40 



in access to strategic minerals than a vulnerable reciprocal regime 

 to which only a handful of industrial countries belonged." 



Is that the rather grim alternative that faces us if we do not sign 

 this treaty? 



What are the alternatives? Suppose we don't. What could 

 happen? Would the other industrial nations join up with the other 

 nations of the world that want the treaty and leave us out? 



Mr. Richardson. Even if the other countries' representatives in 

 seabed mining did join us, we would still only be a handful, but you 

 have raised a different point which is an important one, and that is 

 that we might find at the end of the day that even they or some of 

 them had decided to join the treaty regime and not our little club 

 of industrial countries. 



They could have a number of reasons for doing this. They might, 

 for example — it is certainly true of the United Kingdom — conclud- 

 ed that their paramount interest in the treaty is in the provisions 

 that secure coastal state jurisdiction over the hydrocarbons in the 

 continental shelf beyond 200 miles. 



Other countries might decide that the marginal economic advan- 

 tages of operating outside the treaty were outweighed by the legal 

 security of operating inside and that, given their dependence on 

 overseas sources, they would prefer the security to that economic 

 margin, and so on. 



Third World relationships could have a significant degree of 

 weight, and these might influence, in the case of France, for exam- 

 ple, a decision to go forward under the treaty rather than to join 

 with us and a few others in a reciprocal regime. 



Mrs. Fenwick. I see my time has expired. Thank you. 



Chairman Zablocki. Mr. Dornan. 



Mr. Dornan. Thank you. 



Mr. Secretary, I, too, want to join my colleagues in compliment- 

 ing you for taking on a task that easily has to have been as 

 difficult as any of the great branches of our executive department 

 that you headed ably for years. 



You made a statement that fascinated me. You said that the 

 change to the last administration had been a greater ideological 

 shift from one administration to another than any in recent 

 memory. 



One would assume from that statement that you mean the ideo- 

 logical shift from President Carter to President Reagan is greater 

 than the shift in thinking in the approach to economic and even 

 international affairs than it was from a Nixon-Ford administration 

 to a Carter administration, than it was from President Johnson's 

 administration to a Nixon administration. Is that a fair assump- 

 tion? 



Mr. Richardson. Oh, I think, clearly, yes. Having served in all 

 these administrations— my first Presidential appointment was by 

 President Eisenhower; I served throughout his second term— I 

 think the answer is clearly yes. 



Mr. Dornan. I am building up to something here, not just fish- 

 ing for your fascinating observations on recent history. 



It would seem then that some of the charges of those of us who 

 unabashedly call ourselves conservatives would be true in your 

 estimation when we said, without alluding to some demagogs from 



