Reagan Diaries & Ambassador Malone Comments Confirm Concerns About Collectivist UNCLOS Redistributing Wealth & Making New International Economic Order

110th CONGRESS SENATE EXEC. REPT. 110-9


CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA DECEMBER 19, 2007.

(pp. 24-25)


http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/lots.pdf


Mr. BIDEN, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, submitted the following REPORT together with MINORITY VIEWS


[To accompany Treaty Doc. 103–39]


IX. MINORITY VIEWS


MINORITY VIEWS OF SENATORS DEMINT AND VITTER


Ronald Reagan Biographer Dinesh D’Souza tells of an incident that occurred only a few weeks after Reagan was elected president:


According to aides who were present at the meeting, Reagan was asked by Alexander Haig, his new Secretary of State, to approve continuing negotiations for the Law of the Sea treaty. Reagan said he would not support the treaty and asked that negotiations be suspended. Incredulous, Haig tried to make him see the light by pointing out that discussions had been ongoing for years
and that every recent president and virtually all leading figures in both Parties accepted the general framework of the treaty.


‘‘Well, yes,’’ Reagan said, ‘‘but you see, Al, that’s what the last election was all about.’’ ‘‘About the Law of the Sea treaty?’’ Haig sneered. ‘‘No,’’ Reagan replied. ‘‘It was about not doing things just because that’s the way they’ve been done before.’’


Since that time, proponents have attempted to paint Reagan’s objections as limited in scope, focused on a few minor changes to the seabed mining section. Meanwhile, key Reagan advisers like Ed Meese, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and James Malone have countered that his concerns were much more broad, relating to the fundamental collectivist philosophy embodied in the treaty. They suggested that even if the seabed mining regime was fixed or even deleted altogether,
Reagan would still not have signed it. Who is correct?


For a quarter century, this question has gone unanswered. However, we now have new insights, with the release of The Reagan Diaries. On page 90, we find the answer in President Reagan’s own hand—


Tuesday, June 29 [1982]. Decided in NSC meeting—will not sign ‘‘Law of the Sea’’ Treaty even without seabed mining provisions.


Reagan’s concerns with the treaty were summed up in a 1984 article written by his chief Law of the Sea Negotiator, James Malone.


"The Law of the Sea Treaty’s provisions establishing the deep seabed mining regime were intentionally designed to promote a new world order—a form of global collectivism known as the new international economic order (NIEO) that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world’s wealth through a complex system of manipulative central economic planning and bureaucratic coercion."


This applies not only to the seabed mining regime, but to all of the treaty with the exception of a few provisions dealing with navigation.


In 1995, Commenting on the 1994 Agreement, Ambassador Malone reiterated his earlier criticism:


"This remains the case today. All the provisions from the past that make such a [new world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because of technical difficulties with Part XI. The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign."


We believe certain provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, particularly those dealing with navigation, have merit. We further appreciate the Navy’s interest in the treaty.


However, the navigation provisions are primarily limited to the first 4 parts—11 pages out of a 188 page treaty. The rest establishes a massive bureaucracy to govern the seas and anything that can be construed to impact the seas—even if the impact is de minimus.