Resolutions

The United Nations Security Council recently passed a unanimous resolution calling for the world-wide end of nuclear weapons. That sounds wonderful. I hope it happens. It begs a few questions though.

Who will enforce it, and how will it be enforced? There were 14 resolutions over a decade's time essentially demanding that Saddam Hussein's Iraq "come clean" with his WMD. It took a small coalition of countries, including only two of the five permanent security council members (U.S. and U.K.), acting outside of the blessing of the U.N., to enforce those resolutions and ultimately discover that there was either not an imminent WMD program and threat or that it was secretly moved out of Iraq before the invasion in March 2003.

Did all countries possessing nuclear weapons vote for it? Yes and no. All of those countries on the council did so, but there are at least five other countries not on the council that possess, or are on the verge of possessing, nuclear weapons. These five countries are India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and North Korea. I would surmise that the former three, if council members, would have voted no since they have not even signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which they would give more consideration and should have more weight in a court than a resolution.

The latter two are not on the council, have not signed the treaty and are open about their intentions to fully develop those weapons or programs. In fact, one member of this council (U.S.) failed to get two other members of this council (China and Russia) to cite these latter two countries by name in this resolution.

What good is this resolution if its members could not enforce a less contentious resolution years ago? What good is this resolution if non-members possess nuclear weapons and have no intention of disarming or worse yet plan to accelerate the programs already in place? Will this resolution be just one more in a long line of "all talk and no walk"? Even children quickly discover that as long as they go punished for wrongdoing they are emboldened to continue in it.