Global Arms Pact is Little Threat to Industry of Death (Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung, Germany)
"The state
of our cursed globe in 2013 warrants no expectation of a quick end to the
billion-dollar business of supplying instruments of death to oppressive regimes
and militia. Certainly not from an international treaty full of assertions of national
sovereignty. Yet the United Nations should not be discouraged. ... From the
International Criminal Court to the Responsibility to Protect, in the course of
organizing of the world, such as it is, rhetoric and reality are converging, even
if at a glacial pace."
After Iran, Syria, and North Korea thwarted a consensus on a
United Nations treaty involving
the weapons trade, no realist needs to reassess their view of the state of
the world. Such regimes, which naturally form up along an axis of evil, appear
not to see any tactical advantage in continuing to pose as forces for peace. It
doesn't bother them that they are snubbing their occasional co-conspirator the Non-Aligned Movement,
which has so often turned a blind eye to the crimes of dictators in the course
of opposing supposed neocolonialism.
[Editor's Note: The United
Nations press office reported on April 2, after passage of the Arms Trade
Treaty, "To a burst of sustained applause, the General Assembly today
voted overwhelmingly in favor of a "historic" first-ever treaty to
regulate the astonishing number of conventional weapons traded each year,
making it more difficult for them to be diverted into the hands of those intent
on sowing the seeds of war and conflict"].
Iranian leaders can no longer cling to the delusion that
they can long stay in the saddle without a nuclear bomb. The ruler of Syria now
finds himself in a literal and acute battle for survival. And North Korea's
dictator has emerged as a cry-baby who may soon make a ballistic down-payment
on his bleakest threats because domestic politics have left him no way out.
With this in mind, the multilateral document that has been
tentatively filed in New York is really no big deal. Not least because it has
been watered down countless times since it was first introduced. For one, the U.N.
General Assembly could have taken up the text instead, and then the normal,
tedious ratification process could have begun without giving three rogue
states de-facto veto power.
Second, the state of our cursed globe in 2013 warrants no
expectation of a quick end to the billion-dollar business of supplying
instruments of death to oppressive regimes and militia. Certainly not from an
international treaty full of assertions of national sovereignty.
It almost seems cynical that governments from north, south,
east, and west, would come together to attach lofty principles to arms trafficking to
paper, while questions fly in Europe over whether additional weapons would have
made things worse or more bearable for the Syrians. Yet the United Nations should
not be discouraged. From the International
Criminal Court to the Responsibility to
Protect, in the course of organizing of the world, such as it is, rhetoric
and reality are converging, even if at a glacial pace.
