ABSTRACT
The final years of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath are sometimes referred to as the “golden age of nuclear arms control”. This period commenced with a nuclear detente between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit and their joint statement in 1987. By 2010, a humanitarian approach had been applied successfully to different weapons categories. In the aftermath of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, two developments took place in parallel, both of which were essential precursors and conditions for the Humanitarian Initiative. The first development was the active engagement on the part of non-nuclear weapon States to promote the implementation of the Action Plan and push for progress. The second development and precursor to the Humanitarian Initiative between 2010 and 2012 was the growing recognition that the 2010 Action Plan was not quite the success the non-nuclear weapon States had hoped it would be.
