One of the reasons the United Nations is such a farce is that it is now based on the absurd rationale that the world is a homogeneous democracy that can be governed by a procedure called “one nation one vote.” It can’t, because most of the nations in the UN don’t understand or respect American freedom, yet are bitterly envious of its political, social, and economic benefits.
“Nations” all have the same vote in the UN General Assembly even though they may have fewer people than some of our cities. Some of those alien nations look upon the UN as a device by which the economically impoverished or socially criminal nations can gang up on the wealthy, successful, free nations, and extort as much as they can.
They do this by fostering a guilt complex among the wealthy nations, by diplomatic intimidation, and by hoisting the banner of “international cooperation” as a cover for bankrolling illegitimate regimes by American handouts. As Americans grow wary of the many conduits that have funnelled U.S. cash through international “loan” and “development” organizations, the third-world confidence men keep concocting new methods.
One of the most sophisticated of such schemes is called “The Law of the Sea Treaty.” Fortunately, just before the United States got locked into this treaty, Ronald Reagan was elected President and stayed the hand of our diplomats just as they were reaching for the pen to sign on the dotted line.
In plain words, the Law of the Sea Treaty is a scheme to force American business interests to sink billions of investment dollars down on the ocean floor, and then let the third-world and Socialist/Communist blocs rake in the sea-bed’s riches.
It all started back in 1958 when Malta (a nation with half the population of Washington, D.C.) proclaimed that the ocean’s floor is the “common heritage” of all mankind and should be governéd by an international treaty. By 1970, the UN voted to convene an official Law of the Sea Conference; its broad mandate enabled the “disadvantaged” countries to polarize the issues and hurl their demands on the wealthy nations.
By 1974, Algeria used the UN platform to launch an “official” call from the Third World for a “New International Economic Order.” The purpose? To use the Law of the Sea Treaty as the primary vehicle to bring about a global redistribution of the wealth from developed nations to the less-developed nations.
There are two fundamental political issues in these negotiations. The poor nations want to con us into using our financial and technological resources to bring up the mineral wealth off the ocean floor and give it to them. The Socialist/Communist nations want to deny the United States access to the strategic minerals which are on the ocean floor (such as cobalt, nickel, and manganese) because the Soviets know that our traditional land-based sources are in politically unstable countries far from our shores.
So those two blocs of nations are trying to force us into an International Sea-bed Authority which would have sole control of all sea-mining rights and decisions about them, even though private American business would put up all of most of the capital and know-how. The Authority would spin off something called the “Enterprise” (an ingenious choice of a name!) which would receive mandatory transfers of technology and funds from the wealthy nations, and then operate in direct competition with American companies.
The Authority would be empowered to tax the profits of private mining companies up to 70 percent of net profits during the second year of operation. These tax funds would finance the Enterprise operation in competition with the companies that paid the taxes.
The Law of the Sea Treaty also proposes to establish an entire international government apparatus on the basis of one member-one vote, with decisions made by a two-thirds majority of the members present. Our government would always be outvoted by Third World and Socialist/Communist nations.
The executive chamber of this new international authority would be called the “Council,” which is weighted to benefit Third World and Socialist countries at the expense of advanced nations. The United States is not even guaranteed a seat on the Council.
There is no way such a system can work in justice or harmony because it is built on stealing the fruits of American labor, capital and technology. The whole world will benefit if American companies are given the green light to invest private capital in producing the strategic minerals our country so badly needs.
