Treaties

 From Eman:

Last week, we were discussing foreign policy and national security issues in Congress. One critical role of Congress is ratifying international treaties. As we’ve seen with the Paris Agreement and several other international policies during the past several administrations, this process of obtaining Senate ratification has become much more difficult due to political polarization. As a result, presidents have relied more on executive orders, and have occasionally been unable to join globally supported international agreements due to Congressional opposition. This was a challenge that President Obama faced several times throughout his administration.

One example is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty that has been active since 1994. UNCLOS is now a recognized framework for international law on states’ rights over oceans, as well as certain marine environment protections. Since then, several presidents, including President Obama, have attempted to get this treaty ratified. (https://www.voanews.com/usa/why-hasnt-us-signed-law-sea-treaty) Another example, as briefly mentioned in class, was the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In both of these examples, the United States played a key role in the writing of the international agreements. The U.S. participated in the conference which led to UNCLOS, and significantly contributed to the modification process. Meanwhile, the CRPD was largely based on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Despite the US’ significant contributions to shaping these international policies, a common argument for Republican opposition to these treaties is that ratifying these agreements would limit sovereignty by overpowering American legal systems with international law. The Heritage Foundation recently published a list of treaties that they think the Senate should oppose under the Biden administration. (https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/IB6045.pdf)

Although Biden supported UNCLOS both as a senator and as the vice-president and was a part of Obama’s fight to ratify the CRPD, it is unclear whether he will try to revisit these old treaties and attempt to pass them in a narrowly Democrat senate. Based on history, it is unlikely that he would be successful if he does choose to pursue ratification. Therefore, the primary reason to propose this would simply be to get a voting record for future policy debates. However, looking forward, it will be interesting to see how political polarization continues to impact the treaty ratification process, and whether this influences the United States’ role in global affairs.