State Department releases new extended continental shelf map
Claims stretch into Arctic, a potentially resource-rich area
US adds a million square kilometers of Continental shelf claim.Source: US Department of State
By Danielle Bochove
December 22, 2023 at 6:48 PM UTC
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Law of the Sea
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US never ratified, governs maritime zones around countries. Under the law, countries have the right to any resources in the sea or seabed floor within their so-called exclusive economic zones, which can stretch up to 200 nautical miles off the coast.
To offer just a few comparisons: annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martinâs contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the governmentâs entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Overall, more than half of the discretionary budget Congress approves every year â basically everything the federal government spends other than on mandatory programs like Medicare and Social Security â goes to the Pentagon.
It would, I suppose, be one thing if such huge expenditures were truly needed to protect the country or make the world a safer place. However, they have more to do with pork-barrel politics and a misguided âcover the globeâ military strategy than a careful consideration of what might be needed for actual âdefense.â (...)
Perhaps you wonât be surprised to learn that the strategic rationales put forward for the flood of new Pentagon outlays donât faintly hold up to scrutiny. First and foremost in the Pentagonâs argument for virtually unlimited access to the Treasury is the alleged military threat posed by China. But as Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight has pointed out, that countryâs military strategy is âinherently defensiveâ:
â(T)he investments being made (by China) are not suited for foreign adventurism but are instead designed to use relatively low-cost weapons to defend against massively expensive American weapons. The nationâs primary military strategy is to keep foreign powers, and especially the United States, as far away from its shores as possible in a policy the Chinese government calls âactive defense.ââ
The US repeatedly bombed Yemen during the 8 years of Obamaâs presidency with drone strikes & at times cruise missiles/cluster bombs and then supported Saudi Arabiaâs scorched earth bombing of Yemen. Trump expanded support for Saudi bombing. Tonight, the US is again bombing Yemen.
There is something surprising in the way Western democracies have reacted to events in Israel since the start of the military operation in Gaza. I call it the end of hypocrisy.
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No one could accuse the U.S. of double standards. What it is vulnerable to is the accusation that it no longer has any standards at all.
But standards have their uses and not only for the sentimental. They give form to world politics and drive other states to follow rules decided and enforced by a higher power. With the right level of hypocrisy, they allow you to subject others to your rules while remaining somewhat above them. The challenge is to explain why the U.S. would be so willing to renounce the advantages of hypocrisy and its role as rule-maker. In the way it has addressed the political and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, we see what it would mean for the existing world order to unravel, as American power gives up on the mission of every hegemon: to shape world politics according to its own plan and, as always happens, its own standards.
The reason for Americaâs capitulation is that rules are always a hindrance to free action. Even for those in charge of creating and enforcing them, or especially for them, since ordering the world is hard work and gets in the way of enjoying it. No great power has ever been founded on the subjectivity of desire or impulse, but those temptations are just as present in the life of nations as in the life of individuals.
The more recent declines of the past two years (to varying degrees for different partisan groups) may reflect economic unease amid higher prices, disapproval of the jobs President Joe Biden, Congress and the Supreme Court are doing, increasing hostility between the political parties, former President Donald Trumpâs persistent political strength, and concerns about election security, voting rights and the independence of the courts and the justice system.
Among major U.S. subgroups, Republicans (17%) are least likely to say they are satisfied with the state of democracy, and Democrats (38%) are most likely. Political independents fall about midway between the two party groups, at 27% satisfaction.
All three party groups are less satisfied now than they were in 2021, when 47% of Democrats, 21% of Republicans and 36% of independents were satisfied shortly after Biden took office.
Typically, partisans have been more satisfied with the way democracy is working when a president from their preferred party has been in office. Between 1984 and 1992, spanning the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Republicans expressed greater satisfaction than Democrats in each of the four surveys conducted.
