Arms control and disarmament : negotiations in the United Nations

Arms control and disarmament issues figured prominently in the UN in the late 1970s and early 1980s, along with other regional and international security issues. This occurred in the wake of the General Assembly’s first special session on disarmament in mid-1978, which was also attended by numerous non-governmental organisations involved in related issues. The special session was held largely at the non-aligned group’s urging and also because of general concern that the United Nations had not focused on disarmament issues since the late 1950s. The non-aligned states sought to reduce the dominance of the superpowers by promoting a greater role for the UN in maintaining international security and in influencing the pace and pattern of global arms control. The multilateral diplomacy that ensued however proved quite unproductive and deepened the sense of crisis regarding the UN’s future. The distinctive approach of the non-aligned states compounded the problem posed by the lack of progress in arms control in US-Soviet relations. The superpowers displayed little enthusiasm for any significant multilateral control, either over military competition or over armed conflicts between states. The Soviet Union seemed to be even less interested than the United States. The numerical majority of the non-aligned group in the UN probably reinforced the superpowers’ preference for the existing bilateral structure for dealing with international security issues. In any case, the imbroglio in multilateral diplomacy and obstacles in bilateral relations between the superpowers indicated that there were serious difficulties in the way of any significant arms control progress and that its prospects would remain limited, especially in the absence of progress in pursuit of other international security goals