That's essentially an unveiled admission of a want to hold the rest of the world hostage and establish domination. There's little rational nor justifiable about such a want from the perspective of anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen.
> Because sovereign states that are unable to enforce their will on others have no real power.
Well, they signed the treaty anyway, did they? I'd say the implicit signal here was: "We don't listen to a hegemony who isn't willing to listen to the rest of the world." What they did was take a moral high ground, and condemn anyone who didn't sign.
Call it virtue signaling, but in international diplomacy, it's a pretty powerful statement. The U.S. may have nuclear weapons, but it's still very much a part of the rest of the planet.
The same is true for all the COP conferences from Rio to Glasgow, and climate protocols, over the past 30 years.
> If this is a policy you seriously want to advance, I recommend taking a hard look at how national security professionals establish values and objectives, assess problems, and work through cost-benefit analyses in pursuit of said objectives.
Which objectives? To who's benefit? Yours? The U.S.? The rest of the world?
The U.S. is in a tentative spot of taking an exclusive role in determining what is or isn't a moral high ground. Whether that's nuclear disarmament, or reducing CO2 / curbing climate change, or social equity.
This is used as an argument for new, upcoming powers like India or China to forge their own path forward, for better or worse. If the U.S. wants to keep playing a role of significance in the 21st and 22nd centuries, it will have to relinquish its hegemonic stance.