Antarctic Treaty (Gundam) - Motivations

Motivations

In the Gundam Encyclopedia:"Gundam Officials", the editor, Yuka Minakawa, quoted the original author of Mobile Suit Gundam, Yoshiyuki Tomino, in the Antarctic Treaty section in page 532, that the Federation needed the treaty to be signed because:

• They had no effective way of defending themselves from colony drops, especially against the tactical advantage of Zeon mobile suits at the time
• They knew Zeon's main weakness was the scarcity of mineral resources, and prolonging the war meant taking the lead in mass-production of ships and weapons, thus a long-term strategic advantage
• They needed time to catch up with their own mobile suit development.

The same section also states the Principality of Zeon agreed to the treaty in light of the following factors:

• The continual use of weapons of mass-destruction were also dangerous to Zeon, as the Federation Forces could retaliate back with NBC strikes. The EFSF had enough nuclear warheads stored in Luna II to completely annihilate Side 3 (a few thousand according to Gundam Officials).
• The banning of weapons of mass destruction meant that conventional/mobile warfare would be the norm. With their mobile suits, Zeon would have the tactical advantage — they already outpaced the Earth Federation in MS development, having successfully deployed their Zakus in real combat (although the Federation engineers proposed their own mobile suit research project in U.C.0078, the Project V didn't formally start until after the Battle of Loum, and the mass deployment of Federation mobile suits didn't appear until November, U.C.0079)
• The treaty allowed Zeon to bring the battlefront down to the surface of Earth. Surface access was considered paramount because in a prolonged war scenario their raw material resources were insufficient (Zeon's national strength was only 1/30 compared to the Federation), and they soon after started various mining operations on Earth (the biggest being the M'Quve mining operations near Odessa).