Obama Treaties Face Uphill Battle In Senate

The Boston Globe:

President Obama's vision of global cooperation - symbolized by his surprise Nobel Peace Prize - is in for a crucial test in the months ahead when he begins sending a series of treaties to the US Senate, where skepticism among Republicans and some Democrats will make approval exceedingly difficult, according to government officials and specialists.

Marking a major reversal from the Bush administration, which considered most treaties to be too restrictive of US sovereignty, the Obama administration says it will seek ratification of three major pacts aimed at reducing nuclear weapons. It also will seek approval of a set of regulations to manage use of the oceans and, by the end of the president's first term, a new treaty to combat global climate change.

Read the whole story: The Boston Globe

Comments

[Tim303]

It was always pretty scary for me in CO to see the missile field, those silos with baked out of their minds soldiers with their fingers on the button.

[wonketteRAWKS]

Germany's Merkel wants US nuclear missiles stored there removed.

Just saying.

[greysells2]

Another chance for the Party of No. When you are in a hole. stop digging. Unless you don't know it. In that case, ask for some more lime green kullaid.

[Durango]

Being Pro Nuclear weapons, when we have enough overkill to destroy all of mankind, is as dumb a talking point as being anti empathy, believing in death panels, absent birth certificates, or being pro rape.

I had hoped that after last November we would be finished with ignorance passing for political discourse.

Boy was I mistaken.

[research]

It looks like the accepted minute number of nukes a country needs to stay Sovereign, is about 100, based on Pakistan's, Israel's and India's arsenals.

Every sovereign country will eventually get nukes.

Even faster is we are insane enough to pursue further nuclear power.

[BorisPutinov]

Tovarich.
Of course there will be no more nuclear treaties.
We in the Motherland do not want them and neither do you.
Persia will attain nuclear status within the next 5 to 10 years to safeguard our South-Eastern flank and balance will be maintained between our two countries ( just like we did in China some decades ago in order to protect our Western and South-Western flanks ).
In regards to you wanting to move some of your pieces in Eastern Europe, we have some pieces of our own we can move in Central and South America, just to keep things interesting.
Tovarich, Chess is the most wonderful game in the world; it resembles life itself.

Boris

[mravka]

Tovarich,

Two quick points FYI;

China is on your Southeastern flank, Iran is to the Southwest, not the other way around.

Russia wants nuclear missile reduction more than the U.S., they've been clamouring for it since Gorbachev.

[BorisPutinov]

Tovarich.
Forgive me, of course you are right, I got my Cardinal Points mixed up ( too much Putinka, I guess ).
Just to let you in the worst kept secret in the world, over here we too have a Military Industrial Complex that employs a lot of skilled workers and scientists that must be kept employed and busy.
We do nuclear weapons well; why stop ?; besides, they have kept the peace between us all these years, that is an uncontrovertible fact.
The strong always respects the strong; it has always been a fact of life.

Boris

[Durango]

He was looking at his Stratego Board upside down.

[PlaceboStudman]

The whole nuclear arms fight is nothing more than an international spitting for distance contest, or a My phallus is bigger than your phallus. Just because we CAN make nuclear weapons doesn't mean we SHOULD. Nuclear sciences should be restricted to energy and medicine, period. Everything else is just a hollow show of testosterone

[watchful123]

Reducing nuclear arms is an issue Obama could stand strongly on as the leader of the free world... knowing full well that congress will likely oppose it.

[Osusuki]

Time for a history lesson, children:

The last American President to take a stand like that was Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who negotiated the Treaty of Versailles which both ended the First World War and founded the League of Nations. Thanks to the Republican party, most notably Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States never ratified that treaty, never became a member of the League, and officially remained at war with the Central Powers until Republican Warren G. Harding became President in 1921.

Never underestimate the ability of a Republican Senator to hold up world peace or common sense until he can find a Republican President to take the credit for it.

Absent American membership, the League of Nations became a paper tiger which Mussolini called, "very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out." The League disbanded in 1935. By that time, Wilson had long since passed away, viewed by the world's statemen as a broken old man with a slight Messiah complex. You can make a case that Wilson's naivete and Republican obstructionism led directly to the Second World War.

There are things worse than not having a new nuclear arms agreement right now. Really. So unless Mr. Obama is willing to walk into the Senate cloakroom with his Louisville Slugger and break out some Chicago Politics to get these treaties ratified, he should just back off.

[Durango]

"The last time an American President . . . President Wilson"?

There is a WHOLE lot of history under the bridge since that time.

You are completely ignoring the Washington Naval Treaties.

Not to mention the United Nations, NATO, WW II, Cold War etc. etc.

While your analogy of Republicans blocking a Presidents actions, might be valid in these circumstances in the interests of fairness, the Washington Naval Treaties and Kellogg Briand Treaties were negotiated by Republicans.

History is a bit more complicated than you portrayed.

[vesaversa1]

President Obama haven't shown that he can be a true leader yet , not in my opinion that is.Obama should leave the nuclear treaties up to the more experiences people in congress.

[mummblemouth]

So the way for him to prove he is a 'true leader' is to not lead. Now that's some twisted logic.

[MadJeffersonian]

Then nothing will be done.

[Durango]

HA, HA,HA, HA, HO, HO, HO HO HA, HA HA, HA. HO, HO HO,

You are in for an extremely long 7 years.

HA, HA,HA, HA, HO, HO, HO HO HA, HA HA, HA. HO, HO HO,

[anticapitalist1983]

best cartoon on nuclear weapons ever:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/cartoons/wildcat/sp000583.gif

[Matrsnot]

If giving up US soveriegnty in favor of treaties with others, I hope he does fail. The Constitution still stands and he will be compared to the other worst nightmare this country ever stood up with, Carter.

[Durango]

You are right that the Constitution still stands, after 8 years of Republican attempts to destroy it.

Your understanding of the Constitution is as deficient as your understanding of National Sovereignty.

But i suppose that is generally the case when you regurgitate nutty talking points without understanding the meaning behind them.

[RTIII]

Obviously you meant Bush.
.

[Abraxas79]

It is time for political reform in the United States. It is time to do away with the Senate. Collapse the senate into the house. It is not checks and balance, it is redundancy and inefficiency. Time to clear out those fossils once and for all. Simple majority should be enough.

[instagladiator]

Sounds good on paper, but in reality, unworkable. Whether you care to believe it, or not, the root cause of all of your problems is the Fed - the one and only central bank that has enslaved you. It always has been, always will be.
If only the founding fathers would have included one simple feature to the constitution, your government would not have grown so "out of control and complex". That simple feature is "A Vote of No Confidence". If that were in place, politicians would remember who they are representing and why, or be booted out of office.
But then, that's just a fairy tale that will never come about.

[PlaceboStudman]

Wow, thanks so much for advocating steps down the road toward Emporer Obama's dictatorship. The congress may not be as effective as it can be or should be, but if we do not have a congress, then we have a dictatorship. And no one really wants that, do they?

[Durango]

Don't know where you were between 2001-2009, but a dictatorship is exactly what Bush/Cheney and their codependent Republican Congress wanted.

It was pretty obvious.

Too bad you missed it. But since you did, I don't think you have any grounds for warning against dictatorships.

[BritishColumbian]

To an outsider whose democracy is based on the British model your Senate is seen as a dictatorship with a Senate full of decades long "serving" members that are bought by lobbists.

If your democracy worked, you would not be decades behind in enacting change that other democracies have been able to pass. You dwell too much on the past when circumstances are totally different, look at former presidents through rose coloured glasses and are constantly in election mode.

[Blasphemy]

I have to agree with Joedlh. Obama is going to face an uphill battle because the republicans want him to fail. It cost a tremendous amount of money to fund a nuclear arsenal the size of the U.S. or Russia. The costs are staggering and these weapons sit year after year swallowing up money better used elsewhere. Nuclear weapons should be globally banned, but since there are rouge nations that will stop at nothing to have them, the best we can do is reduce those arsenals to the extent that we "could" retaliate horribly if attacked in such manner. The last thing we need is another arms race to swallow our resources, but the Republicans will stop at nothing to ensure Obama's failure.

[Abraxas79]

Indeed you get to the point where although a country has nuclear weapons, none of them operational. (See the U.K.)

[Matrsnot]

If and whne he gets the senate to ratify the UN small arms treaty, the real revolution will start. Read "Neither Predator nor Prey." also John Ross's Unintended Consequences.

[patbernstein]

*Obama asks world to reduce nuclear weapons while U.S. agency pushes new bomb production*

ATLANTA — Despite statements by U.S. President Barack Obama that he wants to see the world reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration continues to push forward on a program called Complex Modernization, which would expand two existing nuclear plants to allow them to produce new plutonium pits and new bomb parts out of enriched uranium for use in a possible new generation of nuclear bombs.

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/nation/obama-asks-world-to-reduce-nuclear-weapons-while-us-agency-pushes-new-bomb-production

[changeself]

he's banking on the fact that the Hill is full of neo-cons and neo-libs

who have no interest in nuke-free world.

they have it exactly where they want it right now.

[Joedlh]

There are two factors at work here: (1) the GOP desire for Obama to fail on all levels. There are few ways to change this perspective other than to vote them out of office. (2) The loss of nuclear weapon funding in an elected official's district, which, of course, translates into lost jobs and, therefore, lost votes. It is no coincidence that the Department of Defense has sprinkled war-enabling jobs in all 50 states Nevertheless, this can be addressed by replacing nuclear weapons funding with other options that have a clear benefit in terms of local jobs and the nation's future. Few human beings who are not getting a pay check out of it will defend nuclear weapons as a good thing in and of themselves. There was a report just issued that Baby Boomers have a higher incidence of cancer because they were children when there was rampant testing of weapons. These types of weapons are just wrong on so many levels that there is no argument for their existence that will stand up to scrutiny. In fact, there are many military thinkers who agree that they have little meaningful role in hostilities.