U.S. Policy on Conventional Arms Control Departs Reality

Ted Bromund / November 04, 2009

On October 30, the United States voted with the majority in the General Assembly to support U.N.-sponsored negotiations to regulate the conventional arms trade. The vote was 153-1, with the pariah state of Zimbabwe the lone hold out. More significantly, some of the world’s more ethically challenged arms traders – the states of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan, and Cuba – abstained in the vote.

U.S. support for the negotiations reversed the policy of the Bush Administration, but the U.S. agreed to participate only if the negotiations were conducted on the basis of consensus, which the Obama administration claims will “ensure that all countries can be held to standards that will actually improve the global situation.”

The vote is not, in practice, as immediately significant as its supporters claim. The Open-Ended Working Group on the treaty that was already meeting in New York – and in which the U.S. was already participating – has been transformed into a Preparatory Committee for the crowing U.N. conference on the treaty. But that conference was always supposed to be held in 2012: the latest resolution simply confirms that goal and date. (more…)