Chipping Away

The big news emanating from New York is the ability of the NPT PrepCom to reach an agenda for the 2010 RevCon.  Reuters proclaimed, "Nuclear talks get first breakthrough in 10 years."  Two interesting points to draw from this: 1. U.S. credibility does play a role-- two different unnamed diplomats were quick to admit in the article that the new U.S. stance changed the equation

"Huge obstacles remain, but the clear change of tone coming from the Obama administration has changed the equation," said one Western diplomat involved in the talks. "The U.S. is now willing to engage on disarmament. It's willing to engage with Iran. It mentions Israel. That's all new and it's helping."

and also helped turn France

"The Obama administration did an about-face and agreed to bring those commitments back on the agenda," a diplomat said, asking not to be named. "The French were still trying to block it but gave in overnight when they realized they were alone and isolated."

2. It's still baby steps- while the ability to reach some consensus is a breakthrough, it is nonetheless a breakthrough to setup the agenda for the 2010 RevCon.  The difficulty of simply negotiating what to even talk about proves that there is a long road ahead.  Israel's strong rebuffing of Obama's wish to universalize the NPT represents one of my giant obstacles that will have to be dealt with to make serious nonproliferation progress. None of this will be easy but perhaps the U.S. and others can slowly chip away at some of these pressing issues.