Belarussian seal.

From these different national experiences in establishing CFE Treaty inspection organizations, certain generalizations emerge. To begin with, all NATO, Eastern European, and USSR successor states recruited, trained, and used their professional military as CFE Treaty inspectors and escorts. In the NATO nations, the selection, training, and leadership responsibilities of the inspection team leaders were quite similar in all of the inspectorates. The selection of inspectors varied, however. The larger verification agencies--those in the United States, Germany, France, and Great Britain--used a concept of organic, fixed teams, while the smaller verification organizations--those in Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Italy--opted for composite teams with permanent leaders and linguists as the core team. Inspectors drawn from the military forces augmented the teams.

Among the Warsaw Pact nations, there was a similar conceptual distinction. Russia, with its INF Treaty experience, used the fixed team model for escort and inspection operations under the CFE Treaty. Belarus and Ukraine focused their operations on escorting, but here again, they used professional military officers dedicated to implementing the treaty. In both nations, the national CFE Treaty obligations were substantial in terms of the numbers of OOVs and TLE subject to inspection. The likelihood of these sites and units being inspected by the NATO nations was considerable; consequently, the greatest burden in both Belarus and Ukraine fell to the escorting mission. Further, the poor economic conditions in these nations after the collapse of the centralized Soviet Union limited their governments' capability to organize and send CFE inspection teams abroad. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and, to a degree, Poland used composite inspection and escort teams.

The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) experience was considerably different. There the Soviet Union--and by extension Russia--commanded the dominant role. Within its officer corps, there was a clear sense of professionalism and commitment to direction from Moscow. Compared to NATO nations, there was far less communication among the former nations of the Warsaw Pact. Among the states of the former Soviet Union, Belarus and Ukraine had team chiefs who had, with some exceptions, direct experience with escorting American inspection teams monitoring Soviet missile eliminations under the INF Treaty. Thus they shared a distinct set of experiences with Russian inspectors and escorts. One final generalization applied: the directors, commandants, and commanders of the national CFE Treaty inspection agencies saw their organizations and inspection/escort teams as implementers of the treaty. Their mission was to monitor on-site the entitlements and obligations of the respective nations; they did not articulate policy or advocate future agreements. Theirs was a limited role.

Local escorts hosted INF inspections in the Soviet Union; later they brought their experience to the newly formed national verification agencies.

A U.S. site commander conducts a "windshield tour" of the declared site.

PATTERNS OF TRAINING

A distinctive pattern of training emerged during the 20-month period from CFE Treaty signature in November 1990 to entry into force in July 1992. This pattern applied in both the larger, separate national verification agencies and in the smaller, cadre type of inspection organizations. The key concept was the use of mock inspections in which two teams of inspectors, an inspection and an escort team, conducted a full-scale on-site inspection at an active military installation using the CFE Treaty as "the law." All the treaty's provisions and protocols applied, from the team's arrival at a treaty-designated POE through the conduct of a detailed, thorough inspection, to the inspection and escort team leaders' signatures on the final inspection report. A joint evaluation followed each mock inspection, with the participation of the two teams, the military installation commander, and invited observers. As Colonel Lawrence Kelley, the Director of Operations for OSIA's European Operations Command, declared, "Mock inspections are now and have always been the single most important training tool that we have at our disposal."²⁶

In setting up the U.S. CFE inspection operations, Colonel Kelley established a three-pronged approach for these training inspections. One involved a series of mock inspections conducted with inspection teams from the NATO nations. Rigorous and thorough, these inspections developed a common understanding of the process, the CFE Treaty, and national obligations of the inspectorates. Another had American CFE inspection teams conduct rigorous mock inspections opposite other American teams on U.S. military sites and installations throughout Europe. These training inspections educated both the American inspection teams and the American military personnel at each of the installations, from the security police at the gate to the combat commander at the unit that was the object of verification. Participants tested all aspects of the on-site inspection protocols, particularly the line between the treaty rights of the inspectors and the treaty obligations of the inspected state. The final aspect of the American approach had U.S. inspection teams participating in a series of mock inspections with Russia and the Eastern European nations. Through mock inspections with Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, OSIA built early and continuing liaisons. The mock inspections initiated these ties, and over the course of many discussions among inspectors and escorts, and directors and commanders, common approaches to many areas of treaty implementation developed.²⁷