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Nothing so drastic seems in prospect should the Senate decide to reject the LOS treaty. The treaty, which originally had been hammered out in a series of complicated conferences in the '70s and early '80s, had been a U.S. diplomatic initiative ever since Sen. Claiborne Pell proposed in 1967 "an ocean space treaty with all nations for more orderly use of the sea."

The treaty's approach was to set up an International Seabed Authority, which would collect royalties and distribute a share of the profits of mining companies to poor countries. The ISA would also share sophisticated technology and enforce the many other mining provisions in the treaty. In addition, the treaty would pool resource extraction efforts of the less developed nations in an entity called the "Enterprise," which would be granted access to sites surveyed by mining companies.