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eHAPTER EIGHT CONVENTIONAL "RMED FORCES IN EUROPE TREATY In retrospect, the negotiations that led to the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) moved incredibly quickly, despite taking place in the midst of breathtaking political change. I ran into Victor Smolin, my SALT II counterpart, in Moscow in the fall of 1988, and he said, "Our leadership is determined to get a conventional arms treaty in two years and we professionals have to tell them that's impossible ." Well, it happened. During the course ofthe CFE negotiations, which lasted about twenty months, five negotiating parties changed their names and one disap- ::-:- peared (the German Democratic Republic-the GDR or East Germany- - merged into the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990). In fact, the last change to the CFE Treaty was on the morning when we were going to agree on the final text inVienna. Ambassador James ~-- Woolsey got an anxious call from the Bulgarian ambassador who said, "You must change the name of Bulgaria from the People's Republic of Bulgaria to the Republic ofBulgaria. Our parliament acted yesterday." That was the last change, and it is representative of the process that went on in Vienna. Previous negotiations on conventional arms involved a limited space (Central Europe), a limited number of parties in Europe, and a focus on manpower. CFE was different in all these respects. It covers all of Europe from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains (the area of application). All twenty-two NATO and former Warsaw Pact countries (minus the GDR) were signatories to the treaty. After the dissolution ofthe Soviet Union, the eight successor states that have territory in the area of application of the treaty became parties and Czechoslovakia split in two. East Germany had disappeared during the negotiations. As a result of all this, today there are thirty parties to the CFE Treaty. Instead of personnel limits, it addresses equipment, in particular the five major categories of equipment that are viewed as necessary for a combined-arms surprise attack in Europe like the Nazi blitzkrieg at the beginning of World War II, or any similar major offensive action. The focus on equipment limitations was present from the beginning of CFE. The CFE negotiations were designed to deal with the threat that the West faced from the beginning of the Cold War to its end-the huge Soviet cOnventional military superiority spearheaded by heavily armored forces pointed westward. That was a reality in Europe for forty-five years and it was what CFE focused on redressing. The Western objectives of establishing a secure and stable balance of conventional forces at lower levels, eliminating disparities prejudicial to stability and security, and eliminating the capability of launching a surprise attack were completely realized. When CFE is assessed and when various points are made about this provision and that provision, it is important to keep in mind that the West's three basic policy objectives were completely realized, and Europe was changed forever as a result, when the CFE Treaty entered into force. In fact, many assert it was the CFE Treaty itself that ended the Cold War. The treaty is the basis of certainty and confidence in an era of change. It fixes strict, precise equipment limits on the size of forces in Europe on a permanent basis. It also fixes legally binding limits on the forces of all thirty parties, including originally sixteen, now nineteen, NATO parties and the remaining post-Cold War Eastern European countries, most of them successor states to the Soviet Union. This is the central accomplishment of the CFE Treaty. There are also very extensive, on-site verification and information exchange provisions which have added considerably to confidence building , openness, and transparency with respect to military policy and systems in Europe. The CFE Treaty, when signed in I990, established a limit of 20,000 battle tanks, 30,000 armored combat vehicles {Acvs)-with sublimits of I8,000 for armored infantry fighting vehicles and I,500 for heavy armored combat vehicles-20,000 artillery pieces, 6,800 combat aircraft, and 2,000 attack helicopters for each of the two groups of countries, which were, when the treaty text was conceived, coterminous with NATO and the Warsaw Pact membership. In addition, the sufficiency rule in the treaty established that no one country can have more than approximately one-third ofall such arms in Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals. In I988, the Soviets alone had 4I,000 battle tanks, 57,000...

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