Why arms control is hard...

This item has been sitting in my reader for a few days.  This statement, made by Vladimir Putin, touches on so many aspects of international relations that I didn't quite know what direction I wanted to take in examining it.  First, the statement:

"Only sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council can serve as a basis for restricting weapons supplies to any particular country. In all other cases, nobody can use any pretext to dictate to Russia or any other country on how they should trade and with whom."

I would like to address two interesting points from the standpoint of my own research on arms transfer that this statement evinces.

1. Arms control is inherently difficult to begin if the two states that have the largest stake in the arms transfer game have an effective veto on limitations of their right to sell weapons.  This is a highly rational position for Russia to take if it sees arms sales as a vital part of its economic, military, or foreign policy portfolio. The built-in veto of the security council turns this international organization into a forum for state to state diplomacy rather than international action in the case of arms transfers.  What I mean by this is that in the case of the US and Russia having disputes over arms transfers to Syria, for example, the veto on the security council by each state means that either state can effectively get what they want in the absence of all but the most spirited international consensus.  
2. The second point is that Putin seems to put arms sales in the same category as other trade.  Nobody can dictate how they trade and with whom.  This is a very interesting sentiment for a state which recently was accepted into the WTO to have.  

The question about arms transfers being a different type of trade is one that I'll leave to another time.  However, Russia continues to hold firm to its position of autonomy in foreign policy.  Its leaders are unwilling to allow the state to be constrained by other states (i.e. the United States) or even by the international community more broadly.