[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 76 (Thursday, June 16, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        FISHING FOR ANSWERS: THE DEBATE OVER THE LAW OF THE SEA

  Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, for almost five decades both 
industrialized and developing nations have debated over how best go 
govern the vast resources at the bottom of the sea. At the close of 
World War II, nations around the globe raised jurisdictional questions 
regarding ownership of the ocean's assets. As a result, in 1958, the 
United Nations held the first of three conferences on the law of the 
sea--UNCLOS. The second conference--UNCLOS II--was held in 1960, while 
the third conference--UNCLOS III--met in 1973. During these meetings, 
the United Nations formulated what is now known as the Law of the Sea 
Treaty [LOST].
  The LOST consists of more than 400 articles which cover 6 areas, 
including seabed mining, fishing, navigation, marine research, ocean 
pollution, and economic zones. In 1982, after much debate over 
controversial, anticompetitive deep seabed mining provisions, the 
United States rejected the treaty. Although the United States failed to 
sign the LOST in the early 1980s, the United Nations now has enough 
signatories to ratify the treaty. The LOST will be effective in 
November, 1994.
  While the Bush administration did not question President Reagan's 
reluctance to endorse the treaty, the Clinton administration has 
renewed the debate over the U.S. position on the LOST. The current 
administration is considering adding the United States to the treaty's 
list of supporters.
  Many questions exist regarding U.S. support for the treaty. In fact, 
William Safire of the New York Times recently wrote an article 
criticizing the Clinton administration's renewed interest in the LOST, 
in his article, Mr. Safire raises several important issues, including 
the potentially anticompetitive nature of the treaty and the notion 
that the seabed is the common heritage of mankind. Part XI of the 
treaty, which covers regulations pertaining to deep seabed mining, is 
the prime section of contention in the LOST. Although, Part XI has been 
modified, making it less controversial, many issues remain unresolved.
  I believe that Congress should hold hearings regarding the LOST to 
discuss further any issues which could adversely affect the United 
States and other market economies. The State Department needs to 
provide more answers before the United States approves this treaty. I 
stand ready to work with the administration in efforts to resolve 
questions regarding the treaty's legitimacy.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to place William Safire's 
article, ``LOST at Sea,'' in the Record at the conclusion of my 
remarks.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 31, 1994]

                              LOST AT Sea

                          (By William Safire)

       London.--LOST is a loser, but the U.S. is getting ready to 
     sign on.
       The Law of the Sea Treaty--its apt acronym LOST--has been 
     ratified by 60 nations and will come into force on Nov. 16 of 
     this year. The big question--one that will affect global 
     business on and under the sea for generations--is whether the 
     U.S. will subscribe to what third-world leaders and 
     international bureaucrats hail as ``the constitution of the 
     oceans.''
       I have long argued we should not. Although many of the 
     treaty's navigational and fishing provisions are 
     unobjectionable, the core of the new international law is a 
     collectivism cartel that conflicts with our national 
     interests and betrays the spirit of capitalism.
       Back in the 70's, as the have-not nations were touting a 
     ``new world economic order'' to redistribute the world's 
     wealth, Carterites and some liberal Republicans enlisted in 
     the cause to declare the resources of the sea bottom ``the 
     common heritage of mankind.'' (That was before we become 
     ``humankind.'')
       Their essential idea was that entrepreneurs of the 
     industrial nations would mine the seas for mineral wealth, 
     just as explorers and discoverers did for centuries, but with 
     this difference: Most of the product of free enterprise would 
     be turned over to a Socialist ``Enterprise,'' a vast new U.N. 
     bureaucracy that would both regulate and compete with the 
     miners of the sea.
       The philosophy was wrong, John Locke, on whose writings 
     Thomas Jefferson drew, held that when a person mixed his 
     labor with a material resource, the person acquired a 
     property right in that resource. That provided a profit 
     motive, the incentive to explore and develop that created 
     fortunes and built industrial democracies.
       But under the Marxian collectivist philosophy expressed in 
     the Law of the Sea, the ocean resources belonged not to the 
     ones who found it, but to the united Nations. An OPEC-style 
     cartel would graciously allow the developers to keep a part 
     of their stake, but would demand they share their technology 
     and would determine production and prices.
       To its eternal credit, the Reagan Administration saw this 
     basic conflict of ideology and said to LOST negotiators: 
     Nothing doing.
       Reagan's principled rejection, as Doug Bandow's recent Cato 
     Institute study points out, caused great gnashing of teeth 
     among diplomats at the U.N. and politicians in scores of 
     third-world countries who had been counting on lifetime 
     sinecures with perks in the LOST ``Enterprise,'' to be based 
     in sunny Jamaica.
       Despite the drop in mineral prices that discouraged 
     expensive seabed exploration, and blind to worldwide loss of 
     interest in Socialist economics, bureaucrats pressed ahead.
       Enter the Clinton Administration with its multinationalism 
     and multiculturalism and multimultiism. Thanks to the U.N. 
     representative, Madeleine Albright, and gnomes in the State 
     Department who never met a global treaty they didn't like, 
     LOST was found. Their technique was to dress up the pact with 
     market rhetoric, drop the requirement to share technology 
     with the third world, and slightly modify other egregious 
     offenses to free enterprise.
       Something happens to diplomats who get involved in a 
     diplomatic ``process'': The deal becomes the goal. Their 
     measure of success is a flock of signatures on a document at 
     a televised ceremony with souvenir pens handed out all 
     around.
       When the Clinton State Department is asked about the status 
     of LOST, the answer is: ``Hasn't made it up to the seventh 
     floor yet.'' Secretary Warren Christopher has his hands full 
     with a threat from a bellicose North Korea, and cannot focus 
     on convoluted philosophical disputes.
       What will happen? When LOST gets up to foggy bottom's 
     seventh floor, Christopher will lawyer it a little, make sure 
     the U.S. has a veto, get some Pentagon admiral to praise its 
     unnecessary legitimization of Straits of Gibraltar passage, 
     and have President Clinton sign it as a symbol of the brave 
     new multinational world.
       Then the Senate will decline to ratify LOST because its 
     central provision is anti-free-enterprise. Is such a display 
     of disunion in the President's interest? Or in America's?
       No. The time to drop the vast boondoggle of LOST is now.

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