President Bush returned longtime adviser Karen Hughes to the halls of power as America's new "undersecretary of state for public diplomacy". Hughes' appointment is part of a broader strategy introduced to counter America's "unilateralist" image abroad.

As part of the overall public-relations makeover strategy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared the president wants to see the Senate ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty ratified "as soon as possible."

The Law of the Sea Treaty, or, appropriately enough, LOST, would effectively turn control of seven-tenths of the earth's surface to the United Nations. Ratifying LOST would empower the U.N. to collect royalties on seabed mining and regulate exploration and commercial development anywhere in any of the world's oceans.

Overseeing the LOST provisions is a multinational bureaucracy that sounds like something out of an Ira Levin novel.

At the core is the International Seabed Authority, or, as it likes to call itself, "The Authority." "The Authority" supervises a mining subsidiary called "the Enterprise," which is all ruled by "the Assembly," which then answers to "the Council," etc.

Mining operations would be approved or rejected by the Authority based on rules set by the Authority and enforced by the Enterprise for the good of the Assembly. Companies allowed to mine would owe substantial fees to the Authority and be required to do surveys for the Enterprise, their government-subsidized competitor.

According to Dr. Rice, "Joining the convention will advance the interests of the United States military," she claimed on Jan. 18. "The United States, as the country with the largest coastline and the largest exclusive economic zone, will gain economic and resource benefits from the convention. ... And the United Nations has no decision-making role under the convention in regulating uses of the oceans by any state party to the convention."

As Dr. Rice noted, the U.S. already has the largest coastline and economic zone. Ceding it to U.N. control won't make it bigger. It will only make it taxable.

As far as Dr. Rice's assurance the U.N. will have no decision-making role, Article 2, paragraph 3 of the treaty says, "The sovereignty over the territorial sea is exercised subject to the Convention and to other rules of international law." By ratifying LOST, the U.S. is, in principle, ceding territorial sovereignty over our own seas to the U.N.

History suggests that placing 70 percent of the ocean's surface under U.N. control will advance U.S. military interests only if they are interests shared by the United Nations. If the U.N. restricts the Navy from the Persian Gulf, do we obey? Or go to war with the U.N.?

Among the provisions buried in LOST is the recognition that the seas are reserved for peaceful purposes. The Navy could legally interfere with ships from other nations to investigate or interdict piracy, slave trade or some forms of unauthorized broadcasting, but not terrorism.

Under LOST, the U.N. will finally have the tax and regulatory powers it has lusted after for so long, together with a commercial income stream, independent of the purse strings of national legislatures. Any entrepreneur wishing to explore or mine the ocean floor would have to pay the Authority and provide technical assistance to the Enterprise, the ISA's own commercial ocean mining corporation. Articles 192 through 237 are loaded with environmental legalese that will provide U.N. autocrats and their NGO allies at Greenpeace and the Sierra Club with unrestricted power.

But with all of this, the administration is still bent on having the Senate ratify it. At first glance, it might seem like a good idea for a "quick fix," but on closer examination, it's much too high a price to pay to erase the "stain" of unilateralism from our national resume.

Proverbs 14:12 warns, "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."