ABSTRACT
This chapter details the history of multilateral nuclear disarmament diplomacy between the end of the 1970s and the turn of the millennium. Despite a marked improvement in East–West relations from the mid-1980s onwards, multilateral non-proliferation and disarmament conferences in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1990, and 1991 all failed to materially advance the cause of disarmament. The lack of progress towards a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was particularly vexing to many neutral and non-aligned states, and the nuclear-weapon states’ continued unwillingness to negotiate such an agreement at the 1990 NPT review conference fostered a crisis of legitimacy for the nuclear regime complex. Over the next few years, the neutral and non-aligned powers launched a series of confrontational initiatives that broke with established diplomatic practice. The crisis was finally resolved at the NPT review conference in 2000, when the nuclear-weapon states committed ‘unequivocally’ to nuclear abolition and agreed to a range of so-called practical steps to implement the NPT's disarmament provisions.
