ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 discusses the United Nations’ creation of the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee, or ENDC, at the end of 1961. U.N.-sponsored disarmament talks had not occurred since the Soviet Union abandoned the Disarmament Commission in 1957. Since that time, the Soviet Union also refused to engage with discussions on the peaceful uses of outer space at the COPUOS unless that committee also addressed disarmament. After President Kennedy assumed office and the Space Race began, the United States accepted the Soviet view that discussions on the peaceful uses of outer space could not occur without some progress on disarmament. The result were agreements between the Soviet Union and the United States, reflected in back-to-back U.N. Resolutions 1721 and 1722 (XVI), reestablishing the COPUOS with Soviet participation and establishing the ENDC. The two committees would act in some ways as two sides of the same coin, with the COPUOS addressing the peaceful uses of outer space while the ENDC addressed disarmament in space, as well as other disarmament issues.
