dish out scare tactics that the U.N. is going to take over every little fishing pond in the world," Helmke told Muckraker.