The Enterprise: An expendable triumph

The developing countries scored an outstanding diplomatic success when they secured provisions in the Draft Convention for setting up an organ of the International Authority to engage in commercial activities in the international area. If in negotiations concessions are made to one party in exchange for concessions desired by the other, then these concessions should normally be expected to address the real interests of the parties concerned, especially if concessions involve costs, so that the benefits of mutual concessions would be equal. In the negotiation on the question of the system of exploitation, however, the concession to set up this organ--the Enterprise--was made by the industrial countries even though it did not safeguard or achieve any concrete interest of the developing countries or those of a number of individual developing countries, thus bringing about benefits to them. The industrial countries, because they misjudged the mood of the developing countries, failed to recognize that, though united and eloquent, the mounting pressure for a unitary system of exploitation reflected only the highest common factor for agreement among themselves and not a substantive interest from which a benefit or advantage could be derived. Had they seen that the system of exploitation proposed by developing countries did not reflect or promote any widely shared national or ideological interests, the industrial countries could have avoided the undertaking to set up the Enterprise.