ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the other half of the multi-level approach – the international forces influencing the arrangement. It concerns the centrality of the nuclear security imperative for continued co-operative relations between the United States and Russia. The chapter examines the systemic goals of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. It argues that an agreement with such serious problems for commercial and trade interests was ultimately driven by a national security principle. The chapter also argues that highly enriched uranium (HEU) conversion was a central pillar in the preventative diplomacy of Bill Clinton's post-Cold War US foreign policy as well as the consolidation of the new nuclear restraint regime. HEU conversion also contributed to the Clinton nuclear non-proliferation stance, and established a co-operative strategic framework. Normative values and political considerations confuse the more self-evident side of the national interest creating an ill-defined subjective bias that relates to the ordering of priorities in foreign policy.
