ABSTRACT
If there was one thing that was certain with the return of the Democrats to the US administration, it was an overhaul of the US policy of nuclear non-proliferation and arms control. During the eight years of the presidency of George W. Bush, Jr., US support for bilateral and multilateral strategic arms control remained at an all time low with the trend instead being in favour of unilateral initiatives or those acceptable to a ‘coalition of the willing’. In the process, the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty was discarded in favour of an ambitious national missile defence, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)-3 was allowed to die, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was left comatose, and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was largely ignored as evident in the forgettable NPT Review Conference (RevCon) in 2005.
