CFE and Beyond: The Future of Conventional Arms Control

CFE and Beyond The Future of Conventional Arms Control Jonathan Dean and Randall Watson Forsberg T h e collapse of the Soviet Union has created a great deal of confusion and uncertainty about the future of conventional arms control. The dissolution of the Soviet Union into twelve independent republics plus the three Baltic states has raised doubts about the ratification and implementation of the world’s first major conventional arms reduction agreement, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Equally uncertain are the prospects for further negotiated or reciprocal conventional arms control measures in a world where there is only one military superpower and one dominant military alliance. Signed in November 1990 by twenty-two states, including the sixteen NATO nations and the six members of the former Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO),’ the CFE Treaty has been waylaid on the road to ratification by successive upheavals in the former Soviet Union, starting with the often rancorous mid-1990 televised debates of the Congress of People‘s Deputies and Supreme Soviet.2Now that neither the WTO nor the Soviet Union exists Ionathan Dean, Arms Control Adviser to the Union of Concerned Scientists, was the U.S. representative to the NATO-WTO force reduction talks from 1978 to 1981. He is the author of spwral books on EastWest security, including Meeting Gorbachev’s Challenge (1989) and Watershed in Europe (1987). Randall Watson Forsberg, founder and director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, supervised the Institute’s East-West Conventional Force Study and published ViennaFax, a news service on the CFE and CSBM talks in Vienna. The authors are greatly indebted to Steve Lay-Weber for his analysis of the CFE-related disposition of Soviet weapons and the potential post-CFE holdings of the republics, for preparing the text and appendix tables, and for helpful comments on the text. A research fellow at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, he participated in the East-West Conventional Force Study in 1987-1991, co-authored several project reports and articles, and edited ViennaFax in 1991. We gratefully acknowledge financial support for research and writing from the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the John Merck Fund, the CS Fund, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the New-Land Foundation, and the Bydale Foundation. 1. On February 25, 1991, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union agreed to end the WTOs military functions as of March 31, 1991;Brian Hunter, ed., The Statesman‘s Year-book 1992-1992 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991). The WTO was formally abolished on July 1, 1991; Arms Control Reporter, July 1991, p. 402.8.280.13, 2. Military and conservative criticismabout the vast amount of Sovietweaponry to be destroyed under the CFE Treaty, first voiced in these debates, presaged the shipment of tens of thousands of Soviet weapons beyond the Urals in the summer and fall of 1990, raising initial questions about the viabilityof the treaty. Further uncertainty was raised in late 1990by the Soviet Union’s International Security, Summer 1992 (Vol. 17, No. 1) 0 1992 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 76 CFE and Beyond I 77 any longer, it is uncertain whether the treaty will ever be ratified and implemented . The newly independent republicshave been mired in disputes about how to divide up the conventional arms of the former Soviet Union;3 and the roughly concentric thin-out zones for ground force equipment, which are an important feature of the CFE Treaty, do not conform to the borders of the republics. Before ratifying the treaty, the republics must determine their respective shares of the former Soviet weapon holdings and agree on allocations that can be reconciled with the CFE zonal sublimits. Even if this happens, the CFE Treaty may not be viable over the longer term since it was intended to be implemented by two alliances, not by NATO on one side and, on the other, thirteen disparate and sometimes quarrelling states. It will also be difficult to find simple, compelling goal-omparable to the CFE formula of seeking equal limits on armaments for two rival military alliance-to guide future negotiated cuts...