Wednesday, September 19, 2007 New: Take a Stand

Analyst: China building world’s largest navy as U.S. sea power is in 'absolute decline'

By Cliff Kincaid
Did you know that China could become the world’s leading naval power by 2020? That’s the verdict of military analyst Tony Corn. This may help explain why the U.S. Navy thinks a piece of paper called the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty provides some sort of protection for American forces on the high seas. It offers no such protection, of course, but it creates the impression that Navy leaders are doing something about our increasing weakness and vulnerability. However, like so many other U.N. treaties, including the 19 anti-terrorism treaties in effect on 9/11, this one offers a false sense of security. It will mask a dramatic decline in our military power.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) will be the subject of a September 27 hearing before Senator Joe Biden’s Foreign Relations Committee. All of the witnesses are pro-treaty. Another hearing is scheduled to follow and a quick Senate vote on the pact is then predicted. This process is better known as a railroad. Like the illegal alien amnesty bill, our Senate leaders, in cahoots with Bush Administration officials, are trying to rush it through. It remains to be seen whether the American people will wake up in time. Can we count on the media to blow the whistle? The betting here is that talk radio and the Internet will have to carry the load.

Before the Senate rushes into an embrace of this treaty, it might be advisable for our media to tell the complete story of the decline of the U.S. Navy and attempt to explain how and why this has happened. But that would require that major news organizations pay less attention to O.J. and Britney. And that may be too much to ask.

Corn explains what is happening right before our eyes. “Though globalization has increased the importance of maritime affairs, [b]there has been both a relative and an absolute decline of U.S. sea power, with a U.S. Navy today at its lowest level in the post-World War II era,â€