Francis A. Boyle on 2009 US -- Russia Start Talks

Talk Nation Radio for July 9, 2009

Francis A. Boyle on US and Russia Start Talks
History, perspective, and what's going on behind the scenes?

Many news reports have offered the conclusion that former President Vladimir Putin remains the real power in Russia today. They claim President Dmitri Medvedev is a figurehead. What about the power and authority of US President Barack Obama in Washington? Does he possess top control over foreign and military policy or diplomatic endeavors? Or might other forces within the Obama administration, the US Military, Pentagon, neoconservative advisory team, or military industry, retain the level of control they held under Bush/Cheney?

Professor Francis A. Boyle expresses hope that President Obama will make good on campaign promises about the use of diplomacy over the use of force, and that he will in fact negotiate new, binding weapons treaties for our century that can ensure peace.

Professor Boyle's book, "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence," defines the stakes posed by weapons of mass destruction in a post 9/11 world. He clarifies the history of the Start Talks and talks about what is at stake in 2009. (Amazon Books and see more below)

Francis A. Boyle also critiques the Obama team's negotiations noting that special adviser to the President, Michael A. McFaul, announced America's decision against putting the ABMs on the table prior to the Start talks.


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International Law Professor Francis A Boyle joins us to talk about the Start Talks between US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev. [See related, G8 Summit, Addressing the Nuclear Threat, here, with Under Secretary of State Bill Burns, with the President at the G8 for portion on Iran, "because he's been so heavily involved in this, that he can walk you guys through what they're working on".]

What were the successes or failures of the preliminary Start Talks? What has been going on behind the scenes? What is the impact of having so many Neoconservatives on the White House team?

Francis A. Boyle has advised nations and societies at risk including Palestinians and the People of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the ICC, International Criminal Court, and the People of Chechnya in a claim of genocide against Putin's Russia.

Francis A. Boyle is a leading expert on the crisis weapons of mass destruction create. He drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 and the American Implementing Legislation for The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

Bio: A scholar in the areas of international law and human rights, Professor Boyle received a J.D. degree magna cum laude and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the College of Law, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard and an associate at its Center for International Affairs. He also practiced tax and international tax with Bingham, Dana & Gould in Boston.

As an internationally recognized expert, Professor Boyle serves as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine. He also represents two associations of citizens within Bosnia and has been instrumental in developing the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic for committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Professor Boyle is Attorney of Record for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, conducting its legal affairs on a worldwide basis. Over his career, he has represented national and international bodies including the Blackfoot Nation (Canada), the Nation of Hawaii, and the Lakota Nation, as well as numerous individual death penalty and human rights cases. He has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare. (More on Professor Francis A. Boyle here.

Where to purchase books by Francis A. Boyle
Bookmasters, According to Bookmasters, "The 2002 book, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence provides a succinct and detailed guide to understanding the arms race from Hiroshima/ Nagasaki through the SALT I, SALT II, ABM and START efforts at arms control, to Star Wars/National Missile Defense, U.S. unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty, and events in Afghanistan and beyond".

"It clarifies the relevant international law, from the Hague Conventions through the Nuremberg Principles to the recent World Court Advisory Opinion, as well as tracing contradictions in and contraventions of domestic guidelines established in the U.S. Army Field Manual of 1956 on The Law of Land Warfare, which remains the official primer for U.S. military personnel concerning the laws of war to which they must regard themselves as subject".

Accompanying story in Counterpunch by Francis A. Boyle here Bush Jr.'s Nuclear Sabre-Rattling: The Rogue Elephant, "In quick succession the world saw these Bush Jr Leaguers repudiate the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the International Criminal Court, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), an international convention to regulate the trade in small arms, a verification Protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention, an international convention to regulate and reduce smoking, the World Conference Against Racism, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems Treaty, inter alia. To date the Bush Jr Leaguers have not found an international convention that they like. The only exception to this rule was their shameless exploitation of the 11 September 2001 tragedy in order to get the US House of Representatives to give Bush Jr so-called "fast-track" trade negotiation authority so as to present the American People and Congress with yet another non-amendable fait accompli on behalf of American multinationals, corporations, banks, insurance companies, the high-tech and biotech industries, Wall Street, etc. The epitome of "globalization," American-style".

Bookmasters, Using International Law to Clarify and Resolve the Israeli/ Palestinian Conflict, "No regional crisis has greater potential to affect world peace than the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. None has proved more intractable, and seemingly impossible to resolve. Yet, at the end of the day, most commentators agree that the only solution to the conflict lies in the creation of a viable Palestinian state under the guidance and norms of international law: only international law can provide an autonomous legal system capable of rendering objective judgment on the claims of the competing parties".

Special thanks to Professor Francis A. Boyle for spending time with us working to educate us on Obama policy and global events during early 2009. We are in your debt.

Press Notes:
Headline July 9, 2009 CNN BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- "The U.S. military has released five Iranian diplomats detained in Iraq since early 2007, the Iraqi government and Iran's embassy in Baghdad said Thursday.
-- The five have been transferred to Iraqi custody and were expected to be taken to the embassy. The U.S. military would only say it was looking into the report".

Robert Gibbs, July 9, 2009 From: THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary U.S. Press Filing Center, L'Aquila, Italy

Robert, you all pretty much laid out yesterday what's -- especially on climate change -- what's going to be in the G8 language and the MEF language. What's in play today? Do you expect any movement on that front at all, or what's --
MR. GIBBS: Well, no, I mean, I think they'll just continue to work through that. I think they will -- I mean, obviously there are some meetings throughout the day on trade. Again, that was a topic that the President talked to President Lula about.
"I think obviously a lot of business was done on some of the major topics -- climate and Iran -- yesterday.