Matt Yglesias

Law of the Sea Opponents Are Letting Rival Powers Rewrite International Law in their Interests

Commander James Kraska from the U.S. Navy writes in Foreign Policy about the damage to American interests being done by conservative opponents of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Specifically, with the United States not involved in the process, other countries are able to write rules that we don’t like but have no ability to stop.

This is, of course, a broader problem with the modern right’s blanket hostility to international law. The train still moves forward without us, but it does so less effectively and in a way that we’re not able to influence. As the world’s dominant power, we can kinda sorta get away with this kind of behavior, but it works less-and-less well with every passing year and only accelerates our relative decline.