The Patriot Post® · Obama Seeks Legacy Over Legality

In 2008, Barack Obama promised to work toward making the world safe from the threat of nuclear war. With four months of his time in office remaining, Obama is quickly working to secure his legacy as a champion for the cause of a world free of nuclear weapons. The problem is he has gone about it backwards by first seeking to impose limits on U.S. nuclear capabilities rather than on those nations with nefarious regimes. (Even more nefarious than his, we mean.) His Iran nuclear deal is a prime example of this kind of backward reasoning.

As is often the case with leftists, they cling to their ideology over and against reasoned reality and Obama is no different. In seeking to secure his legacy as an anti-nuclear weapons warrior, Obama has been weighing the idea of making an unequivocal “no-first-use pledge.” This devastatingly naïve idea is based on the theory that such a statement would encourage other nuclear capable nations into similar actions, therefore becoming the first step in a move toward greater nuclear disarmament. If only the world only worked that way.

Obama has also continued to seek a way around Congress with regards to committing the U.S. to the UN’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which would disallow the testing of nuclear weapons. This treaty was rejected by the U.S. Senate 17 years ago, yet Obama and company have not let that decision or the Constitution deter their efforts. Obama is seeking to have the U.S. obligated to the treaty, without it reaching the level of a treaty, thereby bypassing the Senate.

Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, warned that Obama’s move is one that would seek to impose international law over that of U.S. law. He said, “By signing on to language declaring avoidance of nuclear weapons testing to be essential to the ‘object and purpose’ of the CTBT, the State Department is in effect submitting the United States to the restrictions of a treaty that has not entered into force. Regardless of one’s view about the necessity of nuclear testing, seeking to limit a future administration through a customary international law mechanism, when your administration has only four months left in office, is inappropriate.” Not only is it inappropriate, it is unconstitutional.