Lack of Leadership by Washington and Moscow Undermines Treaties and Norms

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-wellen/59093/lack-of-leadership-by-washington-and-moscow-undermines-treaties-and-norms

Lack of Leadership by Washington and Moscow Undermines Treaties and Norms
Russia
by Russ Wellen | October 20, 2014 - 7:56am

In a blog post at Arms Control Now, Greg Thielmann writes about how the numbers of nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia deploys have actually increased in the last six months, in advance of the deadline for rollback imposed by the New START Treaty.

The 1970 NPT is the keystone of international efforts to control and reverse the international nuclear weapons threat. But many countries have long questioned the bona fides of Russia and the United States in implementing the treaty’s NPT Article VI disarmament obligation, a skepticism that is especially evident at the deliberations of the NPT review conference every five years.

~snip~

Meanwhile in an article in the National Interest titled Barack Obama Is Not a Realist, Paul Saunders writes that it’s not just nuclear weapons where the United States fails to demonstrate leadership, but (emphasis added):

… global rules and norms are in flux. America, the European Union, some components of the UN bureaucracy and progressive NGOs have attempted to redefine them, weakening state sovereignty and legitimizing force to right perceived wrongs. It is naive to expect others—especially dissatisfied major powers like China and Russia—to observe international rules and norms that we ourselves consider inadequate and are attempting to modify. This is a particularly daring assumption when we ourselves often try to change rules and norms through action and precedent rather than negotiation and consensus.