Piracy On The High Seas

Later this month, people from more than 150 countries will travel to Geneva, Switzerland, to put the finishing touches on an international treaty on the oceans.

But there will be one major problem. At the eleventh hour, the United States is balking and, in effect, vetoing the Law of the Sea treaty agreement; this, after having given its concurrence to each section of the treaty during negotiations over the past seven years.

Why the U. S. flip-flop? The purpose of the treaty is to govern the unclaimed ocean frontier and regulate behavior on the high seas. The treaty versions hammered out by the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations included some principles of sharing. The Reagan administration's plan for the oceans involves only taking. Reagan wants the oceans to be like the prairies and hills of the Wild West; those who get there first, get it first.

The treaty came about because countries were enforcing different rules on how close to their shores foreign ships were permitted to sail. Commercially and militarily, the U.S. was very anxious to have guaranteed access through the more than 100 narrow water channels in the world where countries can restrict passage. To the eager satisfaction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the last version of the treaty secured the right of passage for all nations.

But the controversial treaty issue for the U.S. had to do with regulating the removal of valuable materials from deep sea beds beyond territorial waters. Whose resources are they? And who should benefit from their development? Apart from the question of ownership, who will police and tax ocean activities to restrain corporations from churning up the ocean into a cesspool of refuse for their own profit?

The treaty answers these questions by creating a governing body, democratically run by nations on a rotating basis, that is to set and enforce standards of behavior. Taxes on development and exploitation would be levied, much like the U.S. now taxes and controls companies who mine and drill off U.S. shores. Some mining technologies and resources would be transferred to all countries, including land-locked ones, and a public mining venture would be operated to compete with the private monopolies. In short, good stewardship of the oceans requires some concrete policies.

The Reagan administration said it wanted to "review" these plans for sharing and fair play, even though the U.S. stood to gain the most from the treaty, getting sole title to 2.8 million square miles of coastal ocean resources, including oil, natural gas, and fish. Apparently the rich were not due to get enough richer.

The bottom line is not just money; it is military monopoly as well. The ocean treasures the Reagan administration is after are minerals like cobalt and manganese. Cobalt is primarily used to make super-metals for jet fighter engines, missile-guidance systems, and other Pentagon hardware. The U.S. now imports more than 90 per cent of the cobalt we use, almost all of it from the world's nearly sole exporter of cobalt, Zaire, a country deemed unstable by the West.

Although they won't openly admit it, taking the oceans by force for their resources apparently seems easier to Reagan officials than fighting a war over resources in a revolutionized Zaire, Saudi Arabia, or other resource-rich country.

Their public rationale for scuttling the treaty is that development of the oceans by the rich will trickle down benefits to poor people around the globe. How this will happen from the high-technology production and deployment of jet fighters, missiles, and other cobalt-based weapons is beyond imagination.

Our emerging oceans policy is a clear example of the meanness emerging in our foreign policy as a whole. Like in the Wild West, it treats the world like an open range to be grabbed by the powerful with disregard for justice and stewardship. Reagan's position on the sea treaty is where an environmental policy that disrespects the earth and a foreign policy that disrespects weak nations come together.

Phil M. Shenk was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.