In international relations, the more powerful have a way of underplaying history or overemphasising it, depending on how helpful or otherwise it may be in promoting their immediate objectives. It is interesting to note that even a country like India, which is beginning to sense the stirrings of power, is tending to fall into the same pattern. While this may be generally true, the expressions of power in the context of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, as becomes evident from an assessment of the five yearly Review Conferences of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), have been more pronounced than perhaps in any other area of international relations.