Reading a week-old issue of The Economist today, I did a literal double-take:

A part of an American draft resolution, for instance, calls for nuclear-armed states to vow never to use such weapons against non-nuclear states.

http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14462435

Why the hell would anyone bother pushing this sort of thing? I’m going to stop short of saying that the UN’s time is precious, since a great deal of what they do is finger-wagging anyhow, but I find it hard to believe that any reasonable policy-maker could be naive enough to think that a  “promise” to a body with as little leverage over nuclear powers as the UN could ever prevent one from deploying its full military might. Don’t they have more important things to be talking about in there?