On Wednesday I watched as the US’s Disarmament Ambassador announced to the UN First Committee that the US would vote in favour of negotiating an Arms Trade Treaty by 2012.

On face value, this seems like an amazingly positive turnaround – and particularly fitting coming only days after Obama won his hotly debated Nobel peace prize for work in disarmament and UN diplomacy. The Arms Trade Treaty was initially dreamt up by a group of Nobel Laureates – so what better way to demonstrate Obama’s commitment to the prize than roll up his sleeves and get to work on a treaty all about stopping irresponsible arms transfers that fuel human rights abuses.

And we’re not talking about just shifting policy gears – the US has abandoned its old beaten up foreign affairs Chevvy and is now on the multilateral UN bus (a bit less partying than the Venga bus but they do have more flags). Up until this point the US has been one of the Arms Trade Treaty’s biggest critics. In 2008 the US and Zimbabwe were the only governments in the world to vote against working on the Arms Trade Treaty – what do they say about being judged by the company we keep? Little wonder really –the US being the world’s biggest arms exporter and not against of using so-called “military aid” to mess with the political affairs of fragile states around the world.

But that was then – when the Bush administration was all about shunning the international community and pursuing unilateral and humorously named military operations in far away places, with no so humorously tragic consequences. The New York Times just reported that over 85,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the invasion in 2003 – and I wonder how many at the hands of weapons irresponsibly or illicitly transferred into the country. For that matter I have to wonder how many of the 4,500 odd US troops who have lost their lives in this Iraq war were killed with weapons made in and shipped from the US (or Russia, the other major global arms exporter who would gladly see the back of an Arms Trade Treaty).

Given US resistance to a legally binding treaty it did seem almost monumental when the US delegate took the floor to give his government’s commitment to it. But then he said something that reminded me that while the US is offering it’s right hand in friendship, it’s still giving us a bloody belting with the left. He said, “Mr Chairman, the Arms Trade Treaty is just too important to be left to a majority vote”, before going on to make it clear that the US will only support the treaty if the text is agreed by absolute consensus.

The hypocrisy is clear – the US is willing to invade sovereign countries to enforce democracy and majority rule, but when it comes to regulating the global arms trade (or more importantly, US exports) it just won’t do.

Too bad every diplomat and NGO knows full well that absolute consensus will ruin any chances of negotiating an effective treaty – by giving a veto power to every state in the room (including ones that import weapons for the purpose of waging war against their own citizens). The Dutch, Swiss and New Zealand delegates said it would create a “recipe for the lowest common denominator”. Germany said it would give a “premium to those with the smallest ambitions”. Cote de Ivoire reminded us all that nothing should stand in the way of states being able to agree on a treaty that saves lives.

But despite these pleas the UK and co-authors (Australia among them) have redrafted a resolution on the treaty that caves in to this deadly demand. It includes a paragraph that clearly states decisions on the treaty will be made by consensus. All delegates will vote on this resolution at the end of the month.

The co-authors of resolution have literally impaled themselves on the US’s double-edged sward. It’s a despicable misuse of US power and shows a clear lack of vision on the part of the co-authors. All I can say is I hope the more progressive states including Norway, Canada, Ireland, Germany and New Zealand fight tooth and nail to get absolute consensus out of the resolution and put the Arms Trade Treaty back on track. Millions of lives depend on it.