Now nearly 100 countries are trying to change that, by pushing for the creation of a new treaty that would finally regulate the highly lethal international trade in smaller arms. The initiative, which is being pushed by Britain, Japan and others under U.N. auspices, would prohibit the sale of these weapons (which include various guns and portable grenade launchers) to states with poor human-rights records or those likely to use the arms to perpetuate wars.
Proponents of the idea have submitted various proposals for a treaty to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and he’s expected to soon appoint experts from two dozen countries to study them and report on their feasibility. But there are reasons for pessimism. The United States—which is the world’s biggest exporter by far of such weapons, having inked about $13 billion in arms export agreements in 2005—refused to submit a proposal of its own for the treaty. Last year at the United Nations, the United States was the only member state to vote against starting treaty talks. Russia and China, two other major arms suppliers, have provided input to Ban Ki-moon, though they didn’t advocate much stricter controls. Chinese and Russian officials wouldn’t comment on how they’ll proceed if a treaty emerges. For their part, U.S. officials haven’t ruled out participating. But they must contend with the mighty U.S. gun lobby, and have already said that they don’t think a U.N. treaty would improve on U.S. protections currently in place.
Treaty advocates argue that other groundbreaking measures, like the International Criminal Court and the landmines ban, have been set up without Washington. Perhaps, but how can you limit international sales if the world’s biggest vendors ignore you? —Patrick Falby
Terror, Torture Eager to show it was revising counterterror policies, two years ago the White House adopted 37 of the 39 reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission. But it rejected one urging the U.S. to comply with the Geneva Conventions on the “humane treatment” of captured terrorists. That refusal would haunt the administration. “This [did] more damage to our foreign policy than any other issue,” says Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission who later served as counselor to Condoleezza Rice. Key European allies, he said, balked at cooperating on terrorist apprehensions because of fears their agents could be prosecuted for human-rights violations. U.S. officials also learned that European officers were releasing terrorists seized in Afghanistan rather than hand them to U.S. interrogators, according to a former U.S. counterterrorism official who declined to be identified. Zelikow and others say the battle continued until July 2006, when President Bush finally agreed that the U.S. would adhere to Geneva Conventions standards.
Those battles are likely to haunt next week’s confirmation hearing for Michael Mukasey, Bush’s nominee to replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. —Michael Isikoff
Beneath The Robe Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst at CNN and The New Yorker, is the latest author to dish on the inner workings of the U.S. Supreme Court. The unspoken conceit is that inside dope on the justices helps explain their jurisprudence. And although these personality portraits are tantamount to pop psychology, they still have their rewards. Toobin shows how Justice Anthony Kennedy’s boundless vanity accounts for his grandiose rulings and florid prose. Elsewhere, he argues compellingly that Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s failure to forge conservative majorities on issues like the death penalty, gay rights and abortion left him gloomy and cynical. Perhaps the most surprising revelations are those that emerge about paleoconservative Justice Clarence Thomas. Silent on the bench and dour on the page, Thomas turns out to be a loyal supporter of his clerks, the court’s staff and NASCAR racing. While Toobin’s tome isn’t exactly the last word on America’s highest court, it isn’t just voyeurism either. —Adam B. Kushner
Ready to Levitate? Germans take pride in their engineering prowess, so the 23-years-and-counting it’s taken to put their zoomiest invention into service is not exactly a national ego booster. But after a string of false starts, a magnetic-levitation train that floats atop a cushion of invisible forces is finally set to appear on (or, more precisely, above) German soil. The new line linking Munich’s airport with the city center should cut the travel time from 40 minutes to 10 and cost €1.85 billion, with federal, state and city governments footing the bill. But will it actually happen? No timetable has been given for construction anda previous attempt to link Berlin and Hamburg in the early 1990s ended in cost overruns and acrimony. The technology has been vilified by environmentalists and even some former proponents opine that time has passed maglev by. As conventional trains keep getting faster, maglev comes to look ever more like Concorde on a magnetic track, a comparison that stings not just because the supersonic airliner is obsolete, but also because it’s French. —John Sparks
Renaissance Madman Giuseppe Arcimboldo, portraitist of Hapsburg monarchs, scholar, inventor and scientist, has never really gotten his due. But now through Jan. 13 at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, curious viewers can rediscover this most curious of painters. While his royal portraits are beautiful, precise and detailed, it’s his surrealism, predating that of Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí by three centuries, that astounds. “The Librarian” is a portrait of a man made entirely of books. “Vertume,” a bust of grapes, melons, cherries, flowers and wheat stalks, is actually a portrait of Arcimboldo’s last Hapsburg employer, Rudolf II. Arcimboldo’s simultaneous embrace of both the beautiful and the grotesque mark him a man of the 16th century, but also make him right at home in the 21st as well. —Ginny Power
Reality Check Hard-charging type A’s who dismiss concerns about their long hours at work by saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” should have a look at a new British study. Turns out that lack of sleep appears to be linked to high blood pressure, a known risk factor for both heart disease and stroke. The 17-year study of 10,000 workers showed those who reduced their sleep from seven hours per night to five or less doubled their risk of cardiovascular-related death. —John Sparks
