Defense ministers of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council meet at NATO headquarters.
| What was the status of the other CFE Treaty states as they prepared to implement the treaty? On the first day of the treaty's entry into force, every state had to be ready to carry out its treaty obligations and rights. Obligations meant that states had to be prepared to display and account for their treaty-limited equipment (TLE); ready to send and receive treaty-required communications regarding force data, reduction activities, and notifications of all inspections; and ready to receive inspection teams, transport them to the declared sites, host and escort them on-site, and return them to the point of entry (POE) after completion of the inspection. Treaty rights focused on the selection, preparation, and training of inspection teams that would monitor the different phases of the treaty. They also included the opportunity to send national delegates to serve on the Joint Consultative Group (JCG), which was responsible for facilitating the treaty's implementation. A survey of the 29 CFE Treaty states on the eve of the treaty's entry into force on July 17, 1992, revealed a wide degree of preparedness, as one might expect from a wide array of nations-large and small, stable and unstable, and spread over a continent.prepared to implement the treaty? On the first day of the treaty's entry into force, every state had to be ready to carry out its treaty obligations and rights. Obligations meant that states had to be prepared to display and account for their treaty-limited equipment (TLE); ready to send and receive treaty-required communications regarding force data, reduction activities, and notifications of all inspections; and ready to receive inspection teams, transport them to the declared sites, host and escort them on-site, and return them to the point of entry (POE) after completion of the inspection. Treaty rights focused on the selection, preparation, and training of inspection teams that would monitor the different phases of the treaty. They also included the opportunity to send national delegates to serve on the Joint Consultative Group (JCG), which was responsible for facilitating the treaty's implementation. A survey of the 29 CFE Treaty states on the eve of the treaty's entry into force on July 17, 1992, revealed a wide degree of preparedness, as one might expect from a wide array of nations--large and small, stable and unstable, and spread over a continent. |
 The Russian NRRC--the largest, most experienced verification agency in the Eastern states. |
Within NATO, four nations--the
United States, Germany, France, and Great Britain--had
established new agencies or expanded existing on-site
inspection organizations in 1990-91. Other NATO nations,
such as Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands, set up small
arms control verification staffs in their ministries of
defense or on their general staffs. Generally, nations
with larger military forces set up separate agencies to
implement the treaty, while smaller nations opted for
military staff offices to satisfy CFE requirements. Within the Eastern group of states, the Soviet Union/Russia had the largest and most experienced inspection agency. Established in 1987 to implement the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Soviet Union's inspectorate, the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center (NRRC), became the new Russian nation's inspection agency late in 1991. To implement the INF Treaty, the Soviet Union's NRRC had established treaty support organizations in the Soviet military districts. From 1988 to 1991, when all INF treaty items had been eliminated, these support elements gained invaluable experience working with inspection regimes, reduction protocols, notification requirements, and timelines. Consequently, when Belarus and Ukraine set up their CFE Treaty verification agencies in 1992, they had a cadre of people experienced in implementing arms control treaties. Six months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, eight of the newly independent states became parties to the CFE Treaty in June 1992 at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) summit in Oslo. They were Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakstan. Of these states, only Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine possessed a professional cadre of inspectors, escorts, reduction facilities, and institutional relationships with national military forces. The other states, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakstan, had little or no direct treaty experience. Many of these new nations were caught up in internal and external wars and had little time or interest in any treaty that would reduce conventional armaments. |
As with agencies of the NATO
nations, the size and structure of the Eastern European
nations' inspectorates varied considerably. Poland,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania
established CFE Treaty verification agencies either
before treaty signature in November 1990, or shortly
thereafter in early 1991. In 1991, Poland established a
separate verification agency with an authorized force of
85 military officers and civilians, and placed the new
organization in the Ministry of National Defense.
Hungary, by contrast, set up a small arms control section
within its national armed forces in 1990.CHARACTERISTICS OF EUROPEAN AND RUSSIAN CFE TREATY INSPECTION TEAMSWhen Germany established its Federal Armed Forces Verification Center, the Zentrum für Verifikationsaufgaben der Bundeswehr (ZVBW), in October 1990, it had an authorized staff of 65 inspectors, communicators, trainers, logisticians, and administrators.1 For its initial cadre of CFE Treaty inspectors, the new German center drew upon a small group of military officers who had been conducting inspections of large-scale military exercises of the CSCE states under the Stockholm Document of 1986. A few of these experienced officers became CFE inspection team leaders. For the other CFE team leaders, the German Bundeswehr requested volunteers. Many officers applied, and by December 1989, some 11 months before the CFE Treaty was signed, all the German CFE team leaders had been selected and enrolled in an intensive Russian language course. Colonel Joern Steinberg recalls that he and the other German team leaders studied for nine months at the national language school at Hurth, Germany.2 All German team leaders were professional military officers, 40 to 50 years old, with 15 to 25 years of service in the German army, air force, or navy. |
 German team chief signing reduction inspection report in Slovakia. |
 German officers of the ZVBW training to implement the Open Skies Treaty. |
The German verification center opened in October 1990 at Geilenkirchen and immediately began the process of organizing inspection teams. Each team trained as a unit, concentrating on learning the treaty as well as the current military force structure and the TLE of a single signatory state or group of states. German CFE Treaty inspection teams were led by colonels, with lieutenant colonels serving as deputies and captains, lieutenants, and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) as inspectors. In 1991 and 1992, the German verification center grew rapidly, acquiring new missions under the Open Skies Treaty and the Vienna Documents of 1990 and 1992. By July 1992, the center had 400 personnel on board. A considerable part of this growth reflected the incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic's (GDR) treaty verification unit.3 |