During the campaign, President Barack Obama promised to "crack down on nuclear proliferation by strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions."

When Obama came into office, if a country violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency would investigate, and could then refer a case to the the United Nations Security Council for punishment. But the security council isn't required to do anything, and with five nations holding veto power, it can be difficult to create a consensus package of sanctions. For example, the Obama administration has been struggling to convince fellow council members Russia and China the Iranian regime's apparent violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty warrant stiff economic sanctions.

Obama hopes to fix this by making sanctions mandatory. But he faces a stubborn and skeptical international community. In September, Obama was chairing the security council -- the first American president to do so -- when the body unanimously voted to adopt a resolution addressing a wide array of issues surrounding nuclear weapons. Most of Obama's arms control goals were mentioned; the resolution called for a treaty banning the production of fissile materials, the universal adoption of Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and urged more nations to permit tougher International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

But the idea of adding automatic sanctions to the Non-Proliferation Treaty is nowhere to be found. In fact, the resolution explicitly takes a different route by bringing violators directly to the security council, eliminating the IAEA as a middleman, but still leaving punishment in the hands of the council: "a situation of non-compliance with non-proliferation obligations shall be brought to the attention of the Security Council, which will determine if that situation constitutes a threat to international peace and security."

In a speech before the Security Council, Obama said that was progress. That may be true, but to us, it's also an indication other nations aren't on board with Obama's more ambitious goal.

"Countries don't want to give up their sovereignty in advance, they want to handle (the decisions) on a case-by-case basis," said Charles Ferguson, the president of the Federation of American Scientists and a nuclear policy expert. While the United Kingdom and France are both on record supporting automatic sanctions if a nation withdraws from the treaty, China and Russia's actions on Iran indicate the security council is still divided. And smaller, developing nations without nuclear weapons are unlikely to strengthen the treaty's non-proliferation measures when they continue to believe the nuclear powers aren't doing enough to disarm themselves.

While things could change at the treaty's review conference in New York in May or at Obama's planned summit on nuclear security in March, it looks like Obama has a long way to go in convincing other nations to adopt automatic sanctions as part of the treaty. For now, we rate this promise Stalled.