U.S. ratification--December 26, 1991.

FROM TREATY SIGNATURE TO RATIFICATION

In constitutional governments, treaties require two acts for legitimacy: executive signature and legislative ratification. For the United States, President Bush signed the CFE Treaty in Paris on November 19, 1990. That same day, the leaders of 21 other NATO and Warsaw Pact nations signed the treaty. Ratification, however, took nearly two years. On October 30, 1992, just 20 days short of two full years, the final two states, Belarus and Kazakstan, ratified the treaty and deposited their instruments of ratification at The Hague in the Netherlands. Why did it take so long?

One CFE Treaty signatory state, the Soviet Union, was in such turmoil in 1991 and 1992 that its very existence was in question.¹ When the USSR collapsed in late December 1991, its successor states had to form new governments, and those governments had to work out military and security relationships with Russia, the largest and most powerful of the former republics.

So great were the repercussions from the Soviet Union's internal difficulties that the CFE Treaty signatory states had to convene four separate extraordinary meetings to approve, authorize, and incorporate new statements, understandings, declarations, and agreements into the treaty regarding entitlements and obligations. In June 1991, the signatory states met at The Hague; in October 1991 they convened in Vienna; in June 1992 they met in Oslo; and, finally, in July 1992, they assembled just before the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) summit in Helsinki. At each of these meetings, the diplomats took up specific treaty issues for the group to resolve before the individual states would proceed with ratification and implementation. Every issue was a consequence of the Soviet Union's collapse as an empire. Throughout these extraordinary meetings across Europe, the commitment of the European and North Atlantic states to the CFE Treaty as the "cornerstone of European security" proved to be remarkably strong and durable.

THE FIRST CRISIS: SURPRISES AT THE DATA EXCHANGE

The first, and most serious, issue arose at the time of the CSCE/CFE Treaty summit in November 1990. On November 18, one day before treaty signing, representatives from each of the signatory states placed stacks of treaty-mandated data books on long rows of tables in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. The books listed detailed information on force structure, force size, military units and organizations, and military weapons in the five treaty categories of armaments: tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, and combat aircraft. Shortly thereafter, state delegates moved from table to table scooping up copies of these invaluable military force data. U.S. CFE Treaty Negotiator Lynn M. Hansen, who was in the Hofburg Palace that morning, characterized the exchange as having the "aura of a bazaar." He remembered military officers and specialists excited and buzzing at the opportunity to compare treaty declarations against current estimates.² Within days, however, the atmosphere changed for the worse as serious questions arose about the Soviet Union's force data (see table 3-1).³

It appeared to many of the state delegates in Vienna that the Soviet Union had underrepresented its treaty holdings by a significant degree. In July 1988, when all the states had presented their force data to the negotiating teams, the Soviet Union had given out one set of data. Now in November 1990, at treaty signature, it had presented a much different set of data. When compared, there were major discrepancies. U.S. officials reported to President Bush that the Soviet discrepancy was between 20,000 and 40,000 items: 6,000 to 11,000 tanks, 12,000 armored fighting vehicles, 12,000 artillery pieces, and 3,000 combat aircraft.⁴ This was a serious discrepancy, one that clearly threatened ratification. Was there a Soviet explanation?

In Vienna, Soviet diplomats explained that during the two years of treaty negotiations, 1989-90, the Soviet High Command had conducted a large-scale operation that withdrew thousands of military personnel, weapons, and units from Central and Eastern Europe. It was this military equipment, they asserted, that accounted for the difference.⁵ They explained that in one category alone, tanks, the Soviet Army had destroyed, exported, or converted more than 4,000 items since 1989. The Soviet military had sent another 8,000 tanks to motor rifle and other divisions stationed in Asia, or to military storage depots located beyond the Ural Mountains. In addition, they pointed out that the Soviet military had sent thousands of items from other treaty-limited equipment (TLE) categories--artillery, armored combat vehicles (ACVs), and helicopters--to military depots and active units stationed beyond the Urals.⁶ The Ural Mountains were the CFE Treaty's easternmost boundary; military equipment located east of the Urals was not subject to any of the treaty's requirements. There would be no requirement for its inclusion in the initial data, for on-site inspection teams to count it, or for it to be reduced within a set period of time. Finally, the Soviet diplomats explained that since much of this equipment had been transferred from specialized combat support units, those units no longer held any TLE.⁷ Those units, by the treaty's inspection protocols, would not be objects of verification (OOVs). As a result, the Soviet Union's OOVs dropped from approximately 1,500 to fewer than 1,000.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze detailed the movement of TLE east of the Urals.

Within a few weeks, diplomats linked these questions to other unilateral treaty-related actions by the Soviet Union. The Soviet High Command, according to the USSR's data books, had resubordinated three motor rifle divisions to naval infantry forces. In terms of CFE Treaty equipment, this meant they had transferred to the naval forces 120 tanks, 753 armored personnel vehicles, and 234 artillery pieces. The Soviet High Command also had established a new kind of naval unit, the coastal defense forces, and assigned to it 813 tanks, 972 ACVs, and 846 artillery pieces. In addition, the Strategic Rocket Forces received 1,791 ACVs.¹¹ During treaty negotiations, delegates considered all this equipment to be a part of the USSR's CFE Treaty TLE ceilings, subject to reduction quotas and inspection protocols. In Vienna, Soviet diplomats argued that since the Soviet High Command had reassigned this equipment to naval units, which they asserted were not included in the treaty, the equipment would not be subject to treaty inspections or ceilings. Further, they asserted that the Strategic Rocket Forces' 1,791 ACVs should be classified as internal security equipment, again outside the treaty's quantitative provisions. Finally, the Soviet data omitted 18 PT-76 armored combat vehicles, which had belonged to the civil defense forces, from the TLE category of heavy armament combat vehicles. Neither in their data submission nor in subsequent discussions did the Soviets give any explanation for this omission.¹²