1826 



Regionalism as a concept is more than a halfway house between 

 independence and interdependence. It offers a means by which the 

 separate nations of the world can group themselves into larger multi- 

 national units, with each participating nation yielding up some portion 

 of its sovereignty in exchange for the shared benefits enjoyed by the 

 region as a whole. The earlier study of commercial nuclear power in 

 Europe demonstrated that nations may be willing to relinquish a 

 measure of sovereignty in exchange for the greater safety of nuclear 

 control. The mutual efforts of the Riparian States of the Lower 

 Mekong basin exemplify another form of interdependence in which 

 some elements of sovereign independence in economic planning and 

 technological self-determination are traded for the greater gains 

 possible through concerted regional development. If it should come 

 about that 20 or 30 regions of the world, rather than some 150 inde- 

 pendent and sovereign nations, are represented in the U.N. General 

 Assembly, it will be because the member states of each region find 

 the forces that hold the region together stronger than those that 

 separate the nationalities comprising it. 



Each action that tends to strengthen the ties that hold each multi- 

 nation region together would be a step toward a more coherent and 

 manageable world of global regions, each interdependent within itself 

 and each region interdependent in its relations with other regions of 

 the world. Such a concept, perhaps not altogether beyond human 

 attainment, seems to be suggested by Cleveland and Franks, and 

 reinforced to a degree by the "Spirit of the Mekong." 



CASE five: exploiting the resources of the seabed *^ 



The issue of independence versus interdependence is moving toward 

 a climactic contest in the impending question of sovereignty of the 

 seabed. The oceans of the world, from the earliest formulation of inter- 

 national law, have presented the challenge to seafaring nations: how to 

 allocate law and responsibility in a global region open to all — an 

 international commons. In the 1970s, technology has raised anew the 

 quandary of national versus international control. The increasing 

 ability to drill for oil and prospect for mineral wealth in the ocean 

 floor poses problems of sovereignty, property rights, and national 

 interests in the allocation of rich resources among claimant nations 

 and their nationals. 



The dangers and serious problems which would result from failure 

 to establish an orderly and equitable international system for exploit- 

 ing the resources of the seabed were widely recognized at the time 

 when the seabed study was prepared, 5 years ago. The United Nations 

 had sponsored conferences m 1958 and 1960 to reconcile conflicting 

 jurisdictional claims. In 1970 the U.N. General Assembly called for 

 another conference : 



. . . this time to produce a comprehensive treaty settling all the issues that had 

 been skirted before, and that had arisen in the interim as a result of new tech- 

 nological progress. The complexity of the problems overwhelmed the 2,000 

 delegates of 148 governments who met for 10 weeks in the summer of 1974 in 

 Caracas, Venezuela. The same proved true of the eight-week conference [held in 

 the spring of 1975] in Geneva. The primary disputes remain.**' 



«8 Doumani, Kxploiting the liesourccs of (fie Seabed, vol. 1, pp. 435-524. 



"7 Richard A. Frank, "The Law at Sea," New York Times Magazine, May 18, 1975, p. 15. 



