[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 126 (Monday, September 12, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                E X T E N S I O N   O F   R E M A R K S


                         LAW OF THE SEA TREATY

                                 ______


                            HON. JACK FIELDS

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, September 12, 1994

  Mr. FIELDS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, do the Russians know something we 
do not?
  Mr. Speaker, I recently read an excellent article published in the 
Washington Times which makes a curious observation about the Clinton 
administration's Law of the Sea Treaty [LOST]. On July 29, the Clinton 
State Department bound the United States to this fatally flawed 
document which may be presented to the Senate for ratification as early 
as this October. I note that to date, no other industrialized country 
has ratified this monument to the new international world order.
  The article points out that the Russians have expressed misgivings 
about LOST because it does not sufficiently embrace capitalism. Odd 
words coming from the former supreme Communist country. This should 
give the United States serious pause before President Clinton 
surrenders our sovereignty to an unprecedented United Nations 
monolithic bureaucracy which will control over 70 percent of the 
world's surface. President Reagan rightly rejected LOST in 1983; the 
U.S. Senate should overwhelmingly vote no in 1994.
  I commend this article to my colleagues and ask them to join with me 
in urging Members of the other body to scuttle the Law of the Sea 
Treaty.
  The text of the article follows:

               [From the Washington Times, Aug. 16, 1994]

                 Collective Parts of the LOST Machinery

                            (By Doug Bandow)

       In Washington bad ideas never die. They simply lie dormant, 
     waiting for a sympathetic bureaucrat or politician to revive 
     them. So it has been with the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST, 
     as the agreement, which covers everything from navigation to 
     seabed mining, is appropriately known. Early this month the 
     Senate Foreign Relations Committee held preliminary hearings 
     on the LOST, which the Clinton administration is soon to 
     formally submit to the Senate for ratification.
       Treaty negotiations began in 1973 and immediately became 
     part of the Third World's redistributionist campaign against 
     the West. The Carter administration, its delegation led by 
     Nixon apparatchik Elliot Richardson, negotiated a deal that 
     would have essential created a second United Nations, with 
     the purpose of mulcting industrialized states and 
     distributing the resulting loot to the Third World voting 
     majority.
       Luckily, Ronald Reagan was elected before the LOST was 
     concluded; the administration then said no thanks when 
     presented with the completed treaty in early 1982. In the 
     intervening years, the LOST was ratified by such world powers 
     as Fiji, Jamaica, Belize, Cuba, Cameroon, Yemen, Angola, 
     Djibouti and Comoros. No industrialized state, not even the 
     Soviet Union, joined in, however, the LOST looked to be about 
     as effective as the so-called Moon Treaty, which authorizes 
     creation of an ``international regime'' to govern outer space 
     and which--I am not making this up, to quote humor columnist 
     Dave Barry--took effect 10 years ago in July.
       But President Clinton's foreign policy advisers, living up 
     to their reputation as the Carter B-team, decided to revive 
     the LOST. They won a few changes in the most nonsensical 
     provisions, while accepting an overall system--with 
     International Seabed Authority, Enterprise, Council, Assembly 
     and more--that was guaranteed to become yet another 
     multilateral boondoggle. So in late July the United States 
     signed the convention. U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright 
     told the U.N. General Assembly that the administration was 
     happy to endorse an agreement that ``provides for the 
     application of free market principles to the development of 
     the deep seabed'' and that ``establishes a lean institution 
     that is both flexible and efficient.''
       Mrs. Albright's claims did not go unchallenged, however. 
     The next day Russian Ambassador H.E. Ostrovsky rose to state 
     his nation's opposition to the LOST. Though the amendments 
     were ``a step forward,'' he allowed, he doubted that the new 
     agreement could achieve its goals. Of particular concern to 
     Moscow, he explained, was the fact that ``general guidelines 
     such as necessity to promote cost-effectiveness cannot be 
     seriously regarded as a reliable disincentive.'' Already--
     before the treaty had even gone into force--he pointed to ``a 
     trend to establish high paying positions which are not yet 
     required.''
       On this issue, at least, Russia has become more cost-
     conscious and capitalist than the United States. But then, 
     this should come as no surprise. After all, so consistently 
     left-wing has been President Clinton's program that he 
     quickly gained a special foreign admirer: former Polish 
     dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski. Gen. Jaruzelski last year 
     publicly apologized for his crackdown on the Solidarity union 
     in December 1981. He acknowledged that communist doctrines 
     were ``partly utopian and partly wrong,'' and emphasized that 
     he retained `'the values of the left.'' What political 
     philosophy did he feel closest to? ``Actually, in Clinton's 
     program I see elements I like a lot,'' he explained.
       And why shouldn't the former dictator like what he saw? A 
     faster growing state, increased manipulation of the economy, 
     higher penalties on the most productive and entrepreneurial, 
     nationalization of the health care system, and Orwellian 
     newspeak about reliance on free markets. President Clinton 
     may be more committed to the democratic political process, 
     but he shares with Gen. Jaruzelski a belief in the infinite 
     perfectibility of man by beneficent social engineers running 
     the state.
       Nowhere is this more evident than with the LOST. Though 
     obscure, the agreement represents the high tide of 
     international collectivism. Ocean mining is an industry that 
     is best left alone, with just a minimal system to arbitrate 
     any mine site disputes. Thus, the real purpose of the LOST, 
     which creates an expansive and expensive U.N. regulatory 
     regime, is to promote an extortionate ``New International 
     Economic Order'' under which Western taxpayers underwrite 
     Third World regimes. And this the administration's modest 
     treaty improvements will not change.
       But then, we probably should have expected this. Years ago 
     foreign policy analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted that the 
     Soviet and American systems would converge. The collapse of 
     communism made that forecast seem silly. But with Russia 
     haphazardly moving toward the free market and the United 
     States shifting ever more purposefully toward collectivism, 
     it looks like the Clinton administration may bring Mr. 
     Brzezinski's idea to pass.

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