Two More if by Sea

...The possible permutations of this experience—the Pakistani at Sandhurst, the Nigerian at Oxford, the Singaporean at Cambridge—made for many slight variations in enunciation...

...Yet, is there anything embedded in this earlier maritime effort which might produce something useful and productive...

...The prospect of Soviet penetration into southern and central Africa was taken seriously...

...It is 1990, and it is still going strong...

...One can understand why the seabed authority would have been the most complicated institution of governance ever created—with a "constitution" of epic length and detail to match...

...It began in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and served only to poison the Western democracies' relations with UNESCO...

...By then, of course, everything we think we know today about environmental chemistry will have been proved erroneous...

...T he Conference, though obliged to 1 reproduce its results in five officiallanguages, seemed to rely only on two...

...Properly speaking, this would be the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, hence the acronym UNCLOS III—the previous two having dealt mostly with the continental shelf...

...Ordinary citizens and private organizations and lobbyists of every kind hovered on the margins of the discussions...

...This is an enormous addition to the national patrimony—some two million square miles, or about four billion acres...

...Rajiv Gandhi, when he was still prime minister of India, had an idea for a multibillion dollar revolving fund, constantly replenished by the Western democracies...

...The U.N...

...For one of the things now set in stone in international law is the right of states to assert their jurisdiction over offshore marine resources...

...These offshore domains could become the Louisiana Purchase for the twenty-first century, but we really will not know until the new acquisitions find their Jefferson-like presidential advocate or, at the least, their Lewis and Clark.' In the past twenty years, whether on land or at sea, events have conspired to produce a powerful vindication of American theory and practice—the very things we were once told we had to abandon...

...One would have thought that this referred to countries which bordered the Soviet Union, but it was merely the U.N.'s way of saying "landlocked...

...There are some—once again, seemingly serious people—who wish to use the Law of the Sea debacle as a model for a new Law of the Air...

...There were three committees known as I, II, and III...

...After about six years of negotiation, there was general agreement on the creation of a wholly new kind of international organization —the International Seabed Authority, with likely headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica...

...The irony here is that the United States, since the 1950s, had been concerned by the trend in the world toward "enclosure" of the high seas...

...It would float its own bonds, receive subsidies, have its own self-perpetuating bureaucracy, purchase technology on preferential terms and, were it ever to prosper, become a free-standing, financially independent, unaccountable authority of the sort that would have made Robert Moses envious...

...As the years wore on, however, the hedges were trimmed and, by 1980, the U.S...

...indeed, we can barely conceptualize its potential...

...Since 1983, there has existed a "Preparatory Commission for the International Seabed Authority and for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea...

...In March 1989—when the Law of the Sea "prepcom" was in its sixth year of writing regulations for a still nonexistent seabed authority which, itself, had been two decades in the making—representatives of twenty-four nations met at the Hague...

...Nine years of negotiation will get us to 2005...

...Toward the end of the decade, when a treaty seemed within reach, more than one conference principal envisioned himself a future Nobel Laureate for Peace...

...That same year, the United Nations proclaimed a New International Economic Order, based on a Charter of Economic Rights and Duties...

...It is thus altogether conceivable that the world community will home in on the least productive results of the Law of the Sea experience and work unceasingly to emulate them...

...an interminable two-part article appeared in the magazine in August 1983...

...For years, a staff writer from the New Yorker was on the scene, soaking up the ambience...

...There were other groups named after people, usually with Hispanic names like Castaneda...

...The prime ministers of France, Norway, and the Netherlands were among them...

...The closest we have so far is the Committee on Seabed Utilization in the Exclusive Economic Zone, a creation of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering...

...Then, its replication by any North American was high mimetic art but, today, access to the model has become so widespread that mimicry is unexceptional...

...Yet we now find ourselves one of the world's major beneficiaries of the fact that things did not work out as well as we once thought we would have liked...

...It has been reprinted in his new anthology Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views, The AEI Press, $16.95...

...executive vice president of the Madison Center in Washington, D.C., was in 1981 a member of the American delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea...

...Driven by some hidden automaticity, this language could generate entire declarations into whose writing no human element seemed to have entered...

...If the three prime ministers had had their way, the conference would have 2They were aided in this by Robert Goldwin's lucid article, "Locke and the Law of the Sea," Commentary, June 1981...

...The standard for the spoken version was established by those born in South Asia or other British colonies who had studied the speech of the British Isles...

...If the conference, as it went on over the years, had been a novel, it would have been an improbable collaboration by William Gaddis and John Barth and Evelyn Waugh...

...gone even further...

...The idea that the resources of the seabed beyond the reach of national jurisdictions should become "the common heritage of mankind" was put forward at the United Nations in 1967...

...And how might we pay...

...It would have empowered this new organization, to be named "Globe," to impose sanctions and fines on governments which refused to comply with its clean air standards...

...In the spring of 1981, the administration announced that it would undertake a full-scale review of the American position in the negotiations, thereby effectively suspending our participation for a while...

...No one really believes any of it anymore, but no one knows exactly what to do about the detritus of the New World Economic Order either...

...What has been proved overseas can surely be recalled and reapplied at home...

...The "prepcom," as it is known, shuttles between Kingston and Manhattan...

...It was also at this time that the long struggle over a New World Information Order began...

...It was thus reasonable to argue that some older legal practices had been superseded by changes in both politics and technology...

...Because many issues will need resolution, "a thorough preparatory process is indispensable...

...In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development will convene in Brazil, noting the twentieth anniversary of a similar meeting in Stockholm in 1972...

...Commentary, August 1978...

...Another seven years of regulation-writing will carry us to 2012...

...the project had had a bipartisan cast, with backing not only from Presidents Nixon and Ford but even, at one point back in 1976, an important intervention by Henry Kissinger, a Realpolitiker...

...We know comparatively little about all of this...

...It is, plain and simple, an embarrassment, but it will not go away of its own accord...

...In its own dreary repetitiveness, it manages to embody Santayana's definition of a fanatic—the man who redoubles his efforts as he loses sight of his aims...

...And, while from today's vantage point, this may seem rather whimsical, it is difficult to exaggerate the solemnity with which almost all "thoughtful" people embraced this analysis and bent to its program...

...See Charles Horner, "Who Owns the Sea...

...The relevant parts of the United Nations apparatus are already at their preparatory work...

...In the hermetically sealed world of the United Nations, all this seems normal enough...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1990 17...

...It would also have an operating arm, and be able to go into the business of deepsea mining on its own account...

...We need an international treaty, modeled perhaps on the Law of the Sea treaty," he wrote, "to co-ordinate and enforce international action on the environment...

...It was because nations began to assert their jurisdictions hundreds of miles into the oceans that the United States became interested in a broad recodification of sea law...

...The proceedings have changed and the official United Nations letterhead now uses the word "convention," not "conference...

...In sum, then, capitalism and democracy were written off...

...Indeed, it had once been a basic United States negotiating ploy to acquiesce in this "enclosure" movement in return for satisfaction on other issues of interest to us as a great maritime power—unfettered mobility for our ships, or deepsea mining, as examples...

...The Taoist sense of unlimited time Charles Hornet...

...Technology was being developed, multi-million dollar commercial consortia had been formed, and the impression at the time was that major efforts would go forward once the legal tangles were resolved...

...Its purpose was to overturn the system of world economic relations that had been in place since 1945, and rearrange world political balances accordingly...

...A hardy few will note the twentieth anniversary of the mandate for the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea...

...In any event, recalling Mt Richardson's proto-schedule, four years of preparation will take us from 1992 to 1996...

...For the United States, with thousands of miles of coastline, there are practical implications to ponder...

...The Authority was to be independent, governed by its member nations in accordance with by-laws of extraordinary complexity...

...It issued a report, "Our Seabed Frontier," in 1989...

...Resource security" was an important strategic consideration...

...Pounds of printed matter are turned out, even as the fundamental world outlook which gave rise to the treaty in the first place is in full retreat wherever one looks...

...Indeed, StandardUnited-Nations-Spoken-English has become world-famous through the appearances of Archbishop Rau and Nelson Mandela on "Nightline" and other television programs...

...To thenewcomer, it was all the same, but the experienced ear soon learned to appreciate the fine distinctions...

...There were regional groupings and caucuses of every description...

...President Reagan used to speak of our opportunity to begin the world anew, and for those who want an opportunity to begin this particular surreal world anew, there is one...

...But, as it turned out, it was simply the wrong decade to attempt to address issues of such political and philosophical difficulty...

...There were Groups of Five, Seven, Eleven, Twenty-One, and Seventy-Seven...

...Richardson might have added, of course, that there have been seven years of post-treaty deliberation...

...When representatives of 156 countries met in Caracas in 1974 to commence the bargaining, the world was reeling from the oil exporters' embargo of 1973 and a concomitant explosion of prices, dire predictions about future access to minerals and other vital commodities, and unchallenged assertions about the end of Western ascendency...

...Today the problem seems almost quaint—and it has left the United States with two million square miles yet to be explored...

...A typical collective was the Group of Geographically Disadvantaged States...

...The United States ended up leaving the organization, and has still not returned...

...The Law of the Sea Conference was a wonderful 1970s event, seen by some as a balm for our Vietnam war wounds, by others as a laboratory for old collectivist economics and new theories of international relations...

...The standard written language was the grapholect someone once called Marx-ist-Leninist-Russian-As-Rendered-Into-United Nations-English...

...Inevitably, the United States will feel obliged to join in...

...And, while the call for Conference III did not go out formally until 1970, the project had been in the works for about three years...

...Yet the New Yorker's man missed an important change one would have expected him to note: Patek Philippe came to replace Rolex as the wristwatch of choice among the Third World kleptocrats...

...It turned out, however, that the Reagan Administration had a philosophical interest in the Law of the Sea that has proved more enduring and, to this point, far more influential than any merely strategic analysis...

...One typical, though totally wrong, prognosis appeared in 1978: "The United States, which is today eighty percent dependent on imported nickel, could under present circumstances become independent by 1990...

...Up to that point, international maritime affairs had been dominated by the flamboyant assertion of national rights by coastal states in the Third World, coupled with sullen grumbling and piecemeal accommodation in the First...

...Seabed mining seemed a wholly practical response to OPEC...

...As the work of the conference went on, it became apparent that its novel contribution to international law and practice would be its arrangements for seabed resources beyond the claims of governments at the time, that is, further out than 200 miles...

...Other littoral states began to emulate them...

...Since then, 159 states have signed on to the arrangement, but far fewer have actually ratified it...

...In the meantime, of course, there is still plenty of procedural work to prepare for the great day...

...16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1990 would not have approved of it.2 From the Reagan Administration's point of view, the defects in the draft treaty could not be overcome by subsequent negotiating efforts, and the President announced in July 1982 that the United States would not sign the convention...

...In a piece which appeared in the New York Times in February 1990 Elliot Richardson joined the discussion...

...It would in effect own the resources of the deep seabeds, and control access to them by individual governments and commercial enterprises...

...There were Groups of Five, Seven, Eleven, Twenty-One, and Seventy-Seven...

...The Third World despotisms and their Soviet backers launched a project designed to lead, eventually, to a dominant role for the police states in the dissemination of news and other information...

...And, in explanation of the new administration's deepest concerns, American representatives could do no better than to point out to other delegates that, whatever else could be said about the treaty, John Locke 'Many otherwise sensible people were impressed by the potential of a seabed mining industry...

...ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan: The foreign ministers examined the international situation and noted that the contradictions between the existence of large-consumption economies based on an unequitable state of crisis, and the social and economic margination of vast masses, is becoming more acute and generates a radicalisation of the revolutionary potentiality in developing areas which, in turn, manifests itself in the irreversible progression of an historical current leading to economic and political liberation, strengthening of national identity and cultures and the attainment of fair social orders which allow the masses to participate in the development process and its benefits...

...In the early 1950s, for example, countries on Latin America's Pacific coast had asserted rights over fishing to a distance of 200 miles...

...There were three committees known as I, II, and III...

...This conference issued a call to the world to create yet another new United Nations authority and finance its operations in order to protect the earth's atmosphere...

...that defined the pace of sea law creation was rooted in the history of the first meeting...

...There were seabed boundary disputes around the globe with major implications, forsubstantial submerged petroleum and mineral resources were involved...

...For the sake of many who earn their livelihood either participating in, or paying attention to, this unique maritime industry, it is fortunate that it came into being in the 1970s...

...And it is indeed remarkable how many other (seemingly) serious people thought that their personal reputations would be hugely enhanced by association with the proceedings...

...government had fully forgotten older "caveats" and had entered fully into the spirit of the gathering...

...It was expected that the new Republican administration would participate in adding the requisite finishing touches...

...In March 1983 in a little-noticed but historic act, President Reagan issued a proclamation confirming American sovereign rights and control over all living and non-living resources within 200 miles of the United States coasts...

...For the Law of the Sea Conference was a wonderful 1970s event, seen by some as a balm for our Vietnam war wounds, by others as a laboratory for old collectivist economics and new theories of international relations, and yet by others as a vision of limitless possibilities for global order...

...Moreover, the basic thrust of the New International Economic Order was "resource denial," "cartelization," and such...

...This was a truly seductive tongue and the ordinary American was oftentimes beguiled by it...

...President Nixon, in a solemn 1970 statement, announced our acceptance of the undertaking, and held out great hopes for it...

...Committee III was especially memorable, for it wal chaired by a Bulgarian with the wholly appropriate name of Yankov...

...an he twentieth anniversary of Earth TDay, widely celebrated this past April, will almost certainly overshadow another political milestone in the life of our planet...

...Still, more than 150 nations would somehow have to be involved in its governance and they would have to agree on the basis of Conference custom to produce treaty text by consensus...

...Consider this sentence, a particular favorite of former U.N...

...There were other groups named after people, usually with Hispanic names like Castaneda...

...By the time of the first Reagan term, the treaty had beencompleted for all intents and purposes...

...Here, for example, is one issue: Should the United States, which emits a fourth of the world's carbon dioxide, pay Brazil for the fresh air we get from the good chemical deeds of the Brazilian rainforest, which turns the stuff back into oxygen...

...For the United States, as a sign of its good faith at the Conference, had placed a unilateral moratorium on our own seabed mining, even though our official position was that Americans had a perfect right to proceed with it if they wanted.' Moreover, people around the world had gotten it into their heads that seabed mining was a money-maker of enough potential to justify years of wrangling about its future course and development...

...The United States went along with this, although official pronouncements were always hedged about...

...Even if the Law of the Sea Treaty manages to round up the sixty ratifications necessary for it to enter into force, none of the major countries will be among them...

...And Santayana, it will be recalled, was also the man who said that those who forget history will be condemned to repeat it...

...took four years to lay the groundwork for the Law of the Sea Conference, and the conference spent nine more years, with twice a year meetings, to produce a treaty...

...But if serious business and serious results THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1990 15 were contemplated, the cultural context of the meetings belied it...

...A comparable effort to draft a "constitution for the seas" would probably not be launched now, and, even if it were, the effort would probably lead to something different from today's impasse...

...But the activity grinds on, and only a cynic could doubt that this peculiar institution will live on well into the third millennium...

...There just might be, but to find it we will have to look to one aspect of the "law of the sea" that has gone almost unnoticed...

...This was serious business, especially for the United States, whose interests were engaged at every level...

...On the seabed we now control, and in the ocean above it, is an extraordinary range of resources amid correspondingly diverse biological, geological, and oceanographic conditions...

...There was even a United Methodist Project on the Law of the Sea, and a representative of New York's then Episcopalian Archbishop Paul Moore, committed to preventing multinational corporations from raping the seabed...

...But whatever good sense underlay a try for new international arrangements, the attempt could not stand up to the temper of the times...

...Such areas, known as "exclusive economic zones," were mostly of ideological significance thirty years ago, but technological advances have since added new and concrete meanings...

...President Carter had placed Elliot Richardson in charge of the American delegation, and Richardson had warmed to the task...

...This, of course, had to do with the American experience of constitution-making, and the successful practice of democracy and capitalism generally...

...Indeed, there were significant issues for such a conference to address, and no inherent reason why new international arrangements could not have been put into place...

...V' et this rather obscure set of issues 1 engaged a surprisingly strong set of practical and philosophical concerns in the new Reagan Administration...

...The huge traveling road show left Caracas and shuttled between Geneva and New York...

...And if we are looking for ways to absorb our energies and spend our peace dividends, it may turn out that there are plenty close to shore...

...A year later, a Permanent Committee on the Seabed was set up and, by 1970, it had its mandate to organize an international conference to incorporate this principle into a new international convention...