Chapter 1 --The Treaty and the Mission

In contrast to the successful negotiation and institution of these CSCE confidence-building measures, another set of cross-European diplomatic-military negotiations, the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFRs), did not fare well. These negotiations were between the representatives of two alliances: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). Initiated in 1973, the negotiations lasted intermittently for 17 years. They were never able to get past several stumbling blocks. NATO sought reductions in military personnel stationed in Europe, whereas WTO proposed equal reductions in both military personnel and weapons. The objective, NATO argued, would be to achieve, after several phased withdrawals, end-strength parity in the forces of both alliances. The Warsaw Pact, as the WTO was commonly known, countered that both alliances should be reducing the same number of personnel and weapons, leaving the end strength unbalanced. Neither alliance would agree during the lengthy negotiations whether to make the cuts in equal slices or through gradual reductions leading to parity. Nor could they agree on whether the cuts should be made on an alliance-to-alliance or a nation-by-nation basis. In addition, a major U.S. concern was that there was no satisfactory method to verify personnel cuts. In lieu of any agreement in these protracted and frustrating MBFR negotiations, both NATO and WTO modernized their conventional weapons and maintained their focus on combat readiness. Huge, modern, massed armies and air forces continued to face each other across a line running through a divided Germany.⁸

Military Forces in Europe 1986

NATO--3,670,000
WTO---5,343,000

A U.S. team observes a Russian exercise--a CSCE-negotiated confidence-building measure.

Throughout these years, the 35 CSCE nations continued meeting in a series of lengthy conferences in Madrid, Stockholm, and Vienna. The Madrid meetings began in November 1980 and led to the delegates agreeing on a September 1983 CSCE Mandate. This mandate called for all delegates to negotiate agreements implementing not only confidence-building measures among the states of Europe, but also new treaties leading to the gradual disarmament of Europe. At the Madrid meeting, the CSCE nations accepted a broader definition of Europe as envisioned first by French President Charles de Gaulle, then by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and finally strongly articulated and argued by the United States. It defined Europe as stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains.⁹ This meant that any future agreement or treaty would include military forces and equipment stationed across the length and breadth of Europe, including the interior of the Soviet Union. This definition had significant implications for the CFE Treaty.

Three years later in Stockholm, in September 1986, CSCE delegates agreed to new confidence and security building measures (CSBMs). These measures required notification of military exercises involving more than 13,000 troops and provided for on-site inspection of field activities involving 17,000 or more ground forces or 5,000 or more airborne troops, with no right of refusal by the inspected nation. Known as the Stockholm Document of 1986, this was the first multinational agreement that the Soviet Union signed permitting on-site inspections on its own territory to verify an arms control accord.¹⁰

In agreeing to the Stockholm Document, Gorbachev signaled his intent to accelerate negotiations for reducing military armaments across Europe. Throughout 1986-87, Gorbachev gave a series of dramatic speeches, calling upon European and American leaders to consider phased reductions in conventional and nuclear forces based on the European continent. He changed the course of all previous negotiations by conceding that since the Soviet Union had numerically superior conventional forces in Europe, the NATO nations might reasonably conclude that these forces were a threat. He further stated that under any negotiated all-European arms control treaty, the side with the greater number of forces ought to take a larger share of the reductions, provided there was adequate verification through on-site inspections. Under the Soviet Union's leadership, the seven-nation Warsaw Treaty Organization met in Budapest and endorsed Gorbachev's proposals.¹¹

Responding to these significant new Soviet and Warsaw Pact initiatives, the foreign ministers of NATO created a High Level Task Force (HLTF) in May 1986 to develop a coordinated alliance proposal for a conventional arms reduction treaty. Following long and difficult internal discussions within the 16-nation alliance, this NATO task force produced a negotiating position in December 1986. The NATO foreign ministers in their December meeting proposed a two-track negotiating strategy. One would consist of the 35 CSCE nations' pursuing broader and more transparent confidence-building measures. The other would have the NATO nations and the WTO nations negotiate phased reductions and stability provisions for their conventional forces in Europe. This two-track strategy was adopted.¹²

Just five weeks later, negotiators from 23 states (16 NATO, 7 WTO) met in Vienna on February 17, 1987, to discuss treaty negotiating guidelines. Nearly two years of detailed, often technical discussions, both among the allied nations and between the alliances, produced on January 14, 1989, the Mandate for Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. This mandate established the fundamental negotiating principles for the CFE Treaty. Specifically, the treaty would include provisions to reduce or prevent the capability of any nation, or group of nations, to mass military forces on the European continent in order to launch a surprise attack across national borders. The treaty would seek to significantly reduce offensive military hardware; these reductions would be asymmetric, with the objective of an end-strength parity between alliances. In addition, the treaty would contain provisions for a robust and intrusive verification regime.¹³

NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

NATO Nations
Belgium	Luxembourg
Canada	Netherlands
Denmark	Norway
France	Portugal
Germany	Spain
Greece	Turkey
Iceland	United Kingdom
Italy	United States

Warsaw Pact Nations

Bulgaria

Czechoslovakia

German Democratic Republic

Hungary

Poland

Romania

Soviet Union

Twenty-three states began negotiations under the Cold War structure of Europe. The NATO alliance, 16 nations including the United States, formed one side; the Warsaw Pact, 7 nations dominated by the Soviet Union, constituted the other. Although these nations shared negotiating goals and strategies as members within their alliances, they were independent, sovereign nations. Under the treaty being negotiated, the individual signatory states would hold all rights and obligations. Recognizing this fact, French negotiators successfully argued for not identifying in the formal treaty language either the NATO or the Warsaw Pact alliance. Instead, the French persuaded the other nations to use the term "group of state parties" to refer to the two alliances.¹⁴ This became a critical treaty term since it allowed negotiators to incorporate the existing bloc-versus-bloc structure as an integral element of the treaty while holding the individual states responsible for treaty implementation. This dualism remained in the treaty despite revolutionary changes that transpired in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union in 1990-92.

In late 1989, the East Germans revolted; the Berlin Wall fell, and the German Democratic Republic's communist government collapsed. German unification became a serious possibility. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, British Prime Minister Margaret H. Thatcher, French President François Mitterrand, and American President George Bush participated in a series of dramatic meetings in 1990. These negotiations culminated in a series of international agreements that recognized Germany as a single, unified nation, effective October 3, 1990. While these events unfolded, the Warsaw Pact collapsed. This collapse was a direct consequence of the "velvet" revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1988-89 as the peoples of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria rejected their communist governments. Equally important was the fact that Gorbachev and the leaders of the Soviet Union allowed the revolutions to proceed. Previous attempts by Warsaw Pact nations to depart from communism had resulted in forceful Soviet military intervention. In 1989-90, by contrast, Soviet troops were withdrawing from Eastern Europe.¹⁵

All these events influenced the CFE Treaty. The issue of German unification posed several concerns for treaty negotiators. A united Germany would possess a large, modern armed force. It would have the largest national army and air force in Central Europe. Twice in the 20th century, Germany had sought to dominate continental Europe. Acknowledging this legacy, German Chancellor Kohl pledged that his government would reduce the size of the new nation's military forces. Germany submitted a special declaration to be included in the CFE Treaty. The "Declaration by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany on the Personnel Strength of German Armed Forces" stated that Germany would cut its troop strength to 370,000 three to four years from the day the CFE Treaty entered into force.¹⁶ This declaration persuaded other nations to declare their willingness to negotiate "to limit the personnel strengths of their conventional armed forces." Although negotiators did not reach agreement on this issue in time for the signing of the CFE Treaty in Paris in November 1990, they continued negotiations throughout 1991 and 1992. By July 1992, the time of the treaty's entry into force, national personnel limits were contained in a separate document, entitled the CFE 1A Concluding Act.

Another event, also larger than the treaty and influencing it, was General Secretary Gorbachev's unilateral declaration at the United Nations in December 1988 to withdraw six tank divisions (50,000 men) from the nations of Central Europe.¹⁷This unprecedented, massive Soviet military withdrawal, coupled with the Eastern European nations discarding communist governments for democratic rule, resulted in a weakened, impotent military alliance among the Warsaw Pact nations. Just five months before the CFE Treaty's signature, the Hungarian National Assembly on June 26, 1990, voted 232-0 to initiate negotiations for Hungary to leave the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact.¹⁸ Since the framework of the CFE Treaty rested on a group of states as the basic unit for all reductions and end-strength parity, a breakup of the WTO presented the possibility that those nations would no longer act as a group. This did not happen. The Eastern European states did not want the possible dissolution of the alliance to prevent the CFE Treaty from entering into force.

The CFE Treaty was negotiated under a NATO/WTO scenario.