As World Law Erodes
By Jason Sibert.
Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the United States is abandoning the idea of a world governed by law.
Although he campaigned on law and order, Trump’s ideas on arms control are creating a new world disorder. It looks like our country will be leaving the Open Skies Treaty, a 1992 George H.W. Bush treaty. Trump has reportedly signed a document withdrawing from the treaty.
The treaty was first proposed by Republican Dwight Eisenhower and was implemented decades later under Bush. It allows all of its 34 signees, including the United States and Russia, the chance to conduct unarmed surveillance flights over each other’s countries to view the forms of weapons that are possessed by each country. The treaty supports security through arms control, as it allows all signees to know what types of weapons each possesses. The treaty builds a bond, or cooperation, between all who signed it.
Former California Governor Jerry Brown, who is now the executive director of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, has been critical of the path our country is taking. He said: “Congress should stop this madness before it’s too late. We need more transparency, not less.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists promotes nuclear arms control and Nuclear Threat Initiative promotes the abolition of nuclear weapons.
California Representative Jo Khanna currently promotes an alternative foreign policy vision for the United States. She’s said we should quit withdrawing from multi-lateral agreements and go back into the INF Treaty, stay in the Open Skies Treaty and extend New Start in order to avoid a costly arms race with Russia. This is wonderful advice for our country!
“We have to foster a diplomacy rooted in dialog and diplomacy,” Khanna beautifully said.
Arms control expert Alexandra Bell, who worked on the Open Skies Treaty and served as an advisor in the Office of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, said it’s not clear that President Trump knows why this treaty is important. Some are skeptical of the treaty because of possible Russian violations of it, a relevant point. However, the whole idea of a treaty is to create an avenue for discussion if violations should occur.
The whole zeitgeist of this administration works against the idea of discussion and quality diplomacy on the international stage. Arms control means a certain amount of trust amongst both friend and foe. The type of politics that dominates the administration, a form of hyper-nationalism that views other nation-states as entities out to get our own country, is not conducive to quality arms control.
What’s the result of the track we’re on? Our country is likely to engage in a power-balancing game with other countries. Each country in the game will try to accumulate more weapons. In turn, we’ll spend lots of our treasury on arms and our country will suffer internally due to lack of domestic investment.
As we speak, our country is growing further apart from other countries. How do we rebuild the bond we’re currently breaking?
Jason Sibert is the Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project
