UKPSC Prelims 2024 Q31: Which of the following treaties does NOT match with the

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2024 Q31?

B. Correct — B, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (II) Agreement – 1967. SALT II was signed in Vienna on 18 June 1979 by Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, so **Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (II) Agreement – 1967** is the pair that fails. 1967 belongs to a different agreement altogether, the Outer Space Treaty. The other three pairs hold. The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow in August 1963. The NPT was opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force on 5 March 1970. The Seabed Treaty was opened for signature in 1971 and entered into force in May 1972. The idea to carry away: **the SALT agreements belong to the 1970s**, SALT I in 1972 and SALT II in 1979. A nuclear treaty can carry two defensible years, the year it was signed and the year it entered into force, and this paper pairs the NPT and the Seabed Treaty with their entry-into-force years.

UKPSC Prelims 2024 General Studies Paper-I · Question 31 of 147

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2024 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

Which of the following treaties does NOT match with the year it was executed?

(a)Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – 1970
(b)Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (II) Agreement – 1967
(c)Partial Test Ban Treaty – 1963
(d)Nuclear Free Sea Bed Treaty – 1972

Answer

Why

Correct — B, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (II) Agreement – 1967.

SALT II was signed in Vienna on 18 June 1979 by Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, so Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (II) Agreement – 1967 is the pair that fails. 1967 belongs to a different agreement altogether, the Outer Space Treaty.

The other three pairs hold. The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow in August 1963. The NPT was opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force on 5 March 1970. The Seabed Treaty was opened for signature in 1971 and entered into force in May 1972.

The idea to carry away: the SALT agreements belong to the 1970s, SALT I in 1972 and SALT II in 1979. A nuclear treaty can carry two defensible years, the year it was signed and the year it entered into force, and this paper pairs the NPT and the Seabed Treaty with their entry-into-force years.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – 1970 — This pair matches. The NPT entered into force on 5 March 1970, after being opened for signature on 1 July 1968. The stem asks for the pair that does NOT match, so a correct pair cannot be the answer.
The hazard is remembering 1968 and treating 1970 as wrong. Both years belong to the NPT; 1970 is the year the NPT entered into force, which is what this pairing records.
(c)
Partial Test Ban Treaty – 1963 — This pair matches. The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow on 5 August 1963 by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, and entered into force in October the same year. It bans nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, leaving underground tests outside its scope.
1963 is the year the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed and came into force, so the pair holds and cannot be the mismatch.
(d)
Nuclear Free Sea Bed Treaty – 1972 — This pair matches. The Seabed Arms Control Treaty was opened for signature on 11 February 1971 and entered into force on 18 May 1972. It prohibits placing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction on the ocean floor beyond a 12-mile coastal zone.
As with the NPT, the pairing uses the year the Seabed Treaty entered into force, 1972, rather than the 1971 signing year. Under either reading the pair is consistent, so it is not the mismatch.

Concept

Cold War arms control moved in steps: first where tests could happen (Partial Test Ban Treaty, 1963), then where weapons could be placed (Outer Space Treaty, 1967; Seabed Treaty, in force 1972), then who could hold them (NPT, in force 1970), and then how many the superpowers could keep (SALT I, 1972; SALT II, 1979).

Each treaty has a signing date and an entry-into-force date, and the gap between them can be a year or more. A treaty's 'year' in a question may refer to either, so both are worth holding together.

The non-proliferation regime shapes India's nuclear diplomacy. India signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 but has not joined the NPT, which defines a nuclear-weapon state as one that had exploded a nuclear device before 1 January 1967. India's 1974 and 1998 tests were underground, which the Partial Test Ban Treaty permits.

The SALT agreements were bilateral US–Soviet accords rather than multilateral treaties, which is why they sit apart from the other instruments in this list even though the question treats them alike.

Key facts

The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow on 5 August 1963 and entered into force on 10 October 1963.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was opened for signature on 1 July 1968 and entered into force on 5 March 1970.
The Seabed Arms Control Treaty was opened for signature on 11 February 1971 and entered into force on 18 May 1972.
SALT I was signed in Moscow on 26 May 1972 by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev; it produced the ABM Treaty and an Interim Agreement on offensive arms.
SALT II was signed in Vienna on 18 June 1979 by Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev; the US Senate did not ratify it after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
The Outer Space Treaty was signed on 27 January 1967 and entered into force on 10 October 1967.
The Treaty of Tlatelolco, creating a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Latin America, was signed on 14 February 1967.
The NPT was extended indefinitely at its 1995 Review and Extension Conference.
India signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty but is not a party to the NPT.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was opened for signature in September 1996 and has not entered into force.

Treaty–year pairs as printed vs the record

Partial Test Ban Treaty – 1963→signed Aug 1963, in force Oct 1963: matches

NPT – 1970→signed 1968, in force Mar 1970: matches

Seabed Treaty – 1972→signed 1971, in force May 1972: matches

SALT II – 1967→signed Vienna, Jun 1979: mismatch

1967 actually belongs to→Outer Space Treaty (Jan 1967)

Three pairs hold on either the signing or the entry-into-force year; SALT II is a 1979 agreement, not 1967.

Study next

SALT I (1972): the ABM Treaty and the Interim Agreement on offensive armsSTART I (1991), START II (1993) and New START (2010)Outer Space Treaty (1967) and Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967)NPT structure: nuclear-weapon states, Article VI, the 1995 indefinite extensionCTBT (1996) and India's position on itNuclear-weapon-free zones: Rarotonga, Bangkok, Pelindaba, Central Asia

Common traps

Signing year and entry-into-force year differ for the NPT (1968 vs 1970) and the Seabed Treaty (1971 vs 1972); a pair using either year is consistent, so the odd one out must fail under both readings.
SALT I and SALT II are seven years apart (1972 and 1979); attaching the SALT I year to SALT II would still leave 1967 as a mismatch.
1967 is a real treaty year (Outer Space Treaty, Treaty of Tlatelolco), so a familiar-looking year is not evidence that the pairing is right.
The stem asks for the pair that does NOT match, so the three correct pairs are the distractors and the one wrong pair is the answer.

The question hands you four treaty–year pairs and asks for the one that fails. It rewards a chronological skeleton of the arms-control era more than fine detail on any single treaty: knowing that SALT belongs to the 1970s is enough to spot 1967 as the intruder.

Variants ask the same knowledge from the other side: which treaty was signed in a given year, which leaders signed a given agreement, or the order in which a set of treaties was signed.

Related PYQs

UKPSC_2012_PRE_PaperI_Q322012

Same theme, US–Soviet strategic arms agreements, but the 2012 item asks who the parties to START-I and START-II were, while this one asks the year of SALT II. START followed SALT: START-I was signed by the USA and the USSR in July 1991 and START-II by the USA and Russia in January 1993, after SALT II's 1979 signing.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following treaties was signed in the year 1967?
- (a)Outer Space Treaty
- (b)Partial Test Ban Treaty
- (c)Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
- (d)Seabed Arms Control Treaty
Answera — The Outer Space Treaty was signed on 27 January 1967. The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963, the NPT was opened for signature in 1968, and the Seabed Treaty in 1971, so none of the other three belongs to 1967.
practice — not a real PYQ
The SALT II agreement of 1979 was signed at Vienna by which pair of leaders?
- (a)Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev
- (b)Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev
- (c)Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev
- (d)George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev
Answerb — Carter and Brezhnev signed SALT II on 18 June 1979. Nixon and Brezhnev signed SALT I in Moscow in 1972; Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty in 1987; Bush and Gorbachev signed START I in 1991.
practice — not a real PYQ
Arrange the following in chronological order of signing, starting with the earliest: 1. SALT I 2. Partial Test Ban Treaty 3. SALT II 4. Outer Space Treaty Select the correct answer using the code given below:
- (a)2-4-1-3
- (b)4-2-1-3
- (c)2-1-4-3
- (d)2-4-3-1
Answera — Partial Test Ban Treaty 1963, Outer Space Treaty 1967, SALT I 1972, SALT II 1979. Option b puts 1967 before 1963; option c puts SALT I (1972) before the Outer Space Treaty (1967); option d puts SALT II (1979) before SALT I (1972).