News last week that the Obama administration won’t sign the landmine ban is disappointing, but also ironic: the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was the first success of information-age grassroots organizing on a global scale. Jody Williams won a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing together more than 1,300 nongovernmental organizations in 95 countries to pass the ban.
My guess is that the Obama WH came in unfamiliar with this issue or its history. The Pentagon insisted that it could not meet the ban so long as it’s involved in the Korean peninsula and the State Department wouldn’t second-guess Hillary’s husband’s decision to avoid a battle over it.
Obama may yet sign the landmine treaty, but it could take years for the champion of consensus politics to join this particular international consensus.
