Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

> It is wrong for the US to walk away from this treaty

The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Accords were not treaties. We have a process to ratify treaties in the US. The president approves a treaty and sends it to the senate to approve or reject.

It's easy for president to make executive order agreements because it doesn't require approval from the senate (something Obama knew he couldn't get for either deal). But all parties should know that these non-treaties can be undone without a second thought by a new president.

The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

View on HN

No, by international law [1] (and U.S. law [2]) they are treaties [1]. U.S. is not the only country with the notion of ratification [3][5] (not a surprise). Generally, the U.S. distinguishes between "treaties", executive acts or acts of Congress agreements internally, but externally they are treaties.

U.S. treaties are not permanent, and while the statement as ratified, it is law, the U.S. has broken a lot of treaties treaties. See Native American section [4].

I can agree that statements like "It is wrong for the US to walk away..." are strictly moral, with no legal ground, as it was not ratified. Yet this is a treaty that was signed. In the eyes of the world and U.S. law, this is a "broken" treaty. And it doesn't help if we go around breaking treaties. It is not illegal, but you are not building credibility right? It might be only fair if other States start breaking their treaties when convenient. (And some of them do.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_United_S...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification#Ratification_of_a...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_treaties

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_the_Law_o...

Edit: This is a nice interesting read, in case you are interested: https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/2/issue/5/international...

Not to go Godwin but a lot of massacres were also wrong on moral not legal grounds. When it comes down to that non-defense things get even uglier very quickly as it turns to "there is no law here against heading there and breaking your face". Even if they thought it was firmly in their domain.

"Their word is law." is a primitive framework but it expresses that enforcement backs laws.

From that link, it is not a treaty in US law. The article uses the blanket term "treaty-related law", but the Iran agreement falls under the "Executive agreement" category. This is in part a long-standing presidential workaround for the similarly-long-standing Congressional unwillingness to bind the US to treaties. But it does come with a bit of deception of foreign partners, because it does not bind the US in the same way that treaties bind other countries under their own domestic law. One of many ways in which the US system is a bit dysfunctional.

What I read from this is: "the US has a convoluted process, which nobody understands, in order to commit to international agreements". It seems everybody, including head of states, thought the US had agreed to the treaties, but they had not (?), because of a technicality. I assume these technicalities can be applied to anything, any time, in order to justify pulling out of international agreements.

Worse, instead of owning to this change of mind, the rationale of technicality is used in order to justify pulling out. This is done in bad faith.

> The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

You say this now. This experience shows that, once you want to pull out, you will find a nice loophole to pull out. That is the "more or less" part.

And there is another aspect: once excuses for pulling out have run out, we know that the US will simply break, whenever and for whatever reason it wants, existing, ratified, seal-proof treaties.

The US is simply untrustworthy. And sneaky.

Oh come on. That is just plain insulting to all the other parties of the agreement. They knew full well that they did not have a ratified treaty with the US and they were explicitly warned of that fact ahead of time.

Just because people on the internet did not understand that doesn't mean the parties involved did not know that.

This argument reeks of "not my fault you were conned, you should have known I'm a conman"

Iran got their pallet of cash, they knew Obama was making the deal without the support of congress thereby giving the middle finger to US citizens. It would be diplomatic malpractice to not forecast the deal getting revoked, especially if they violated it (and they did)

How did they violate it?

It is not insulting what so ever. Every single agreement that two parties enter is a temporary agreement that will be broken. The only question is when. The history is littered with the agreements/treaties between countries that were tossed.

Every single diplomat knows it, which is why diplomacy is about horse trading. Parties want to "sort of" maintain the status quo, even if it means giving up some of what is "rightfully their" by the agreement.

Seriously? And China is more trustworthy? Look at what they are doing with 1MDB scandal in Malaysia and Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. US is no saint - but it is the best of the worst out there.

Pulling out of a loophole in a treaty is something any country can do. Why is US especial in this?

What are they doing with 1MDB?

Jo Low is evading arrest, and they say is hiding in China. Makes sense.

Wasn't 1MDB to blame on Goldman Sachs, a US company, and Jho Low, a Malaysian?

This is the problem. 1MDB was a money laundering scam. Where do you think the money was laundered from?

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/...

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [0] is not a treaty. That's not a matter of technicality, but of fact. I don't state this intending to defend the actions of the Trump administration. But when you get the basic facts so patently wrong, you do not do your argument any favors.

The staggering amount of these untruthful statements I read on a daily basis here and elsewhere on the internet is extremely disconcerting and increasing at an alarming rate. Please do not try to criticize Trump unless you are able to do so effectively. Posts like yours only make Trump's deceit and dishonesty harder to challenge, by damaging the credibility of anti-Trump individuals. Worse yet, they do nothing to further the cause of promoting positive change. Because if you want to do good, you do have to get things right.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...

They were sold a false bed of goods by Ben Rhodes and he bragged to the NYT about how he duped people into thinking it was a ‘treaty’

If you find requiring the president to sign and congress to approve a treaty convoluted, what DON'T you find convoluted? Putting together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is more conceptually complex, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't baffle international leaders, or you.

I don't find convoluted when you say that you take part into an international agreement, and then you stick to your word.

You expect the whole world to be familiar with the intricacies of the US Government. I assume that you have taken the same interest in familiarizing yourself with the technicalities of the Serbian government agreeing to international treaties.

I expect the people who make agreements with the Serbian government to have. That's why they do the job instead of me.

The United States of America has a population over 300 million, we did not agree to take part in the international agreement. Obama knew that the American people would not support the agreement which is why he did it with the stroke of a pen rather than through congress.

Aha you think the American people has the facts and experience enough to be able to make good judgements in foreign policy and even that YOU actually now what their voice is and can represent them completely?

What you now is the same as everyone else what’s being sold in the media (even social media). There are lots of hacks like Thomas Friedman being given lots of page space in papers such as NYT to even spread propaganda for powerful interests. In aggregation these hacks represents alignments of powers which even a president cannot surmount in the long term. Obama of course understood this but didn’t give up on what he thought was right, and now Trump does not care about was is right instead he simply surf the waves of narratives spewed by the conservative/alt-right to both winning the presidency and keeping his hold on power and enrich himself in the process, while he claims he’s being backstabbed by the deep state. But it’s clear his bet on the wrong horse is becoming a hazard as more Republicans in Senate are realizing this and changing course to avoid the risk of complete collapse of their party and American morals.

I guess another Vietnam has to happen so that the American people will again learn the real news, but given the assymetry in military power and outsourcing of it to allies like SA I’m not sure if they will learn this time.

Then the US should change their procedures: first get the treaty ratified then get their head-of-state to go and sign the treaty. Otherwise, in the eyes of the rest of the world the treaty has been signed and the US is bound by it, whatever their internal politics. Optics matter. The way it looks now because of this - and many other recent examples - that the US is not trustworthy.

A non-trivial number of countries have separate signing and ratification procedures. This is common enough that no reasonable observer in international politics automatically equates the two. Most of them have procedures that mirror those of the US!

It's worth considering that changing this process from one widely understood to one widely not understood is likely to lead to more confusion about weird internal political processes rather than less.

In any case a US president could always make up a story why the other party has violated a treaty if there’s enough interests which are aligned.

Remember Iraq WMDs?

1. Iran had an election shortly after JCPOA. If that election would have led to a change in government, and under the new president, Iran had decided to abrogate from the agreement, would the argument then be "hey, fair enough, it was not a a treaty"?

2. The senate passing it makes no difference. The Republicans, controlling the House and the Senate, may well have been successfully in passing legislation withdrawing from the treaty. Except - that isn't even necessary. Trump can withdraw from any treaty he likes whenever it pleases him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/05/0...

All of these are simply internal American processes, and it is up to the Americans to consider wether they want their politicians to run a foreign policy that projects stability, where the decisions of previous presidents are maintained because, being legitimately elected it was their decision to make, and American's word should stand for something - or whether they want their country to be perceived as erratic - which is in fact the case now, whether or not it causes allies such as the EU to ultimately make real changes in the relationship.

Strong political polarization in the US guarantees that going forward there won’t be continuity between presidents because there’s likely to be rapid shifts back and forth across the political spectrum

So,you agree with USA being unreliable partner now? (it might have been always that way, but it really looks different now)

This means that rest of the world can't trust the US on any issue...

This decreases US power. Everyone knows that they just have to wait for the next president and everything will be reset.

> The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed in 1987, it is now dead. so by your definition, 30 years is now called permanent? To me, a far better definition of the term permanent can be concluded from the matter of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - US permanently refused to join that convention.

How is the INF dead? Trump announced he is withdrawing the US from it but he has no authority to do so unilaterally and requires the approval of the Senate to actually withdraw. That approval has not happened and, as far as I am aware, the Senate has not even discussed the matter yet. It's just being used to strongarm Russia into complying with the treaty after they violated it at least once (that I am aware of, anyway)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com