ABSTRACT
The Bush administration performed a brilliant diplomatic feat in persuading the Soviet government to sign the START-I Treaty in July 1991 and to engage in parallel withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons to central sites. It also succeeded in averting nuclear weapons chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union by persuading the Soviet successor states with strategic nuclear weapons on their territory to sign on to the START-I Treaty in May 1992, and committing Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapons states. Brazil and Argentina gave up their weapons development programmes and established a system of mutual inspection implemented by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). North Korea has at long last signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and permitted inspections. Their agreement to cut missile production would at the least result in tightening the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and might form the basis of a worldwide treaty restricting missile production.
