THURSDAY, JULY 25, 1991

U.S. SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,
Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in room 419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph R. Biden, presiding.

Present: Senators Pell, Biden, Helms, and Lugar.

Senator BIDEN. The hearing will come to order, please.

Today the committee will conduct its fourth hearing on the CFE Treaty. We have already heard from the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the intelligence community

This morning, we will hear from one of our most distinguished generals, General Galvin, NATO's Supreme Commander, who has probably taken more members of the Senate to school over the years as we have traveled through Europe, and he explained to us what everything from our strategy to our policy was in Europe. He has been a great friend and a great help to many of us in this body.

General Galvin will be the primary beneficiary of the new military balance this treaty will help to create. He will be accompanied by Major General Parker, who will be responsible for implementing the central feature of the treaty-its unprecedented onsite inspections. And good luck, General.

We will also hear from Ambassador Woolsey, who not only did an admirable job in negotiating this treaty but has already been part of the committee's deliberations through comments he has made and the expertise he has provided in past sessions.

Also, we are pleased to have Ambassador Lehman with us, who can provide an authoritative account of Washington's view of the treaty as it developed.

The committee's goal today will be to examine specific treaty issues, including the controversial article III, the Soviet movement of equipment east of the Urals, and the data discrepancy and other matters.

Finally, I hope that General Galvin and General Parker can analyze how the interaction and cooperation between the military officers generated by this treaty will impact the European security situation.

Generals, we are delighted to have you here and I will now yield to my colleagues for a moment and will be anxious to hear from you, General Galvin.

Senator HELMS. General, there are some young people here in the back of the room who probably have never seen a four-star general. They can see only the back of your head, but I want them to know that you are a distinguished American and we do welcome you and Major General Parker.

This is, as far as I can tell, Mr. Chairman, the final hearing on the CFE Treaty. I am still inclined to support it, with some Senate conditions. But I have some questions that I keep raising that I think need to be answered.

There seems to be a major conceptual flaw in the treaty, and maybe I can be persuaded otherwise. But we will see. In any event, according to unclassified testimony, U.S. intelligence has strong evidence that the Soviet Union deliberately falsified its declared data on the day of signature of the CFE Treaty. That was November 19 of last year.

Indeed, there is conclusive evidence that the Soviets grossly underdeclared their forces at the time of the signing of the treaty. I have just seen the so-called smoking gun evidence of thousands of pieces of Soviet treaty-limited equipment in the zone of treaty application which were not declared on the day of signature of the treaty.

Our best intelligence indicates that the Soviets had about 18,000 pieces of treaty-limited equipment inside the zone of application that they did not declare at the time of treaty signature.

Now, the testimony of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs shows that a deliberate Soviet data falsification of this magnitude must be regarded, as he put it, as militarily significant.

That worries me about any treaty we enter into with the Soviet Union. They have never failed to cheat or violate any treaty they have ever signed with anybody, insofar as I know. The evidence shows that the Soviets have committed a militarily significant, fundamental violation that goes to the heart of their most important obligation of this treaty, even before the treaty is ratified-which proves, I guess, that all Gaul is not divided into three parts.

It is much more than a violation of the Soviet obligation to declare accurate data. I would characterize this gross Soviet data deception as fraud in the CFE Treaty negotiations, fraud that could give the United States the right to refuse to ratify the treaty or to withdraw from it.

In any case, the proposed CFE Treaty, of course, requires the NATO group of nations and the former Warsaw Pact group of nations to reduce their conventional forces to agreed-upon levels equal for each group. The Soviet obligation is to reduce its forces with its former allies to that agreed level.

So the question arises, what is the starting point for calculating the Soviet obligation to reduce? Is this starting point the level of forces which the Soviets declared at treaty signature time, or is it the level which the U.S. national technical means of verification detected that the Soviets actually had in the zone on the day the treat was signed? Important question.

Now, I am advised that most official in the executive branch seem inclined to minimize the Soviet obligation to reduce. These officials hold, and I am sure in perfect good faith, that the Soviet reduction obligation should be calculated from the level of forces that the Soviets declared at the treaty signature. This is sort of mystifying, because under this method of calculation, the Soviet obligation to reduce would be 19,670 pieces of treaty-limited equipment.

However, this Soviet-declared data is not a legal and integral art of the CFE Treaty. This Soviet-declared data has not even been furnished to the United States Senate. If it has been, I have not seen it.

Finally, U.S. intelligence has established that it is grossly inaccurate.

Now I believe that the correct interpretation of the CFE Treaty, according to its precise provisions, is that Soviet-declared data is only a supplement to the data gathered by the U.S. national technical means of verification for calculating the Soviet reduction obligation.

The treaty's terms precisely state that U.S. national technical means are required for "validation" of the Soviet-declared data. Moreover, there are locational and numerical constraints in the treaty that can be verified only by national technical means.

Finally, the treaty explicitly states that U.S. national technical means are to be used for "ensuring verification of compliance with the provisions of the treaty."

In sum, I believe that the treaty clearly establishes that the Soviet obligation to reduce must be calculated from data on Soviet forces actually in the zone of application on the date of the treaty signature, as established by the U.S. national technical means of verification.

Under this correct means of calculation, the Soviet reduction obligation would be the total of 19,670 pieces to be destroyed, based on the number they declared, and the 18,000 that they did not declare, for a total, plus, of 37,670-almost twice as much. Pretty hard questions I am asking, but they ought to be answered before we go too far with this treaty, which I am inclined to support.

The committee and the Senate, therefore, it seems to me, must solve the related problems of the grossly inaccurate Soviet-declared data, and how to properly calculate the Soviet reduction obligations. Can we allow the Soviets to benefit from such fraud? Pretty good question.

If the Senate does not solve this problem, the Senate will face a situation of having to vote to approve the grossly inaccurate Soviet-declared data being erroneously used to calculate the fundamental obligation of the treaty, which would result in a minimal Soviet reduction.

I apologize for going into detail, but I wanted to go on record with that, General and Mr. Chairman, and I thank you very much, Senator BIDEN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, wanted to join in welcoming our witnesses, Generals Galvin and Parker and Ambassadors Woolsey and Lehman.

I think it is fair to say that the CFE Treaty so far is a success. I congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, in the excellent job you have done in organizing and directing these hearings. I think this treaty could be a major step in the reduction of arms in Europe and, taken together with the political changes, would indicate that the Cold War really has drawn-or is very close to having drawn-to a close.

In this connection, I would note that the treaty and the side agreements will require the Soviets and their former allies to destroy about 70,000 items of major military equipment. The NATO alliance, without the East German equipment, will destroy at most about 6,000. The imbalances that have led us to fear and prepare for war for decades will have been essentially redressed.

If we are wise, and there are more and more agreements to indicate that we will be, these modern swords can be at least figuratively plow shares in the approaching era. I regret that I cannot remain here because of other commitments, but again, I congratulate the chairman and wish you all well.

Thank you.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General Galvin.

General GALVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I submitted a written statement, which I would request be placed in the record.

Senator BIDEN. The entire statement will be placed in the record.

General GALVIN. Thank you, sir. And I have a few comments to open with if that is acceptable to you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator BIDEN. It certainly is.

General GALVIN. I would like to start by saying, Mr. Chairman, that we need to consider right from the outset that whenever an endeavor as significant as this CFE Treaty takes place over time, and now as it draws to its successful conclusion, we have to look at all the other things that have changed during the time when the treaty was actually under way.

I would just like to recount for you some of those, such as the breakup of the Warsaw Treaty Organization during negotiations; the fall of communism; the reduction of the Soviet forces by 500,000; the unification of the Federal Republic of Germany; the withdrawal of the Soviets from Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the beginnings of the withdrawal of the Soviets from the former German Democratic Republic, leaving only some of those left now-a significant number but still under withdrawal-and those in Poland; the new NATO strategy and force structure in the building toward a European security infrastructure, plus, I would add, the changes in policy and philosophy in the Soviet Union.

All of those things are advantageous to us in the West, and yet the Soviets have continued in their negotiations with this treaty. Then what is the Soviet interest in continuing? I think that interest lies in the fact that the Soviet themselves are going through an enormous transformation, a metamorphosis, a time of unpredictability and possible crisis for them.

What they need therefore is stability and predictability and progress and prosperity as they move through this time of change.

So they are very, very interested in making sure that we do establish the treaty, even though as Senator Pell brought up, the figures that bring us down to parity mean enormous reductions on the part of the Soviets and, to some degree, the old former Warsaw Pact nations and, relatively speaking, far smaller reductions on the part of the West.

But beyond the numbers themselves, what the treaty provides us is smaller forces, longer warning times, no Soviet-stationed forces without the consent of other countries, and no forces stationed outside the Soviet Union, limited military deployments by the Soviet Union and then inspection certifications and communication.

In fact, it will turn out that we will, over the years almost always-we, the West-have some kind of team every week, week in and week out, inspecting something in the Soviet Union and we will know far more than we knew before, because that society was not an open society, and ours was, and so in comparison we will gain a great deal of knowledge and confidence, I am sure, as we proceed down the years after the ratification of this treaty.

I would like to interject into my own statement now at this point, Mr. Chairman, a comment on what Senator Helms had to say, because I think it is very important, and I think there are some answers to this question about the 18,000 pieces of treaty-limited equipment.

The Soviets, during the time of the negotiation of the treaty, moved a significant number of pieces of equipment that would be treaty-limited equipment to the east of the Urals. This was not prohibited by the treaty, but there is a question as to whether that was truly in the spirit of the negotiations.

Leaving that aside, and taking the point of military significance, I would say this. The Soviets declared to us that they moved 57,000 pieces of equipment, that they destroyed 10,000 pieces of equipment, and that they converted 7,000 during that period.

We, with our ability to overfly the Soviet Union with satellites and to do other things with our intelligence systems, have not been able to account for every single one of those pieces of equipment. In fact, out of that 57,000 plus 10,000 plus 7,000, there are about 18,000 pieces of equipment that we have not been able to specifically note.

Part of that is because there is covered storage and we are not able to look into buildings, and part of it is simply that that is a great deal of equipment scattered over the whole Soviet Union, and it is hard to say what is what. This is, of course, a very strong argument for the treaty itself and for the verification regime that we will work with the treaty.

The Soviets moved that equipment there, and I have asked different Soviet leaders, such as General Moiseyev, why? His answer has been, it is a question of a management problem that we have had in trying to figure out what equipment we are going to need for a reorganized, smaller Soviet military.

We reduced during the negotiations, and outside the negotiations we reduced by 500,000. That was a lot of units to be changed. We have, in effect, parked that equipment east of the Urals until we can figure out what we want to do with it.

But, basically, what we want to do with it is, first of all, harmonize. That is the word we would use, which means cascade that equipment so that over in the eastern portion of the Soviet Union, the best equipment can be kept. Some of that equipment needs to be exchanged with older equipment that is east of the Urals, in units. Also, there is a question of using some of that equipment for spare parts in repairing other tanks or pieces of treaty-limited equipment that are going to remain, and are authorized to remain, under the treaty.

He has also promised us in the West, speaking to General Powell, that he will not-and this is official. It is part of the agreement that has been made, that he would not put that equipment in unit sets. It would not be given out to units. It would not be concerned with some kind of strike force. So he has given us those assurances.

So what it boils down to is that we cannot count every last piece of equipment in the Soviet Union by simply flying our satellites, or doing other actions with our intelligence capabilities, because a lot of that equipment is in places where we cannot see it, such as in storage in warehouses.

However, under the verification, as General Parker will discuss, we will be able to see that equipment and we will be able to satisfy ourselves as to the total numbers, and the nature of that equipment.

Senator Pell mentioned the destruction of Soviet equipment that they have agreed to: almost 20,000 pieces under the treaty, almost 4,000 more pieces under article III, which has been discussed here before the committee many times; another 14,500 out of that 57,000 that has been moved east of the Urals, for a total there of 40,000 pieces of equipment that the Soviets will destroy, not counting the equipment that will be destroyed by the former Warsaw Pact, to include about 7,000 pieces which are in the Federal Republic of Germany now that East Germany has been absorbed into the FRG.

So we will come down to approximate some kind of parity, at least in the area of the Atlantic to the Urals. I would add, Mr. Chairman, that the Soviet Union is still strong. If you look at the treaty after it is signed and see what the Soviets will be able to keep as treaty-limited equipment authorized under the treaty, the Soviets will still be able to-generate about 60 divisions in the area of the Atlantic to the Urals, plus whatever they can generate east of the Urals.

So to meet that in NATO, as we look at our own treaty-limited equipment and our own units which will be part of the reduced force in NATO, to include the reductions that the United States will make, to meet those 60 divisions we would have about 30, initially, available, and then we would have a force generation which would bring us up to more later.

So we are in much better shape than we would have been in times earlier here, in the last four decades, where we were outnumbered, depending on what type of equipment you could look at, between 3 to 1 or 2 to 1, but we were certainly in a much more worrisome situation than we will be in the future.

Now, in terms of the United States forces in Europe, the United States will withdraw more than half of its forward-deployed force.

When I took over, somewhat over 4 years ago, in the job of commander in chief, United States Forces in Europe, and Supreme Allied Commander, the United States forces were at a level of 326,414. We are now looking at plans-and these have been discussed with the Defense Department and the administration-to reach a level of 150,000 by 1995 in the Army, Navy and Air Force forward-deployed in Europe.

We are also reducing the installations over in Europe. As you know, we have announced more than 200 reductions, and we will continue to make additional reductions. These will be, roughly, in proportion to the withdrawal that we make of our forces, so we will see many, many more installations close in Europe.

I would like to mention something that has come up before the committee several times, and that is harmonization. This is the cascading, in order to make sure that good equipment is not destroyed while elderly equipment is still left within the NATO nations.

So, for example, the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Netherlands, will be donors of equipment rather than destroyers of equipment. Those nations will shift equipment to several other nations including Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, which will be recipients of newer equipment in order that they can destroy older and we can keep a good balance. It simply would not make good sense in terms of husbandry or anything else to destroy, for example, an M60-A3 tank and leave an old M47 tank some place. So we want to do that.

The United States, in its part of that harmonization program, would cascade about 2,000 tanks to the nations that I mentioned, about 600 armored combat vehicles-M-113's in this case, and the tanks would be M60's, and about 180 artillery pieces, which would be 8-inch artillery. The 8-inch artillery is going out of the U.S. system anyway. The tanks are tanks that we do not see the possibility of using in U.S. units in the future, and the M-113's are the older variety.

I would conclude, Mr. Chairman, my opening statement by saying that I believe NATO should. continue, because it is the Atlantic link, because it is a balance of capabilities against the strongest military power in Europe, which will remain the Soviet Union.

It is a good decision-maker in crisis. It does provide that the nations do not renationalize, or in other words go back to a national military approach in Europe. It is the proof that collective security is cheaper, and it is the basis for the future European security structure. NATO's solidarity has been a major contribution to the changes that we have seen in the Soviet Union.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of General Galvin follows:]

I am glad to be afforded this opportunity to discuss with this committee my perspectives on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. As Commander in Chief of the U.S. European Command, I believe this treaty should be ratified by the Senate. As you have heard previously from Secretary Baker, Secretary Cheney, General Powell, and the Service Chiefs, this treaty represents a major contribution to the security of the United States and our European allies.

For the past forty years, the members of NATO faced a Warsaw Pact conventional force numerically superior by a factor of two or three to one, depending on the type of weapon system. These forces were deployed forward along the former inter-German border and along the borders of other NATO states. Large quantities of supplies were stockpiled in forward areas, allowing these forces to launch a major attack with little preparation and little warning to NATO. Because of this threat, sizable NATO forces had to be maintained in forward areas also. While NATO forces had qualitative superiorities which helped to offset the Warsaw Pact's quantitative advantages, the Alliance could have been forced into early use of theater nuclear weapons ranked by the U.S. strategic nuclear umbrella in the event of a Soviet attack.

Today the situation has changed dramatically. NATO nations and the Soviet Union have commenced force realignments. The German nation is once more United; the nations of Eastern Europe are engaged in charting their own courses, free from Soviet domination, and the Warsaw Pact has been dissolved. Soviet forces have left Hungary and Czechoslovakia and are scheduled to leave Germany by 1994. Negotiations are underway for their leaving Poland as well.

The Soviet Union is also undergoing a period of fundamental change. The staggering burden of maintaining an inordinately large military machine has contributed to the overtaxing or a Soviet economy already weakened by extreme centralization. Additionally, the Soviet Union is experiencing political and ethnic upheaval. These internal problems are placing a limit to their ability to project power beyond their borders.

In this time of uncertainty and transition, the Secretary of Defense has articulated a new defense strategy which sizes our forces principally against major regional contingencies that threaten American interests, while keeping a watchful eye on Soviet military power. In applying this strategy to Europe, the main elements of the U.S. defense strategy are:

Foremost among the signed arms control agreements and ongoing negotiations, from my perspective as CINCEUR, is the CFE Treaty. It will be a critical factor in the new security environment now evolving in Europe. Implementation of the treaty will bring us much closer to a balance of conventional military capabilities in Europe with the elimination of the numerical superiority formerly enjoyed by the Soviet Union.

The force balance provisions of the treaty are: asymmetric reductions to parity; geographic-zonal limits on force concentrations; and national limits on the holdings of any one state.

These controls, measured in terms of five primary combat systems (tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters), are the heart of the CFE Treaty.

The provisions for verification of treaty compliance are as important as achieving Treaty Limiting Equipment (TLE) parity levels. As I have stated in the past, the CFE verification regime must be accurate enough to compensate for the loss in NATO warfighting capability which the treaty and other drawdowns will impose. This treaty provides for a uniquely intrusive verification regime which, if fully applied, should provide us with confidence that we can detect any trends that adversary, affect our security. This structure consists not only of our national technical means, but also the right to send inspection teams into western military districts of the Soviet Union to see facilities and units. While the verification process is not likely to detect every treaty limited piece of equipment located where it should not be, I am confident we will be able to determine to our satisfaction whether or not there has been general compliance with the treaty requirements. Additionally, the openness and transparency provisions of the Vienna Document of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe complement CFE verification.

The CFE Treaty will also provide NATO the opportunity to improve the deterrent and warfighting capabilities of post-CFE NATO forces. We plan to meet the U.S. equipment reduction requirements largely through the NATO Harmonization Transfer of Equipment Program. This plan rationalizes the reduction requirement across tire entire Alliance. For example, it does not make sense for the U.S. to destroy M-60 tanks while another alliance member retains older, less capable tanks in its inventory. The plan is to transfer some of NATO's more modern equipment to several allied nations currently holding older equipment. This will allow NATO to meet its destruction requirements by destroying older equipment. These transfers will help modernize NATO forces as well as increase standardization in the remaining force. An additional U.S. benefit of this "cascading" plan is that we will not be required to destroy this equipment. In order for the U.S. to transfer this equipment, Congressional action is required. The necessary legislation has been submitted and I urge you to provide the flexibility to implement this plan concurrent with treaty implementation

As a final note on the treaty, we have had to reverse some Soviet actions which were intended to exclude certain TLE. General Powell, in his remarks before the Committee last week, described these actions and how, through intense negotiations, this dispute over interpretations was resolved. I too am satisfied that these issues have been resolved and that the provisions of the treaty will be adhered to by both sides.

Implementation of the CFE Treaty provides us with the confidence to continue on the course we have set for our future defense structure. Over the next few years, our force structure in Europe will be significantly reduced. By 1995, our European based forces will number around 150,000, a reduction of more than 50 percent.

This "Base Force" will consist of a two division corps, more than three tactical fighter wing equivalents, the Sixth fleet with a carrier battle group and a Marine amphibious unit, along with the intelligence, communications, and reception infrastructure required to expedite return of U.S. forces to Europe should the need arise. The deployed U.S. forces, while smaller in number, will be highly mobile, possessing modern equipment and held at an appropriate level of readiness and training to respond to contingencies.

Treaty implementation will also affect the level of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. With a closer approximation to a balance of conventional forces, the threshold rises and the current Alliance strategy of "last resort" is feasible. While nuclear forces will continue to play an important role in NATO strategy for the foreseeable future, there is room for a negotiated reduction in numbers. A successfully implemented CFE treaty will allow us to proceed with reductions of Short Range Nuclear Forces (SNF) in Europe.

Successful implementation of the CFE Treaty strengthens NATO:

Stability and security in Europe are vital to the security of the United States. Our forward presence in Europe fosters our relationships with our allies and affords America the opportunity to influence decisions on collective defense. We need to remain involved and influential in European affairs with a forward deployed, competent, credible, operationally significant force ready for a multi-faceted mission. The successful implementation of the CFE Treaty is an important part of our national strategy and it will allow us to reduce our forces to significantly lower but still capable levels. The CFE Treaty, through its verification regime, will give us confidence that we can monitor and detect significant violations. I am absolutely convinced that it is in the interest of the United States to ratify this treaty.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, General Galvin. General Parker.

General PARKER. Mr. Chairman, I also have an official statement for the record. If you would accept that, I am prepared to proceed.

Senator BIDEN. Your entire statement will be placed in the record.

General PARKER. I will make a few statements, and then after General Galvin's testimony if there are any questions I will be happy to entertain them.

The On-Site Inspection Agency has been working for the last several months in preparation for the implementation of the CFE Treaty. Our charter is presently to plan and prepare for the implementation of this treaty. Since the directive was given to us late last summer, we have accomplished several actions. We have started to ramp up our activities in Europe for our inspectors and escort division. We have grown from about 20 to 30 people up to about 100 people who will actually do the escorting out of Frankfurt. In addition to that, we have worked very, very closely with NATO--

Senator BIDEN. Would you explain what you mean, general, by the "escorts"?

General PARKER. There are two activities, Senator, that will happen under this treaty. There will be an inspection activity. which will-the NATO-U.S. side will go into the Soviet Union or the other nations and actually do an inspection of their facilities, either a declared or a challenge inspection. The converse of that is true. The Soviets and the other nations have the right to come into the NATO countries and to observe our facilities either under a declared or a challenge inspection.

At that time, we, the United States, will escort the inspection team while at the facilities that we have in those countries.

Senator BIDEN. The incoming inspection team?

General PARKER. The incoming inspection team, yes, sir.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you.

General PARKER. Yes, sir.

So we have been increasing OSIA employees in Europe. We have a training and cooperation program with NATO. We have worked very closely in developing a training program. We have trained all of the allies in conjunction with our own training programs in Europe.

We have over 200 U.S. inspectors trained already. Each of the NATO nations participated either as students or as faculty members. We have a language contract with the U.S. Army Russian Institute at Garmisch, Germany to conduct CFE specific, language causes. We have worked on a recognition manual which will basically identify the Warsaw Pact nation treaty-limited items. We have, if you would, a standardized inspectors checklist that each nation can use at its desire.

We have worked closely with the delegation doing the actual development of the treaty itself on the technical issues involved with inspections. We are also planning to meet in a conference next month, with the NATO OSI agencies in Europe so we can have a seminar to discuss the issues that we have learned throughout the training program.

Probably the key to the entire training program we set up with NATO has been our mock inspections. Today, we either have had a mock inspection with the participation of each of our allies, or we have planned and scheduled one for the future. As a result of these mock inspections, we have learned many lessons concerning escorting, inspecting, and bow to host teams. It has been a very dynamic time. We are ready. Our people are trained from my organization's side.

Sir, I am ready to entertain any questions you might have as far as how the treaty itself will be implemented and as far as the inspection regimes.

[The. prepared statement of General Parker follows:]

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee to testify on the status of the On-Site Inspection Agency's (OSIA) preparations for implementing the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CPE). OSIA is current responsible for implementation of on-site inspection responsibilities for the U.S.-Soviet Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT)/Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET), and the Vienna Document 1990. Additionally, OSIA is planning and preparing for implementation of inspection and escort provisions of the CFE Treaty, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) Treaty and both the Chemical Weapons (CW) bilateral agreement with the Soviets and the multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Since CFE is a multilateral treaty with significant residual forces to monitor, it will differ substantially from INF and the TTBT/PNET. Nonetheless, we feel that our experience with these other arms control agreements offers very useful lessons applicable to CFE and other treaties as well.

OSIA will carry out the United States' portion of the CFE onsite inspection activities associated with monitoring the treaty-limited equipment (TLE) located at military units and facilities of the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania in the Atlantic to the Urals (ATTU) region. We are also responsible for escorting inspectors from these countries monitoring TLE located at U.S, units and facilities in the ATTU.

OSIA's planning for CFE Treaty implementation draws heavily on lessons learned from implementing onsite inspection and escort provisions of the INF Treaty. The considerable experience OSIA has gained in conducting inspections and escorting Soviet inspectors for the INF Treaty, with appropriate adaptations, will apply to many of the tasks we will face in implementing the CFE Treaty.

In more than 3 years of INF Treaty activity, we have successfully conducted over 400 inspections in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the former German Democratic Republic. We have also been successful in facilitating over 200 Soviet inspections of U.S. installations in the U.S. and in the five NATO basing countries in Europe, as required by the INF Treaty.

OSIA's existing infrastructure, which includes worldwide facilities, communications, data base management, and other operational and logistical arrangements, provides a foundation upon which to build the implementation of the CFI, Treaty. OSIA's European office, the Forward Gateway at Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, Germany, and OSIA's participation in the Arms Control Implementation Unit (ACIU) in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow will be key elements for meeting CFE Treaty requirements. These offices will confront the vast amounts of CFE Treaty-limited equipment and the complex coordination required to operate effectively in a Treaty regime which involves twenty-two sovereign nations.

In anticipation of the significant challenges posed by this treaty, OSIA has taken a number of steps to plan and prepare to execute its responsibilities. During the negotiations, experienced OSIA personnel served as technical advisors to the Department of Defense (DOD) representatives at the CFE delegation in Vienna and currently participate in the interagency backstopping process in Washington. This participation has allowed the Agency to develop training plans and operational procedures in harmony with treaty language as it evolved in the negotiating process in Vienna.

OSIA has established a direct relationship with the U.S. military organizations operating in the ATTU. We have coordinated with the Department of State and our U.S. embassies; the U.S. European Command; U.S. Atlantic Command; U.S. Army, Europe; U.S. Naval Forces, Europe; and U.S. Air Forces, Europe to assist them in their, preparations for receiving inspections from the Soviets and East European states. Additionally, close liaison has been maintained with our Allies.

Training has been an essential ongoing activity for 051A permanent party personnel, augmenters, U.S. European Command personnel, and our Allies. Methods of training have included classroom courses, mock inspections, and NATO-sponsored seminars. Courses on the CFE Treaty, developed by OSIA and the U.S. Defense Intelligence College, cover the conduct of inspection and escort duties and understanding treaty provisions. A handbook illustrating treaty-limited equipment (TLE) has been developed. Courses have been held both in the U.S. and at the NATO school in Germany. OSIA has also been participating extensively in mock inspections. These mock inspections have been performed regularly since May and are expected to continue through the fall. All the NATO allies will participate in at least one mock inspection. The purpose of these exercises is to test procedures and train the inspectors and escorts in a variety of inspection and escort scenarios. For example, a mock inspection at a U.S. European Command base may be conducted to familiarize the site commander with expectations of Soviet t inspection procedures. With the involvement of the Allies, we have exercise activities affecting the interrelationship between the host nation and the U.S. forces during an inspection. The mock inspections performed so far have proven to be invaluable experiences for all participants.

As the outline and framework of the CFE Treaty unfolded in Vienna, OSIA undertook efforts to organize and staff the required expansion of the Agency's field office at our Gateway Operation in Frankfurt, Germany. This office has become OSIA's hub for all CFE inspection and escort operations in Europe. We currently have approximately 150 personnel assigned to OSIA designated to support CFE.

As directed by U.S. Government (USG) policy agencies, OSIA has also provided the NATO Verification Coordinating Committee and Verification Support Staff with technical advice and assistance based on our extensive experience with the onsite inspection regime.

In addition to bilateral discussions with each of our NATO allies, efforts are underway to develop effective and reliable communications within the Alliance. An overall coordination mechanism for inspections involving U.S. stationed forces is being developed from individually tailored bilateral implementing agreements now being finalized between the U.S. and allied governments which host U.S. forces in Europe.

Procurement to obtain inspection equipment specified by the Treaty has been initiated. OSIA has coordinated with the appropriate USG agencies to assure that the equipment selected meets operational requirements for Treaty monitoring.

OSIA is planning for overall management of the operational portion of the United States' allotted portion of NATO's inspection activities, including inspector training, scheduling, linguistic support, transportation, and communications. An OSIA-appointed team chief will serve as the senior U.S. representative leading each U.S. team of inspectors assigned to inspect conventional forces of any Eastern European nation. The team leader has final authority over the Learn interacting with the inspected parties. As in INF inspections, OSIA has chosen the highest quality personnel with leadership abilities and proven judgment for these key Team Chief positions, including those experienced in the INF implementation process. I will continue to select every Team Chief personally before approving his or her assignment. The INF Treaty demonstrated the critical role played by highly trained an skilled linguists in inspection and escort activities. OSIA has sponsored training at the Defense Language Institute of selected linguists slated for CFE duties to assure their availability in adequate numbers in time for entry-into-force of the CFE Treaty.

OSIA will form each team of U.S. inspectors from its own permanently assigned personnel, supplemented by a few selected personnel on temporary duty from DOD and other agencies. Teams will vary in composition. Their organization will be tailored to the specific type of inspection mission to which the team is assigned. Given the multilateral nature of the Treaty, it will also be desirable in certain circumstances, such as the monitoring of destruction, to form teams composed of members from several NATO countries.

United States escort operations for CFE will differ from INF in several respects. Significantly, the U.S. will not operate any Points of Entry (POES) to receive inspection teams, nor will we escort these teams as they travel from POE to inspectable sites, or between sites in any country. These functions will be the responsibility of the NATO host nations where the U.S. has stationed forces. Specific U.S. escort operations will be confined to U.S. facilities within the host nation, but liaison arrangements with allied host governments are being crafted to ensure U.S. participation in preinspection activities at the POE where appropriate. By agreement with the host nations, the U.S. will provide liaison officers to the host nation escort team at the POE. The U.S. liaison officers can be present throughout the period in which an inspection team is operating in a country in which the U.S. has forces. The liaison officers will alert appropriate U.S. agencies at any time that a U.S. facility is declared to be the object of an initial or sequential inspection and will assume escort duties, along with other representatives of OSIA, upon the arrival of the inspection team at the entrance to a U.S. facility. Inspectors will also serve as escorts.

Transportation. -- The CFE Treaty will make significant demands upon transportation, especially airlift. The U.S. must be prepared to deploy inspection teams to any of the declared Points of Entry in any of the six nations of the former Warsaw Pact, as well is move escort teams to inspected areas involving 8 any U.S. facilities in the European nations of the NATO alliance. The center for this transportation activity will be OSIA's Field Office at Frankfurt, Germany.

As implementation of the INF Treaty demonstrated, logistics are all essential element in OSIA's ability to achieve its mission. The Air Force Military Airlift Command (MAC) successfully supported our INF logistics requirements. OSIA has been working with MAC, to identify how best to meet the airlift requirements under the CFE Treaty.

Communication. -- The extensive preparation required to provide essential communications is well underway. The Treaty requires that communications be available between each of the participating nations and within the participating nations between the host state and stationed forces. Establishing this network and assuring its continuous reliability will be one of the substantial changes of this Treaty.

Budget. -- Due to changes in Treaty provisions during the negotiations and uncertainty regarding the date of entry-into-force or the CFE, Treaty, OSIA continues to evaluate its budgetary estimates for CFE implementation.

Based on these changes and operational efficiencies, funding requirements have been revised downward. At the present time, OSIA anticipates resource requirements to be $16 million in FY 1992 with an average operating cost of $12 million per year for the remaining term of the treaty. FY 1992 planning figures reflect some one-time initial start-up costs including the conduct of baseline inspections.

There are many other important tasks for OSIA:

In addition, the CFE Treaty onsite inspection regime, unlike INF, is of unlimited duration.

Within DOD, the Director of OSIA reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition through an Executive Committee (EXCOM), chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and including the Under Secretary of Defense for POII.CYO and the Chairman or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For CFE implementation, the EXCOM will provide to OSIA interagency policy guidance on operations, logistics, and technical matters. The Secretary of Defense has designated the U.S. European Command, under General Galvin, as the DOD Executive Agent for implementation of the CFE Treaty. Because the activity of this Treaty is focused exclusively in Europe, close coordination will be maintained with the Department of State and U.S. embassies abroad; the U.S. European Command; and appropriate coordinating bodies at NATO.

The On-Site Inspection Agency has acquired considerable experience in escort and inspection operations and has the professional commitment and dedication that this complex, challenging new mission will demand. The infrastructure is established and three years of "lessons learned" provide a strong foundation of experience. OSIA's operational plans, to fulfill its functions under this Treaty, have been developed and are now being finalized. When the CFE Treaty enters into force OSIA will be fully prepared to execute its responsibilities.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, general. Dick, did you have a comment?

Senator LUGAR. Not at this time, thank you.

Senator BIDEN. General Galvin, you have been quoted as saying that the West "created a loophole" that permitted the Soviet Union to move tens of thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, and armored combat vehicles, east of the Urals. Could you explain what you meant by that comment?

Could you also give us your view as to how dangerous you regard an effort by the Soviet Union to use the equipment moved east of the Urals as a strategic reserve stockpile?

General GALVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the use of the word "loophole," I have said that word many times in the past, so I would like to try to put it into context. I do not know exactly the quote that you have there.

I have said there are loopholes in the treaty-people have discussed loopholes in the treaty, and I have said well, if you want to discuss loopholes, there are big loopholes in the treaty. One of them is that the United States is not included in the treaty, so that is a loophole that is quite advantageous to us. Because the treaty area is from the Atlantic to the Urals, so it does not count any equipment in the United States of the treaty-limited equipment that we are talking about in five categories.

But there are also other big loopholes. People talk about little loopholes within the treaty. Another big loophole is, of course, that the eastern part of the Soviet Union is also not counted. This is just a fact of life.

It is a matter that the treaty was arranged to cover only a certain area. It was also arranged to cover on certain items. It does not cover, for example, maritime items. It does not cover anything except five different categories. It did not, in fact, cover, for example, manpower.

But to use the word "loophole" does not necessarily mean to use it in a pejorative way. What I was trying to say is, let us not worry about minor loopholes when the treaty has great big loopholes. This was earlier when we were trying to negotiate, and there was an idea that we had to close every single little loophole in the treaty. I have said, let us have a sense of proportion hero. Let us not try to worry too much about a minor loophole some place if you have major areas that are simply not covered by the treaty.

When it comes to the Soviets moving the 57,000 pieces of equipment to east of the Urals, 1, of course, wish that they had left those pieces of equipment west of the Urals so that they could be counted in the treaty and destroyed, but looking at this realistically, I feel that we have gotten ourselves a very good proportion which was mentioned by Senator Pell as 70 to 9 in terms of destruction-70 on the part of the Warsaw Pact to 9 on the part of NATO. That, to me, is a pretty satisfactory set of mathematics.

Senator BIDEN. Well, as the fellow who runs the show over there, how worried are you? How dangerous is the existence of this stockpiled equipment? Is it useful as a strategic reserve? How do you calculate that, as the hands-on commander there?

As you sit with your German counterparts and others, you say, okay, they have got those 57,000 pieces of equipment over there now, and when this treaty is over they are still going to have 57,000, except after 40 months, and after 40 months they have to destroy 25 percent of it. Still, they are going to have a lot of equipment sitting on the other side of the Urals that was taken from the treaty-covered zone.

Do you look at one another and say, oh, my God, that is real trouble; boy, if they do the following three things, they can really shift the balance? Or do you sit there and say, look, we have got so much advance warning time, the ability of them to use that material in any way that will significantly alter the balance is minimal?

So what do you say? Speak to me as if I were sitting in your office. Seriously, because I think it is important for the American people to understand, general. I think it is very important for them to understand the implications behind all these numbers.

The focus moves away from the fact that here we are, getting somewhere on the order of a 7 or 8 to 1 trade with the Soviets that makes it almost impossible under any circumstances to see how it could be a bad deal. However, having said that, they then hear the issues that Joe Biden and others raise, such as what about those 57,000 pieces of equipment? So the average person says, my Lord, they have 57,000 pieces of equipment sitting behind some mountain over there. What does that mean? General, tell me what it means. Tell the American people what it means for you, the military commander.

General GALVIN. As I sit there with my commanders in Europe and we look at the 57,000 pieces of treaty-limited equipment that are sitting to the east of the Urals, this is what we think:

First of all, we divide our thinking into intentions and capabilities, as we always do. What are the capabilities, first of all, of that equipment? Well, it has been sitting out there now for about a year. It sat there all through last winter in the snow with hatches open, bumper to bumper, hub to hub. It did not get very much maintenance. Only, at the most, a third of that equipment was being maintained.

The rest of it was parked in such a manner that it was clear it was just put there because that was the closest place that could be found to park it. It was not put there because somebody was going to exercise it, preserve it, take care of it, worry about it and so forth.

Now, still looking at capabilities of that equipment, we see that, first, about a third of it would continue to be maintained, so that is about 20,000. 14,500 are there in the agreement to be destroyed now, so that is getting close to another third of it.

When we start looking at intentions and balancing that against capabilities, what could be intended with this? What are the declared intentions, first of all? Well, Moiseyev said that is a management problem. I do not know what to do with the equipment. I have to keep it, though, to see if I need the parts, to see if I can exchange it for worse equipment that I have that is farther out to the east in units that are still going to be around, and look, it costs a lot of money to destroy that, so rather than make a decision about it right now, I am going to park it some place that is outside the treaty while I still have the right to do so. That is what he has said about it.

How about looking at intentions from a more objective point of view? What actually can he do with that equipment? First of all, he would be making a mistake if he did not take some of that equipment away and exchange it for older equipment that we know exists out in the East.

In fact, what I am saying is, he is right. He does have older equipment out there, and he does need to cascade that equipment. So when he does that, the equipment that comes back into those parking lots east of the Urals is going to be T-55's, T-54's, maybe even T-34's, stuff like that.

Senator BIDEN. Much less capable equipment?

General GALVIN. Much less capable equipment, older equipment. So he is going to end up with one third that he has to destroy, one third that he is probably going to exchange back and forth, or cannibalize, or cascade there, and so he is going to end up, in my judgment and the judgment of most of my commanders-and we talk about this all the time-with probably 20,000 pieces of equipment.

He also has units that he has to keep active out there, so he might find himself, in the future, using those 20,000 to exchange back and forth with units as a kind of a pool.

Senator BIDEN. When you say "out there," what do you mean by, out there"?

General GALVIN. I mean, out east, farther east than the Urals. He has already, in addition to this now, promised that he would not configure those pieces of equipment into, say, a brigade or a division set of equipment. They sit, in other words, all the tanks on one place, more or less, all other kinds of vehicles in another place, et cetera.

So when I look at that I say, now I have to compare that-which I still do not like, necessarily-there are 20,000 pieces out there that could be used for something. I still say to myself, well, let us look at what we have gained in this. He is destroying 20,000 pieces of equipment under CFE. He then, under article III, and I will not go into all of that, because it has been talked about here and the committee before, but basically what that means, under another side arrangement he is going to destroy almost 4,000 more pieces.

Senator BIDEN. For the record, general, are those pieces also in the same general location?

General GALVIN. No. For the record, these are west of the Urals, now. These are in addition to what is across on the other side. He is going to destroy 20,000 in the CFE, 4,000 in the side agreement, and now, of the ones that are actually over there, as I mentioned earlier, lie is going to destroy 14,500 of those. So he has a total destruction there of about 40,000 pieces of treaty-limited equipment.

Now, for that, NATO is destroying about a total of 9,000 pieces of equipment, and we have not counted in here, now, that the Warsaw Pact, other than the Soviet Union, will also be destroying equipment and that part of what the Germans have destroyed is old Warsaw Pact equipment, because they absorbed that when they absorbed the German Democratic Republic. That amounts to another 17,000 or 18,000 pieces of equipment.

So now you are up to about 60,000 pieces that he has destroyed, and of the 57,000 that he has on the other side of the Urals, only about 20,000 of that is something that would be worrisome to a commander like me, looking at the defense of Western Europe.

Of that 20,000 there is a time factor in here that we have not brought out, and that is the point that Colin Powell talked about before this committee. If he wants to use that 20,000, he has to do so many things to use it-reconfigure it into unit sets, get the soldiers in there, trained, move it, and so forth-that we would see this and would know what is going on.

Senator BIDEN. For the record, can that kind of thing be done? I have discussed this privately with a number of your colleagues and I think I know the answer, but I think it is important to put in on record.

Can that reconfiguration be done if tomorrow the Soviet General Staff wakes up and says, "You know, we really ought to reconfigure that equipment into units-have that done by Friday for me, will you, you know, Grigory." Is that something that could be done by Friday? Is that something that could be done by the end of the month? Is that something that takes months?

Now, I am not being facetious here. I am trying, again for the record, to get a sense from a hands-on military commander out there in the field who has the obligation of keeping an oftentimes disparate group of nations, although united in the West, together and working in harmony on military matters. If anybody will know the answer, it is you.

Is that something that is easily done? Is that something that enables the Soviets, if they change their minds tomorrow, or change their minds at the point when they have only 20,000 pieces left, to say, okay, we are going to configure that in units and we are going to integrate it with the material that we have and commanders west of the Urals to add to the strength of our force west of the Urals and in doing so enhance the threat to the West? How long does it take for them to do something like that? Is that an easy task? Is it a hard task?

General GALVIN. To give you the short answer first, it is a hard task and it would take quite a while.

What he would have to do is, he would have to organize the people and train the people, first of all, because this is just equipment sitting around there.

Senator BIDEN. For the record, there are no assigned personnel to this equipment that is sitting east of the Urals?

General GALVIN. That is correct. This is parked equipment in pools, in equipment pools, and there are no assigned personnel for that equipment. There might be a few maintenance units that are working with it, but there are no assigned fighting personnel for that. Those people would have to be recruited, trained, organized, and assigned.

The equipment itself would have to be rehabilitated and put into units, then the units would have to be moved west of the Urals in order to take part in some kind of operation toward the West. To put that together, we would not be talking about weeks, we would be talking about months.

Senator BIDEN. Is it reasonable that we would or could miss such activity with the national technical means we have, if they were moving around anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 pieces of equipment, to configure it in units and bringing in the personnel to operate it? Is it likely we could miss that activity with the national technical means we have at our disposal right now, at this moment?

General PARKER. Senator, as you know, my responsibility is the onsite aspects of the inspection.

Senator BIDEN. I understand that.

General PARKER. But as an overall statement, I would have to say, as General Galvin mentioned this morning, just for this equipment to be brought up to speed, you would have to have the personnel in there. You would have to move them. You would have logistics trails. It would be very difficult, I would imagine, to generate that many tanks, or any kind of equipment, without being observed.

Senator BIDEN. Is that your view, general?

General GALVIN. Yes, I would agree with that. For the record, we should say that if they did do all of this east of the Urals it would not be in violation of the treaty, because that is outside of the treaty area, but there is no doubt in my mind at all that if they began to do this to the extent of trying to take 20,000 or 30,000 pieces of this equipment and put it back in shape and make it into units that were fighting units, we would know it.

Senator BIDEN. However, it would be a violation of the political agreement that they made, am I correct? I will direct this to Ambassador Woolsey, but I believe it would be a violation of the political agreement relating to that equipment east of the Urals, would it not?

General GALVIN. Yes, it would.

Senator BIDEN. I apologize for going over this so much but one of the things that I think Senator Lugar will agree with me on is what our colleagues do with us and what we do with them when they are allegedly gaining expertise on a complicated matter. They come to us and ask us.

One of the questions I am often asked which is based on what my colleagues read in the paper because they have not yet had time to examine this treaty, until we make our report, is, well what about all that equipment over there. Is that not bad news?

The reason I have gone into such detail again is because I think it is important for the record to understand that, although no one likes the fact that there exists equipment that was pulled out of the treaty-covered zone that would have otherwise been covered and would have otherwise had a significant portion of it destroyed, a larger percentage will be destroyed under the political agreement.

The situation is not as onerous and as threatening as it appears. When I first heard, my lord, they have 50,000 pieces of equipment out of there and have it sitting on the other side of a mountain that is a big deal.

It is a big deal, but apparently from what you have said and what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said, what the Secretary of Defense has said, what everyone who we rely on for their expertise in military matters has said to us, they would rather it not have been done, but notwithstanding the fact that it has been done, as it does create somewhat of a problem, something we should be worried about and examine, it is not something we would not have (a) enough notice to be able to respond to, and (b) it is not as bad as it appears.

Is that a fair statement?

General GALVIN. That is a pretty fair statement, Mr. Chairman. I would add one comment to it. The Soviets, during the negotiations, also unilaterally reduced by 500,000 troops. So what you have here is a lot of equipment that is sitting right now east of the Urals. It is sitting there, much of it throughout the winter with open hatches, as I said.

That is equipment that could be sitting, say a few miles of Fulda or Hauff or Coudert or the North German Plain, and it just is not there anymore. And neither are the troops.

Senator BIDEN. Again, for the record, what percentage of those 500,000 troops, to the best of your knowledge, are totally decommissioned are now civilians-and what percentage of them are sitting around in barracks still in the military in the Soviet Union.

General GALVIN. I do not really have a good figure, and you know that manpower things are hard to follow. But the Soviets have announced the reduction of those forces. In other words, those soldiers are out of the military -

Senator BIDEN. Decommissioned.

General GALVIN. And I think that it may not be exactly 500,000, but the figure is a lot like that, somewhere.

Senator BIDEN. I have more questions, but I have kept my colleague waiting too long. Senator Lugar.

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to follow along some of the lines you have established this morning.

General Galvin, throughout our hearings, the term "military significant change" has come to the fore because that is the standard that has been established for verification of this treaty. By this time Members, at least those who have been following the hearings, know the difficulty of getting a fix on exact numbers and disposition of equipment or personnel.

But I would like your comment for the record as to what you would consider to be a "militarily significant change" in the zone in terms of how much equipment and what changes in logistics support or numbers of fighting force would be involved.

In other words, if we are to offer to our colleagues some standard of what we believe to be "military significant," what kind of quantities, what kind of parameters, can you attach to that concept?

General GALVIN. Senator, that is a hard question but I will do my best. First of all, I am really interested in getting a fix on numbers right down to the last soldier and last tank and last airplane and so forth. And the closer we can get to that the better, and that is why I like this treaty, because this treaty does that or gets a lot closer than you can get by flying a satellite over the Soviet Union. That is the first thing.

The second thing is that long before it is militarily significant, certain changes can be treaty violations. And if they are, then I would like to have solidarity and response to those violations and that is another thing that the treaty does give us, and I am very happy about that part of it.

Now militarily significant change, first of all, any change ought to be significant enough to take before the joint consultative group, if we notice it is a violation of the treaty. If it is one tank, it is a violation. Why should we not consult about it and say we are upset about it? We are. It is how upset we are going to get. Maybe not so much about one tank.

If I were to see that even something like a full division had somehow been formed that was not supposed to be there with the equipment that it would have, and we all know what a division is, maybe 15,000 or 20,000 people, maybe 300 tanks, and so forth, I would call that quite significant because it would mean something else must be going on, too. Why would they simply do that?

A significant action to me that would worry me would be a change in production, in military production. I would want to know what this was all about. So I probably am pretty conservative about this, but I have to be with my responsibilities. I would be astounded to see a division pop up someplace that I did not know about.

I can understand not knowing where some tanks are or something like that, but not a division which has to exercise and has to deploy and has to have barracks and has to have motor pools, and forth. You cannot keep something like that in a cave.

Senator BIDEN. How big is a division, General?

General GALVIN. A division is about 15,000 or 20,000. Soviet divisions, probably around 14,000, 15,000, with about 200 to 250 tanks. That is something you do not hide in a warehouse. It is something you do not put in a cave. So something like that probably could not exist that we would not find out. And it would be significant to find it.

If you took significant to mean is it going to be dangerous to the future existence of NATO. You can define this thing in so many different ways. To me, I feel that we need to be able to verify this treaty down to some pretty close numbers. By that I do not mean that you have to count them all. I do believe in statistical procedures by which you can prove, statistically, by studying certain numbers, that bigger numbers are probably correct.

We have noted, for example, that if we took the kind of inspections that we are going to have and we went through about 10 years, of those inspections, that would take us the complete round. We would get to see everything that the Soviets had-10 or 11 years. So year by year, I think that is a pretty good solid verification regime that is going to keep something militarily significant from happening beyond us.

If it did happen, Senator Lugar, I think that something militarily significant probably would not be along the lines of somebody hiding a few divisions someplace. It would be somebody inventing a new kind of weapon or a new kind of defense or something else like that, rather than the idea that people are going to sneak around putting divisions in underground places or having whole airfields under the mountains or things like that.

I do not think those things are as logical as the fact that it might be something in new technology or some advance that would be militarily significant.

So it is hard to play with that term.

Senator LUGAR. General, you have testified that we can anticipate United States forces may be reduced to the neighborhood of about 150,000 troops by 1995. In the event that something of "military significance" occurred, it may not be simply a change in numbers of equipment or people or even the formation of a division. It may be a new innovation in how war is fought or some technical breakthrough.

But are we in a position with 150,000 troops there to be able to augment rapidly the number of people that the United States of America would have or that our NATO allies would have to form an adequate defense against whatever this change might be?

General GALVIN. I think we are in a position to have a strategy with a fully deployed ground corps of two divisions and about 3 1/2 tactical fighter wings, and then the Sixth Fleet. If those thin are forward, and that would be my absolute minimum, we can fall in on that force pretty well. But anything less than that, there is really nothing to fall in on. You do not actually have a competent operational force capable of mixing air, land, and sea the way that we saw, for example, in the orchestration in the gulf.

That is the lowest possible structure that would allow you to adequately fall in and be prepared to fight.

Senator LUGAR. At the 160,000 level?

General GALVIN. Yes, it is. Yes, sir.

Senator LUGAR. You have heard discussion in the Congress from time to time of numbers that are substantially less than 150,000. But let us say, hypothetically, that one of those suggestions found favor one year in an appropriations bill and in fact we ended up with 75,000 troops in Europe, half of what you believe to be the essential minimum.

Describe how you fall in on 75,000. In other words, if you have a military significant breakthrough at that point on the other side, what does it mean to us, if we have 75,000 people as opposed to this minimum of 150,000 you have mentioned?

General GALVIN. I will show you that. First of all, I would say overall if you try to go to that, you would take a big risk. But I do not want to talk about risk as something vague. I will be specific about it. You would not, with 75,000, be able to keep the kind of structure that would allow the air and ground and sea to operate together. That would be the first thing.

You would not be able to keep that structure across NATO. You would not be able to operate with other NATO units because below the corps level, you cannot cross-operate with shifting different kinds of international tactical fighter capability. You could not fight the air-land battle. You could not fight the deep battle. You would not have the long-range communications. You would not have the logistics. You would not have the intelligence. You would not have the air defense. You would not have the tie-in to the NATO staffs that you would need for such things.

All of that would be in such a low level that it would be caretaker stuff that you are talking about. You could keep the equipment from deteriorating, but you could not have a fighting force, a fighting organization. You would still see military people around and military equipment, but it would be hollow in terms of the capability to actually operate with the other NATO nations.

You would be below the operational level. You would have a few tactical capabilities, but that would not be enough. Just to answer the question of how you would reinforce in a time of danger.

But in the meantime, how are you going to train that force with the other NATO forces when it is not big enough to train with them. It does not reach the levels of operation that they would be reaching themselves. The Germans will have three corps. The British, Dutch, and Belgium, will have one. The French will have two. The other nations will be able to operate together, and we would not have that experience in occasional exercises perhaps, when we sent forces over.

That would provide for a deterioration of United States capabilities that would be beyond anything that I think the Nation would consider acceptable.

Senator LUGAR. General, let me carry it just one step further. Some of our colleagues have suggested that the United States should withdraw from Europe altogether. In other words, as a result to this treaty and the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, that European countries are rich and powerful and should be fully capable of defending themselves without the United States present.

Describe if you will, in the same way you described the scene at the 75,000 level of forces, what happens if in fact the United States presence is 0. What could we then anticipate under this treaty in the event of a militarily significant change?

General GALVIN. Senator Lugar, I think we have to take it from the point of view that you have to start at the top. We have to say, what is the strategy? What are the aims of the United States in being in NATO in the first place? Why are we there?

The United States decided a long time ago it could not go for an option of fortress America. It could not just hole up in the United States and defend itself against the world and try to reach some kind of satisfactory security equation and satisfy the national responsibilities for security that way. Not in this world. It is too small; it is too volatile; it is too dangerous.

So the United States said this has to be done not alone, but in a coalition. Never fight alone. That should be one of our mottos. Never fight alone. So what we have said is the major coalition, the most important one to us, is NATO. All right. Then what do we need to be in NATO? Well, we need to have a show of commitment to NATO, first of all. We are the backbone of NATO.

NATO is our entre into Europe. We do not have very many. NATO is the way that we can sit at the table in Europe and be influential, not necessarily have hegemony, not necessarily have absolute control, but be influential in the shaping of the future security of Europe, which is our own future security also because we found out that the worst half of a century we ever had was the first half of this century where we fought two terrible wars.

But the second half of this century has been much better because we have had NATO and we have not fought this kind of a war in Europe, because we are there helping to shape the future of Europe, being a part of that.

What do you have to have to be a part of that? You have to have a show that you truly are committee to NATO. Now commitment of this sense, putting forces forward, this is not a very flexible strategy. This is a strategy in which we say, if anything happens, we are already in it. We have made the decision. We have moved with NATO in this. We are with the Europeans all the way, and they know it.

You cannot do that by just putting a few caretaker forces in Europe. You have to say, we really are with you. Now, does it benefit us to be with them? Well, some people think that the way we got to the gulf was because we had ships and C5A's and 141's. The way we got to the gulf was because we had friends. We had friends who said take my air space. Do you need refueling?

Through my area, there were 17,000 landings in Europe, one-way only, going down to the gulf, and 17,000 coming back. And all of those were on European airfields like Torrejon and Siganella and Rota and Frankfurt and Incirlik and Suda, and many, many others, including in the United Kingdom.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you show commitment, that you have friends who do say we are with you in this. Now that commitment to show, it has to be a competent, capable recognizably operational military force.

When in the air, that means wings, a tactical fighter wing. In the sea, that means the Sixth Fleet, a carrier battle group and a marine amphibious element available on the ground. That means a corps.

The minimum size corps you can have is two divisions. If you have only one division, you could not have a corps, and we are down the minimum, if we take the reductions that I recommend, which is, come down from four divisions to two, from eight wings in Europe to three and a half. To a Sixth Fleet that is configured differently in the future, probably less escorts, although they are more capable now than they used to be.

This is the minimum you can go to and say, we have a presence, and we therefore have committed ourselves to you in Europe, and we therefore have the right, along with you, to shape the future security, together with you, of ourselves and of you, and there is just no other way to do this.

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much, general. I think that is very important testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you.

General, I expect we are going to hear that speech again, and I think it is a good one, by the way. I am not being critical. Now you are starting to sound more like you do in the office. [Laughter.]

I have a few more questions, if I may, and I am sorry to take so much of your time, but it is not that often that we get a chance to have you here.

Let us talk about cascading for a minute. General Galvin, you have been overseeing the NATO cascading plan in which the United States and Germany will transfer equipment to Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and Greece, rather than see this equipment destroyed.

Presumably a key premise behind the plan is to increase the military capabilities of the flank countries, an effort that I know has been underway in your mind, and you have been somewhat relentless for some time, long before this treaty was consummated, on it.

Could you tell the committee to what extent the cascading plan will increase the strength of the flank countries?

General GALVIN. Mr. Chairman, the cascading plan will give our allied countries about somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 newer tanks than they have now. They will have closer to 1,000 armored combat fighting vehicles than they have now, and they will have more than 300 artillery pieces that are newer and better than what they currently have. That is basically the change that will occur.

That will occur because the nations-the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany, which have newer equipment but which also have the responsibility for destruction of a percentage of their equipment under CFE-will not destroy that equipment, they will hand it off to other nations, which will in turn destroy the correct number of pieces so that in the end we will have completed our responsibilities for destruction, in accordance with the treaty, and yet we will also have redistributed our best equipment. That is the plan, sir.

Senator BIDEN. Now, one of the things that I am asked-and this is all basically for the record, because I have had the benefit of hearing these answers before, but again, I think it is important that others also be aware-is if you need legislation for this cascading because, what we are doing is, we are taking equipment American taxpayers have paid for and we are giving it to somebody, and we are not charging them any money for it. We are "giving it away."

I have been repeatedly asked this question. Look, American taxpayers have paid for this with their money, and now we are going to give it to some of our not-so-rich but nonetheless, European allies. We are going to give it away. Why should they not pay us for it?

My response has been, if we do not give it away, we have to destroy it. Is that correct?

General GALVIN. That is correct, sir. If we do not give it away, we have to destroy it, and it costs a lot of money to destroy it to start with.

Senator BIDEN. So in fact it is cheaper to give it away?

General GALVIN. It is cheaper to give it away. The plan now is that when the equipment is given away, the transportation of U.S. equipment, the inspection of it and the maintenance of it, will be common funded. In other words, it will be funded by NATO altogether. In the common funding, we normally pay somewhere in the vicinity of 28 percent, so there would be costs of transportation and maintenance.

First of all, the American equipment involved in this-and that is what we are interested in here-is older equipment. It is equipment that we have in warehouses now. We are renting those warehouses and paying that rental, and it is quite expensive. We are maintaining that equipment when we do not intend to use it for anything.

This is all United States Army equipment. I have already checked back with the U.S. Army, and the Army does not want that equipment. The Defense Department does not want it. It is not useful in the future Army forces. All like equipment has already been planned for, and this is-to name the equipment, it is M60-A1 and M60-A3 tanks, it is M-113 infantry fighting vehicles, and it is M-110 8-inch Howitzers.

The Howitzers are going out of the system anyway. The M-113's are the oldest and are not wanted at the moment by the Army, and I do not think will be wanted at all in the future. The tanks are not wanted in the future either, because they have been superseded by better tanks.

Senator BIDEN. Notwithstanding the fact that they will supersede inferior tanks in those countries.

General GALVIN. That is correct. Although the M60 version of the tank is not a competitor with the Abrams tank, nevertheless it is much better than the M48 and M47 and some of the other tanks that it will substitute for.

So we will take tanks that we do not want to maintain, we do not want to store, we do not want to ship back to the United States-we simply really want to get rid of these, and we have to destroy them anyway under the treaty. So rather than destroy them, we will give them to these other countries.

We will end up paying 28 percent of the transportation charges and the maintenance charges, but those costs compared to the cost of maintaining unnecessary vehicles are not significant costs. So this is a good deal, in other words.

Senator BIDEN. Is it important that Congress pass the cascading legislation before the treaty enters into force?

General GALVIN. Yes, it is, Mr. Chairman. We need to get on with the planning of this and get it accomplished. We have done a great deal of groundwork and preliminary planning with the nations, and the nations are anxious to accept this equipment, even though for them it means new training and so forth. By the way, the repair parts for that equipment as it is used over the years will still probably be coming from the United States.

What we need from the Congress is permission, because if you looked at this outside of the question of the treaty, it is giving equipment free of charge to another nation, and that has to be something that would be approved by the Congress. But it is, of course, far more than simply giving it away. It is saving us the money of destroying it, and we really have no other choice.

Senator BIDEN. General Parker, I am going to ask you a silly question. Why you? How did they pick you to be the guy to do this job, which is, I think, the most difficult part of the treaty? General Galvin can cascade all he wants. That is easy. But you have to go out there and figure out how to implement what is the most intrusive, the most significant, the most broad, the most complicated inspection regime, I believe, in the history of mankind. Why you?

General PARKER. Well, sir, I like to think it is a challenge. Actually, my agency probably has the most experience of any organization in the world as far as onsite inspection, because we have been doing it for 3 years with the INF Treaty. We picked up responsibility for implementing the underground nuclear testing treaties. We have been involved with them, actually, for the last several months, so we have a very experienced cadre of inspectors. We know how to do inspections. We have a program set up for training and equipment, and it is a very logical thing to place us with this treaty.

Senator BIDEN. That leads me to my next question.

One of the criticisms of the INF Treaty, which I strongly support and have supported, was that we are really not destroying nuclear warheads. All we are doing is taking them off the top of missiles and we are putting them some place else, but we are not actually taking a nuclear warhead and taking it apart.

One of the things that you will have gained a lot of experience from, is not only the implementation of the inspection regime of that treaty, but what you are about to undertake as well, assuming there is consent to ratification here in the Senate and nothing else changes.

Now, can you tell me, in your experience, whether or not there is a need to know more about how to actually dismantle a nuclear warhead, rather than just taking the warhead off the top of the missile that carries it to its target, but to actually, once you get that off, to take it apart so that it can no longer function if it were put back on top of a launcher to send it to its destination? How much more do we have to know about how to do that? That is the first part of my question.

The second part is this. Would it be, from your perspective, in the interest of the United States, for the Soviets and the United States to learn jointly how to do that?

General PARKER. Well, sir, as you know, my charter is very clear. The National Security Council gives us policy, guidance on the INF, TTBT, and CFE Treaties. We are talking about the weapons systems, the delivery systems that pertain to the airplanes, or for the INF, in the missile.

Senator BIDEN. There is a thing called START coming up.

General PARKER. In START, we will have basically the same regime as far as destroying warheads, aircraft, et cetera. The issue is one of dismantling of front end of the weapon itself that is actually very technical. It would probably take a great deal of study to examine exactly how you would do that, and to verify, indeed, that the warhead could never be used again.

Again, that is outside of our charter at the present time. There are probably people in the research area who have been looking at those areas, but the treaties right now focus on the destruction of the delivery systems.

Senator BIDEN. Well, you have had to work with the Soviets for the last 3 years on verification issues, and obviously you are going to be working with a whole lot of people, including the Soviets, on verification issues as they relate to conventional weapons. Tell me a little bit about the impact of this activity, your physical activity of actually going in and looking around and planning for the implementation of the inspection regime to see whether this treaty is going to be complied with. Talk to me a little bit about how you interact with your Soviet counterpart. What is his interest, your counterpart, and your interest as it relates to working with him? Do you see what I'm saying?

General PARKER. Historically, for the last 3 years-and I have only been the director for about 6 months-we have found that the Soviets have been very cooperative in ensuring that the treaty is being implemented.

I was at the final eliminations of the SS-20 at Kapustin Yar. I have been to the eliminations of several SS-20's and their equipment, and conversely the Soviets were here at both Davis Monthan AFB, Ariyonia, and at Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, Texas, when we destroyed our missiles.

Both sides have a very professional approach to make sure the requirements of the treaty have been complied with throughout. I would envision that the same thing would happen in the CFE, the difference being in working in a multilateral arena. Under CFE we are going to have multilateral teams.

Under the INF Treaty the destruction was observed by a national team. OSIA teams went over to the Soviet Union and the Soviet teams came here. In the CFE Treaty, we will have multinational teams that will go to the destruction facilities and observe the tanks, artillery, et cetera, being destroyed.

Again, there will be a challenge, because there will be more nations working together, and there is a joint consultative group set up where there are issues that come up, and we would like to make very clear up front that we do not make verification or judgment calls when we go out. We observe, record, and report, and if there is a discrepancy it is reported.

Senator BIDEN. I guess what I am getting at is that it is one thing to observe-it is a little bit like going in and observing the elections. You can observe an election, and you can establish a regime that allows you to observe and determine to some degree whether or not the election is being honestly held.

To continue with this analogy, you could send 50 observers into any State in the Union and observe the election, or any country, and observe the election and not learn a darn thing.

But if you know that you have to come up with the means by which-if there are paper ballots, you observe and you check before the ballots are counted the hands of the people that are counting them to make sure they do not have little pencils underneath their skin just to check off, as they count the ballots, and things of that nature. Unless you know to do that, then you do not really know whether you have observed an election that was fairly or unfairly conducted.

I suspect the same kind of thing occurs with regard to the observation of treaty compliance issues. One of the things that will come up is our movement from the regimes that called for changes in the vehicles sending those bombs, as people think of them, and cutting them out, the launchers.

We are now going to be talking about warheads, We are going to be saying that in START, and I realize this may seem off the point, but I do not believe it is off the broader point of verification, which is a big issue to many people in this treaty, that we are going to be moving to the actual warheads. We are going to say that you cannot have any more than "x" number of warheads.

The question is going to come up of not just whether they have them, but what do they do with the ones that they are going to destroy. Do we know how to destroy? What are the technical requirements for implementing a verified nuclear warhead dismantlement?

What I am trying to get at is the degree to which we are likely to be able to agree, that you will be able to agree with your Soviet counterparts in the future as to the technical ways to determine whether or not such dismantlement can and/or is or has taken place.

Is it in the mutual interest of each country to work out ways to make that determination? Or is it something that we just worry about unilaterally? And it is not something where we should help them worry about their side of it?

General PARKER. In most of the treaty negotiations there is a process that both sides will agree to on how certain things will be eliminated. Those are in the treaty or in the protocols.

To use your analogy of the elections, I have an advantage when my team is going to a site. We have a data point that we start with. We know how many pieces of equipment are supposed to be there. So, we go in. It is more than just observing. We actually count. And if there is a mismatch between what the nation that we are inspecting says that they have and what we come up with, then we have a discrepancy. So we do have an advantage in that case because we can tell before the teams go in what it is they can expect to see. If there is a discrepancy, we can report it.

On the larger issue of the weapons, normally this would be worked out in the protocols as to how they are to be destroyed. For example, in the INF Treaty both sides agreed that certain missiles would be destroyed in certain ways whether it was destruction by a bulldozer running over them or firing the first stage of a Pershing missile.

Senator BIDEN. One more question. There has always been some debate, particularly with some of my friends, and as we say in the Senate, they are my friends, some of my liberal friends think the inspection process should be a function of ACDA.

And I think I disagree with that. I would like the military to learn to love to destroy weapons. That would be a nice thing for you all to learn to love to do.

It seems to me it should stay where it is. And as we move hopefully toward, at the end of this summit, a START treaty, we should continue with the functional implementation in the hands of guys like you, General.

Do you think that should be a purely military function as it is now? Or do. you think it should be an ACDA function?

General PARKER. Senator Biden, I guess I have the advantage that when OSIA was formed, I worked in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was in on that side. Later, I was fortunate enough to work for Ambassador Lehman for 2 years and so I have seen it from that side. And I am now the OSIA director.

The rationale of 3 years ago is still valid. OSIA is basically a military organization. We are organized from the number of people we have, we are about two-thirds military. We are very heavily dependent upon services, airlift, et cetera.

The Department of Defense is a very logical place for it to be and has worked very well.

Senator BIDEN. General Galvin, for some time now it has been my contention, as you mentioned in your statement, that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the termination of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet military withdrawal from Central Europe has had profound consequences on U.S. nuclear strategy.

There is no reason why you would remember because so many of us have come through your office, but you and I have talked about this before. As a matter of fact, you are one of the first people to, early in my career, educate me to the fact that at least part of our nuclear strategy was based upon the significant imbalance of conventional forces, the advantage that the Soviets had.

Now I am beginning to think that the rationale for the myriad nuclear systems that we deployed, even as the need to offset Soviet conventional superiority in Europe has diminished, is not still valid.

I have two questions. Do you agree with that premise? And to what extent can we afford to make nuclear weapons a deterrent to Soviet nuclear weapons rather than a deterrent to Soviet conventional forces?

General GALVIN. Yes, and I remember very well, Mr. Chairman, the discussions that we have had on this in the past.

First of all, I think for the record I would like to bring up some points that you already know.

One of those is that NATO has been changing its attitude toward the employment of nuclear weapons. When I say NATO, that includes the United States. I am not talking about Europe changing its attitude, but NATO. This attitude has changed over the past 20 years.

For 15 years, in fact, it was officially debated within NATO. And the result of that was a document called the General Political Guidelines which in the most general terms moves NATO away from what we would call in the vernacular, nuclear war-fighting. That is the tactical short-range employment of nuclear weapons on the immediate battlefield in order to overcome significant superiority in tactical forces of the Warsaw Pact.

It has shifted from that to more of a use of nuclear weapons to make a political statement of deterrence in times of crisis and of deterrence, again, even when war begins. In other words, they are used to make a war stop. They are employed to make a war stop. They are employed to send. a message that says you cannot gain more than you will lose, if you continue to attack us.

The result of that has been the willingness of NATO, including the United States, to downgrade the value of battlefield weapons, such as nuclear artillery and short-range weapons while maintaining the value of the longer-range weapons, the weapons that go deeper, that strike targets that are not necessarily tactical targets, but rather strategic targets.

Senator BIDEN. Right.

General GALVIN. Now on top of that, however, there is a requirement, I believe, that all of these weapons do not simply become weapons employed by the United States or just one or two or three countries within NATO, but that these weapons to function well have to show solidarity. They have to show unity. They have to show the idea that this is NATO, not some individual nation. That means that we need to keep some nuclear weapons in Europe.

So the conclusion of that is, yes, we are moving away from the use of nuclear weapons because of an overwhelming conventional enemy to the recognition that as a last-resort weapon, nuclear weapons are necessary in order to insure the survival of our forces, if a battle were to begin.

I would say finally on this, that after all is said and done, the hope of all of us is that nuclear weapons are used primarily as a deterrent, a deterrent of war.

Senator BIDEN. That leads me to my last question on this issue.

You have, once again in a very articulate way, laid out the political as well as the military rationale. And they are not competing. As a matter of fact, some would argue that the political rationale may be somewhat stronger than the military rationale.

Do you still arrive at the conclusion, then, when you say nuclear capability, NATO nuclear capability, U.S. nuclear capability in Europe will require land-based nuclear systems or will continue to require land-based nuclear systems?

General GALVIN. I believe when we go into SNF negotiations, the shorter-range nuclear forces negotiations, we have the INF experience.

And I am very proud of the way our forces in Europe removed those weapons without any incident or problem. We have had the removal of chemical weapons from Europe, which also went extremely well with no problems. We have had the conventional negotiations, which are now proceeding. And that is why we are all here, to an end that is greatly beneficial to all of us.

And now we have already agreed that we would go toward another arms control negotiation, which is SNF. And as we do that we have already said publicly, NATO has said, let us look at that in terms, first of all, of getting rid of the nuclear artillery. We would be willing to do so and we encourage the Soviets to do the same. As things are looking now the Soviets are pulling out of those countries, and of course, that means they are pulling their weapons out, too. And so that is becoming a fait accompli.

The other question about ground-based nuclear weapons has, in effect, been answered by the stopping of the development of the Follow-on-to-Lance because the only ground-based weapon we have in all of NATO is Lance. And that is with the exception of French forces which are not integrated into the NATO system.

Therefore, the current Lance will grow old and obsolete roughly in the middle of the 1990's, 1995 or so, a technological rust will have taken place and Lance will no longer be reliable enough to stay on the battlefield. So we will then be looking in Europe at only one type of weapon and that is a weapon delivered by aircraft. So that could be a bomb or it could be a tactical air-to-surface missile.

And the decision now, the next decision that will come along is, are we or are we not going to continue with the tactical air-to-surface missile. I think it would be a very serious mistake in view of the loss of all other capability to go on with simply the old nuclear bomb delivered from an aircraft.

I think we have to move into the world of our time and have something that is technologically more accurate and has the range and dependability that the TASM would have.

Senator BIDEN. I thank you.

General Parker, I, unfortunately, have many questions. But I am going to ask you only one more because we have another panel to hear after you which knows this area extremely well. And I thank them for not beginning to yawn at this point. I do not want to keep them waiting very much longer.

I will submit with your permission, several questions in writing to each of you if I may.

General Parker, it seems to me and I would ask you also to comment on this, General Galvin, that maybe the most significant aspect of this treaty in light of the fact that a good deal of what we sought to accomplish at the outset of the negotiations, especially if we go back and start talking about the MBFR talks or what we had hoped for back then, is already a fait accompli. To use your phrase, it's because of what has happened to the Warsaw Pact nations, what has happened as a consequence of station forces and the Soviet and so forth, that maybe the most significant part of the treaty is the inspection regime which is in place.

I would like you to speak for a minute along these lines. There are 22 nations. Most people think of this inspection capability under the treaty as being one where NATO decides they want to go and look at the Soviet Union and see what they are doing. When, in fact as I understand it, any one of the 22 nations can seek to inspect any other one of the 22 nations.

So the Poles could be looking at the Soviets if they want to. And the Rumanians could be looking at the Hungarians. And the Hungarians could be looking at the Czechs and so on and so forth. Is that a correct premise?

General PARKER. Yes, sir. Basically any of the 22 nations in the course of the alliance will have an agreement, probably in house, but any of the 22 nations would be vulnerable.

General GALVIN. Although I would add that the inspection within NATO of one nation or another or within the old former Warsaw Pact of one nation or another, the number of those inspections would be small, a small percentage.

Senator BIDEN. Why?

General GALVIN. Simply because there is general agreement that the whole idea of the verification as we started out was to check the other side.

Senator BIDEN. But as what constitutes the other side blurs, say 5 years from now, 7 years from now, or 2 months from now and the Poles, say, by the way, NATO is not a bad outfit. Or as one has already blurred, leaving us with no East Germany anymore.

As those occurrences continue is it not legally possible for those nations to conclude that their desire to inspect might be focused in a direction opposite that which was thought to be desired in the first place? Or is that not the case?

General PARKER. It is a complicated area. And I may have to provide you an answer for the record. There are limitations on he number of countries, the prior Warsaw Pact nations, the number of visits or inspections that they can perform on one or another. There are limitations on that. And I can go into more detail for the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

Senator BIDFN. Is that number 5 percent?

General PARKER. I think the number is 5 per country.

General GALVIN. I think it is 5 percent.

Senator BIDEN. Provide that for the record.

Now tell me, General Parker, and you, General Galvin, of the effect of the regime in place that allows all of the inspections, both challenge inspections as well as the normal inspections that this treaty provides for from a military standpoint. Does that build confidence?

Does that have any psychological as well as military impact for, again, a military planner?

What kind of advantage or disadvantage does that provide for you as commander of NATO General Galvin?

General GALVIN. I think I have to be careful in answering your question like this because I think we should recognize that the inspections are for verification of the treaty.

We want to be careful we do not take it to some other reason such as that the inspections are to gain intelligence on other countries or the inspections are for some other reason.

The primary reason for the inspections is verification of the treaty. That is what we should be doing. And that is what we will do. Now, obviously when you go and visit another country and you make an inspection and you meet some other officers or noncommissioned officers or other civilians who are working this, you learn something about them. And you learn about the geography and the general ambience of all of this. I think that that is very helpful to us.

I suppose that in a generalized sense you get a better idea of things that we normally used to get through intelligence like, where are the units, and what does that installation look like? I think we should make sure that we see it this way. It is not an intelligence-gathering exercise. It is in furtherance of the treaty, and that is what we aim for.

Senator BIDEN. I appreciate that. I think that is obviously worth emphasizing. But not withstanding the fact that its purpose and function is not that of an intelligence-gathering operation, the fact is that it has and does put in place an unprecedented ability of military personnel from each of the 22 countries in question to be able to go look at whether or not a treaty which radically affects the configuration of forces in Europe is being adhered to. Does that have any impact or benefit beyond determining whether or not the treaty is being adhered to?

General GALVIN. I would say, Mr. Chairman, that it has enormous benefit to us, because one of the things-the essential thing that has been missing all of these years, in a word, is communication.

We have never been able to talk to each other, and this gives us a chance to do that. I feel that that kind of confidence-building is probably at least as important as all of the official confidence-building measures that we have actually created institutions to attain.

The idea that I, for instance, in this uniform of the U.S. Army, walked down through Red Square with officers of the Soviet, of the Red Army, that really is an experience that has to be salient in my life as a military officer and a military thinker. To have had opportunities, manifold opportunities like that, are very, very important, and especially for the people who will be making these inspections, the younger officers and civilians who will be doing this.

Without a doubt, you are absolutely right, this gets us what we needed, which is this communication that can lead us at least many steps along the road to a mutual understanding of things.

Senator BIDEN. My last question, general, relates to aerial inspection and Open Skies. Right now, the negotiations on aerial inspections in CFE-lA are somewhat stalled, presumably-at least this is my understanding-because some would like to see attention focused on the larger forum in which Open Skies is being discussed. Can you tell me whether that is an accurate perception?

Second, how valuable would aerial inspections be to us?

General GALVIN. Well, as for the first part of your question, Mr. Chairman, I feel that CFE-1A is going to cover, as it is planned to cover, manpower and aerial inspections. I do not see any reason-though there might be all kinds of talk about one thing or another, I do not see any reason why we simply will not go forward and cover those things. That is what we planned, and I assume that will happen, but that is really all I know about that.

On the value of aerial inspections, I think that aerial inspections have great value. You will remember that my predecessor, General Eisenhower-my predecessor some removed-was even at that time talking about the value of aerial inspections, and I follow in that line.

Senator BIDEN. General Parker, do you have any comment to make with regard to aerial inspections and what impact they would have on the functioning of your operation?

General PARKER. No, sir. Again, as General Galvin mentioned, it would be another confidence-building measure. It would be another process and procedure for monitoring the treaties and agreements, along with national technical means and onsite inspection.

Senator BIDEN. I think it is interesting that the issues that are holding up resolution of the aerial inspection issue relate at least in part to concern about the superior capability of the United States and NATO in being able to conduct such operations.

As you keep pointing out, and I think it is important that you make the point, the whole purpose of this is only to determine whether or not the treaty is being complied with, but the concern is that we may possess a capability that would allow us to go beyond performing that one function.

All these years our great concern about Soviet capability heightens every time we get down to crunch time on things like this. We are finding that half the time we are the ones saying well, maybe we had better help you with the technology to allow you the capability to something that we can do, that you are worried we will do. I just find it rather fascinating.

At any rate, is there any comment that either of you would like to make in closing, because I have kept you for an awfully long time, and I do appreciate it.

General GALVIN. Mr. Chairman, I would just simply like the opportunity to reiterate my comment that I terminated my opening official statement with a written statement, and I am absolutely convinced that the ratification of the CFE Treaty is in the best interest of the United States.

General PARKER. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to add that with entry into force, the United States On-Site Inspection Agency and our allies will be prepared to implement the inspection provisions of the CFE Treaty.

Senator BIDEN. You are confident that you will be able to do it?

General PARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator BIDEN. Well, gentlemen, thank you very much. As your colleague, Colin Powell said, general, when he had your job he would have paid dearly for the information that is going to be available, or that is available to you and will be available to you under this treaty. I am glad that we have not had to pay dearly in terms of life and/or dollars to get to this point, and that we are doing it through a treaty.

I thank you both very, very much. It has been an honor to have you here. Thank you again.

Now, what we will do, is recess for 5 minutes. It is about 11:55 a.m. We will reconvene with the second panel, a very distinguished panel, and probably people who know more about the detail of this treaty than any other living human beings. We will do that at 12 so we will recess for 5 minutes.

[A brief recess was taken.]

Senator BIDEN. The hearing will please come to order.

In a very real sense, the committee has in fact saved the best for last, and I mean the best for last in terms of the entire hearing process. I quite frankly debated whether or not to begin with this panel.

I mean this sincerely, because I know of no two people in the world who can better explain in detail and based on our discussions with both of you, and you of late, Ambassador Woolsey-I was about to call you Admiral Woolsey. That is a terrible thing to do to a man, put you to sea, when you have just Finally come to port. I think you both have the ability-I know you have the ability-to explain not only in great detail what this treaty is about, but to explain in understandable terms why it is so significant and why it is such a benefit to the United States.

I understand that, as usual, you are accommodating one another. Ambassador Woolsey is to speak to a group of which I am a vice chair. I will not be there, but you are supposed to be there at 12:30-the Arms Control Caucus.

Anyway, you are supposed to be out of here at 12:30 p.m., and Ambassador Lehman has been gracious enough to suggest that he would be willing to stay after you have departed. I do not know that it is necessary for me to keep either of you very long, because both of you have made yourselves available to me personally in my office and discussed this in great detail with me, but it is important for the public and the record.

Senator Lugar. did you have a comment?

Senator LUGAR. I would ask that my statement be inserted in full in the record.

(The prepared statement of Senator Lugar follows:]

Ambassador Woolsey's appearance before the committee provides an opportunity for us to think about some conceptual guidelines for a key element in the process of providing Senatorial advice and consent to this treaty. Before we get caught up in the rush to add our names to conditions or reservations to the treaty, let me offer some thoughts on how we should approach our prerogative of attaching them to the treaty. I do so now during the early stages of our deliberations in the hope that "reservationitis" will not come to inflict the entire process.

Senator BIDEN. So why do I not begin, or why do you not begin in any order you would like. Whomever thinks they should go first, begin with Your statement and then maybe we will have a few questions, and maybe we can submit a lot more in writing. I am anxious to hear from you both.

Ambassador LEHMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because of time, I will submit my statement for the record. Let me simply say the last time I was up here it was to explain why we should not proceed with ratification until we had resolved the article III issues. Thanks to the outstanding work of my good friend and colleague, "admiral of the fleet" Woolsey, those are behind us, so now I am here to urge us to move quickly toward ratification.

Two days ago the Czech and Slovak Republic moved to ratification. They recognized the importance of this treaty not only for enhancing security in Europe but for promoting the growth of democracy. We ought to recognize that, too. We ought to move out.

I am prepared to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lehman follows:]

Mr. Chairman: I am plensed to appear before the committee today to testify in support of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CPE). I urge the Senate to give its consent to ratification.

The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe is a landmark in the history of the efforts of United States and NATO to build a more peaceful and stable world. The CFE Treaty embodies and codifies, in a legnlly binding document, important arms limitations made possible by the enormous changes we have witnessed in Europe over the pnst two years. The treaty is a remarkable vehicle for strengthening security and stability in Europe. It establishes a balance of forces at lower levels, and it helps eliminate the capability for launching effective surprise conventional attack or initiating large-scale conventional offensive action by the USSR against the NATO Alliance. Threats that for four decades shaped the structure of the security environment and the dimensions of U.S. and NATO security Policy on the European continent are greatly diminished, and the conditions for rapid, positive political change hive been enlirinced.

No one would maintain that the CFE Treaty by itself has been responsible for the revolutionary shifts in Europe's political landscape: "perestroika" in the U.S.S.R., the free election of a Russian president, the emergence of democratic governments in central and eastern Europe, the continuing departure of Soviet forces from those lands, and the astonishingly rapid unification of a Germany, anchored securely within the Western Alliance. Those changes were fundamental and carried forward on deep political currents. But the CFE Treaty, and the negotiating process itself, are surely a part of that revolution-at the same time both encouraging and benefiting from the process of political change.

Negotiating the CFE Trpeaty helped create a new revolutioniir Europe: a Europe in which there will be o Soviet forces in central and eastern Europe and in which they could not be legally reintroduced without consent of the host state; a Europe in which Soviet forces are tightly constrained by the legally binding commitments in their own territory west of the Urals.

The dramatic success of CFE is evident in the contrast it poses with its predecessor, the negotiations on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions, or MBFR. MBFR lasted almost 16 years and produced no agreement; CFE was negotiated and signed in slightly more than 20 months. The territory covered by MBFR was limited to part of Central Europe; CFE's coverage extends from the Atlantic to the Urals, from north Norway to the Mediterranean, and even some Soviet equipment beyond the Urals are affected by associated documents. MBFR concluded with the last NATO proposal still on the table: it called for reductions in Soviet manpower of just 11,500, about the size of a single Soviet tank division. By comparison, CFE requires the destruction of many thousands of weapons systems, and it will require the Soviet Union to reduce its equipment west of the Urals from more than 140 division equivalents when the CFE talks began in early 1989 to roughly 60 division equivalents once treaty limits are reached 40 months after entry into force.

When I last appeared before this committee, we discussed a problem which was then delaying our transmitting the CFE Treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification. That problem was the contention by the U.S.S.R. that its naval infantry and coastal derense forces were not subject to the ceilings on military equipment established by the treaty. I said that the Administration would not transmit the treaty to you until that problem had been resolved. As you know, the U.S.S.R. has agreed to a legally binding statement that makes clear the limits on that equipment. The necessity of returning to negotiations with the U.S.S.R. after signature of the treaty was not welcome. However, the outcome has been satisfactory to the United States and the other twenty nations that have signed the treaty. Accordingly, as my colleagues have already testified, the Administration believes tliaf'the treaty should be ratified and brought into force.

Let me turn now to the treaty itself and explain briefly its main provisions.

The CFE Treaty has four main elements: numerical limits, reductions, information exchange and verification, and implementation provisions.

1. Numerical Limits. -- In fulfillment of the mandate or the CFE negotiation to secure equal limits on military equipment at lower levels, the treaty embodies a complex set of ceilings on those categories of military equipment and weapons that most directly support offensive operations-that is, those operations designed to seize and hold territory. While the limits are set with respect to two groups of treaty parties-the 16 NATO members and the 5 Eastern and Central European states plus the Soviet Union that were formerly members of the Warsnw Treaty Organization-the limits are legally imposed on individual parties. Those individual holdings have been determined by internal agreement within the two groups based upon allocations of the overall ceiling for each group. This approach reinforces the independence of the nations of Eastern and Central Europe that were once part of the now-defunct Warsaw Pact. At the same time it establishes an equitable and feasible structure of limits.

For each of the two groups of states, the overall limits are:

• 20,000 battle tanks,
• 30,000 armored combat vehicles,
• 20,000 artillery pieces,
• 6,800 combat aircraft, and
• 2,000 attack helicopters.

Within the armored combat vehicle limit, in view of their greater capabilities, there is sub-limit on armored infantry fightint vehicles and heavy armament combat vehicles of 18,000, of which only 1,500 can be heavy armament combat vehicles.

These overall limits apply to treaty-limited equipment throughout the treaty's area of application, which is usually described as the Atlantic to the Urals region, or ATTU for short. Except for a part of southeastern Turkey, it includes the territory of the fourteen NATO European Allies, and of the 5 former Warsaw Pact states in central and eastern Europe. Perhaps most significantly, it includes the territory of the U.S.S.R. west of the Ural mountains and Ural river and will impose concrete limits on Soviet conventional armed forces in the Western Military Districts of the U.S.S.R. This achievement is an important breakthrough in arms control.

In addition to the overall limitations on conventional armaments, the CFE Treaty establishes a set of sub-limits keyed to specific parts of the ATTU region. These sub-limits have the efrect of restraining the amount of equipment that can be deployed in central Europe while not permitting an accumulation of equipment on the flanks to the detriment of our Allies there. The treaty makes very difficult the destabilizing localized buildup of forces as in immediate threat against any specific NATO territory.

The treaty also establishes limits on the amounts of equipment that can be held by active units, both overall and in the specific ATTU sub-zones. The remainder of the equipment must be held in designated permanent storage sites, with special restrictions on withdrawal and use. These active unit sub-ceilings should serve to help eliminate the potential for a militarily significant surprise attack.

One of the most important features of the CFE Treaty is the upper limit it establishes on the amount of equipment that any single state may hold in the ATTU region. This "sufficiency rufe" in practice constrains only the U.S.S.R., limiting it to about a third of the overall amounts of equipment that may be present in Europe. Specifically, no one country may have more than 13,300 battle tanks. 20.000 armored combat vehicles, 13,700 firtillery pieces, 5,150 combat aircraft, or 1,500 attack helicopters. As I noted above, the division of equipment holdings among the parties in either group is established by agreement nmong the group members themselves, The result of this division in the eastern group of sin states is that in two cases- tanks and artillery--Soviet equipment levels will be even slightly lower than the treaty's "sufficiency rele" would allow.

This combination of limitations provides some perspective on the true magnitude of the accomplishment represented by the CFE Treaty. If we consider the levels of Soviet forces in eastern Europe and in the western part of the U.S.S.R. at the beginning of January 1989, the numbers were roughly as follows:

• Tanks-41,500,
• Armored combat vehicles-57,800,
• Artillery-42,500
• Combat aircraft-9,000, and
• Attack helicopters over 1,000.

When the ceilings on these equipment categories are reached 40 months after CFE's entry into force, and taking into account the agreement on maximum levels of hldings among the group of six, the Soviet equipment in these categories will only be 13,160 tanks, 20,000 armored combat vehicles, 13,175 artillery, 5150 combat aircraft, and 1,500 attack helicopters. The contrast in these figures is a dramatic reminder of the enormous improvement in the security of all states of Europe and North America that the CFE Treaty embodies.

2. Reductions. -- A major NATO objective in the CFE negotiation was to gain agreement that equipment in excess of treaty limitations would be eliminated, so it's destructive power could not be held in reserve and brought to bear quickly. Destruction of excess TI,E was also important so that, if the U.S.S.R. were to undertake to replace it, considerable effort would be required to manufacture equipment as well as significant financial resources it can ill afford. This objective became intertwined with the parallel decision by the U.S.S.R. to withdraw large numbers of its forces from central and eastern Europe and from the western part of the U.S.S.R., and to dismantle or reconfigure some of these forces. On one hand, the United States welcomed the unilateral withdrawals and defensive restructuring on the part of the Soviet Union, as both clearly served to improve security, especially as there was no prospect of an imminent CFE agreement at the time these were announced. However, by withdrawing equipment before the treaty was signed, Moscow diminished markedly the numbers of TLE it would have to reduce in accordance with the letter and spirit of the treaty. Indeed, the special negotiation over coastal defense and naval infantry equipment, with the resulting legally binding statement by the U.S.S.R. to destroy or convery equipment to ensure compliance with the numerical limits established by the treaty, was in part undertaken to serve the objective of ensuring Soviet reductions commensurate with treaty obligations. The U.S. has also sought and received assurances from the Soviet Union regarding its intention to destroy or convert a significant amount of equipment in treaty limited categories located outside of the ATTU.

The U.S.S.R. will be required to reduce very much more weaponry than will the other Parties. Based on Soviet declarations, the Soviet Union will be obligated to destroy or convert, both in the CFE zone and outside of it, at least 38,000 items of equipment. For the Soviet Union to reconstitute the remaining equipment and forces east of the Urals into a viable threat to NATO would first require them to recreate an infrastructure they lack, and, even after that, probably take months, and possibly years, depending on how the U.S.S.R. restructures its forces. Such an effort would provide strategic warning, allowing NATO time to react.

Reductions tinder the CFE Treaty will be carried out so that the limits on equipment are reached 40 months after the treaty's entry into force. The treaty includes detailed provisions on howtuipment is to be destroyed or converted in order to ensure that it is effectively deprived of its military capability. In the case of those aircraft and helicopters that can be reclassified or recategorized, similarly detailed provisions apply to ensure that their attack capability is eliminated.

3. Verification. -- Of special importance to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency are the CFE Treaty's provisions on verification. In one sense it may be argued that more verification would always be better. There are, however, tradeoffs that are required. We must balance our verification desires with other concerns such as our operational and security requirements, and in a multilateral negotiation like CFE, we must balance the needs of our numerous negotiating partners.

The CFE Treaty presents verification challenges somewhat different from some of the agreements with which we have had recent experience, such as the INF accord, in which the items to be counted, limited, or eliminated are both less numerous and individually of far higher intrinsic military significance. Thus, with respect to CFE, it is not possible to monitor with confidence Soviet data, for example, to the level of a single tank, although the obligation to respect numerical ceilings such as the 13,166 limit on Soviet-tanks is just as strict as any other treaty obligation. We will insist on strict compliance with all provisions, but of overriding importance is to be confident that large violations, especially those involving fully operational and integrated military units are not occurring and are, in fact, deterred or if taking place, detected in their early stages. Within trips context, the CFE Treaty is effectively verifiable.

Monitoring of the CFE Treaty is provided by a range of provisions, beginning with national and international technical means. The latter term is included in the treaty to take into account the possibility of developing multinational technical mearia, for example, by our NATO Allies acting together. The treaty also provides for an extensive and detailed information exchange, and for an intrusive regime of onsite inspections. Moreover, the speciric details of an aerial inspection regime are to be developed in the ongoing CFE-1A negotiation, for implementation after the residual baseline period.

The information exchange regime of the CFE Treaty is unprecedented in its comprehensiveness. Each of the twenty-two states that as signed the treaty has already provided information on its forces located in the area of application, incliding details on the numbers, types and locations of treaty-limited equipment, and similar information on equipment in the area subject to but not limited by the treaty, such as combat support helicopter. This information provides a basis for comparison with information available from technical means, as well as that gathered during onsite inspections.

Each state party to the treaty will be required to accept a specified number of onsite inspections at declared sites without the right of refusal. These inspections can take place at sites in the area of application declared to be holding treaty-limited equipment. The number, or quota, of inspections will be based on the number of units or locations holding treaty-limited equipment, which are derined in the treaty as "objects of verification."

For locations other than declared sites, onsite inspections are possible on a challenge basis. Under the CFE Treaty, a state does have the right to decline to accept a "challenge." However, if a state exercises that right, that state is still required to make good-faith efforts to satisfy the concerns of the challenging state.

The process of reductions of treaty-limited equipment to established ceilings, scheduled to be carried out over the First forty months of the treaty, will also be subject to onsite inspection, without right of refusal and without the limitation of a quota. The U.S. believed that verifying with high confidence the destruction of excess equipment was of sufficient importance that the right to inspect the reduction process continuously was necessary.

Onsite inspections will be carried out during four periods, with different quotas established for each period. The most intensive period will be during the First 4 months after entry into force, in order to validate a baseline of data for the future. During the net three years, inspections will both focus on the destruction and conversion required during this period, and continue to be carried out at other facilities. Beginning at the 40-month mark, there will be a second period of intensive baseline inspection to help verify that states have reached their ceilings for the long term. Finally, for the duration of the treaty, inspections will help verify that states are in compliance with their obligations.

The Western inspections of reductions in the U.S.S.R. may be carried out by multinational teams, composed of members of various NATO countries. The procedures for these inspections, as well as other aspects of Western inspection efforts needing coordination, are being developed in NATO. In Brussels, a Verification Coordinating Committee of Allied representatives, and a complementary international Verification Support Staff, have been established. The United Staies took the initiative in proposing that NATO establish these bodies. They represent a new departure for NATO as its role evolves to take account of the changed European security environment.

4. Implementation Provisions. -- In addition to standard provisions for tre implementation of a treaty, such as provisions for amendment and entry into force, the CFE Treaty establishes a Joint Consultative Group, modeled on bilateral consultative mechanisms in existing U.S.-Soviet agreements. The charter of the Joint Consultative Group includes consideration of measures to improve the effectiveness and viability of the treaty, updating lists of equipment contained in the Protocol on Existing Types, and addressing compliance questions. This Group has already begun meeting, and has served as on e forum for dealing with the problem that was posed by the U.S.S.R. in its seeking to elude naval infantry and coastal defense equipment from the treaty regime.

5. The Prolocols. --- It is not my intention today to attempt to summarize the lengthy and intricate provisions contained in the eight protocols of the CFE Treaty. I will, however, make a few observations about them.

First, there is a protocol spelling out those parts of the treaty and protocols that are provisionally applied. The signatories considered this necessary in order to provide a base of data on which to proceed with ratification, and to prepare for the intensive, but relatively short, baseline inspection period that begins upon entry into force to validnte information exchanged. It is noteworthy that the provisional requirement for an exchange of data at signature on force structures and arma. ments that gave the United States warning of the problem with Soviet naval infantry and coastal defense equipment.

Second, the Protocol on Notification and Exchange of Information requires the 22 parties to the treaty to update, shortly after treaty entry into force and annually thereafter, information that has already been exchanged. This will serve as a continuous, evolving and ever more extensive bank of information about the military capabilities of the U.S.S.R. and the other 21 signatories. Together with the mandatory and "challenge" onsite inspections that will continue as long as the treaty is in force, these provisions should provide a truly unprecedented degree of transparency about the disposition of military forces in Europe and, accordingly, will be an important stabilizing element.

These information exchange provisions are complemented by parallel undertakings of a political nature that resulted from the confidence and security building negotiations. These produced the Vienna Document 1990 that also extends the onsite inspection regime of military exercises first ngreed in Stockholm in 1986 to include evaluation visits to military bases.

Finally, the inspection protocol sets out in a detailed and sound legal framework the rights and obligations of signatories with respect to onsite inspection. These inspection arrangements are an important and essential part of the verification regime as well as a means of protecting U.S. and Allied security interests under the treaty.

I have already discussed the legally binding statement made by the Soviet Union on June 14, 1991, that assures that all of its Constal Defense units and Naval Infantry will be de facto in compliance with the ceilings established by the treaty. There are, in addition, three other commitments directly related to the CFE Treaty that I would note.

The first is the declaration on land-based naval aircraft. This declaration limits the U.S.S.R. to no more than 400 such combat aircraft in the ATTU, and each or the two groups of states to 430. It also prohibits any permanently land-based naval attack helicopters in the area.

The second is the German declaration in the content of the CFE negotiation regarding the number of its military personnel. The Federal Republic has committed to reduce its force levels to 370,000 overall, with a ceiling of 345,000 land-based forces. This declaration was undertaken as a contribution to the reduction of conventional forces, with the expectation that other states would take further measures to enhance stability in Europe, including limits on personnel strength. It was codified in conjunction with the so-called Two-Plus-Four agreement that led to German unification and the departure of Soviet forces from eastern Germany. It is accompanied by the third declaration, made by all of the twenty-two signatories of the CFE Treaty, that they will not increase their own levels of military personnel in the ATTU pending negotiation of a follow-on agreement concerning such personnel.

The CFE Treaty obliges signatories to continue the negotiating process, with a view both to concluding an agreement on military personnel and an agreement on the modalities of the aerial inspection regime called for in the treaty. This negotiation, termed CFE-1A, is under way, and our objective is to seek to concede it, if possible, no later than the followup meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, scheduled for March 1992 in Helsinki. That Conference is expected to launch a new set of security negotiations as agreed by the 34 participants in the CSCE process at the Paris Summit meeting in November 1990.

It is clear that the CFE Treaty Provides a solid foundation for those efforts. The treaty will bolster the efforts of the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe to pursue their independent political development without fear of external interference, a crucial aspect of the treaty's larger political purpose. It shapes the essential contours of a new European security environment based not on confrontation but cooperation. And it provides an underlying basis of certainty and confidence in an era of rapid change, allowing us to take further steps in European arms control.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you might have.

Senator BIDEN. Mr. Ambassador, before you yield the floor, you did come here and you did suggest to us article III must be resolved. You did then turn to the capable ambassador to your left, and it was resolved.

But in a typical administration instinctive reaction, you did not give yourself credit or us credit for what you convinced us to do- remember, we went on record as saying that we should not ratify- because you were so persuasive before us, and we were told that it would be helpful to our ambassador if the whole U.S. Congress, and Senate in particular, were behind him in making it clear to his Soviet counterpart that nothing would be done.

But I am sure that Ambassador Woolsey was going to mention that before he began, I suppose I have just got to loosen you up a little bit, you know. The Congress occasionally does something right.

I just wanted to say that, but I also do not want to get too greedy here. So I will call on you, Mr. Ambassador.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too will submit my statement for the record if that is permissible, and only say, over there in Vienna we did very much appreciate your and the Congress's position generally in support on article III. Senator BIDEN. We were just following orders.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. I am glad that Ambassador Lehman was so persuasive. A minor matter, although I am deeply honored by the appellation "admiral," and in fact, I never rose in the military to a level higher than captain in the Army. I was Under Secretary of the Navy back in the late 1970's, but admiral, although I would have loved to have been one, was a rank I never attained.

I might simply say, Mr. Chairman, that on all of these issues related to the treaty with which we have been working with you and the committee staff, we very appreciate the consideration you showed and the openness to dialog and discussion of these complex issues and having submitted my statement for the record, I am perfectly willing to just respond to questions, if that is all right.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Woolsey follows:]

Mr. Chairman: I am honored to be appearing before this committee to testify on behalf of the CFE Treaty. As the negotiator, I am not a disinterested witness; that job put me and my delegation right in the middle of the momentous changes which took place during these past few years in Europe-changes in which the CFE Treaty figured prominently, both as a partial instigator and a substantial beneficiary.

The CFE negotiation started out in one world; it ended up in another. It be an as a generally two-sided undertaking between the members of the two alliances. It was hoped then that a successful negotiation could both reduce the chances for military confrontation and also act as a catalyst for greater EastWeet cooperation in other areas. NATO's negotiating partner was a more-or-less intact Warsaw Pact, led firmly by the Soviet Union. We ended up with: one Germany instead of two; new, democratically-elected governments in former Soviet satellite states; and an unraveling Warsaw Pact which met less and less as a group, and even more rarely agreed on issues. In those 20 short months, Europe changed beyond our wildest expecta. tions.

These changes had a profound impact on the negotiation and on the treaty which it produced, far from making the treaty unnecessary-or, as one commentator suggested, giving Vienna negotiators an excuse to close up their offices and go to the opra-these changes created a very new purpose for the CFE Treaty. Our task was no longer to help alter the pattern of military confrontation and act as catalyst for political change, but to help lock in the changes which had already begun to take place with a vengeance and to provide a firm foundation for further improvements.

In my view, the treaty we have submitted to you will fulfill these tasks. In doing so, it will make a substantial and, one hopes, long-lasting contribution to security and stability in Europe. Specifically, it will do this in four major ways:

Throughout the negotiating process, I often cited an Hungarian arms expert, Laszlo Labody, who called CFE the most complex negotiation ever undertaken. In presenting this treaty to you, the members of the Senate, I am struck anew by that view.

Covering the five categories of equipment central to conventional armed forces-a total of hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment spread across nearly an entire continent-CFE was a negotiation infringing on most jealously-guarded national prerogatives. It required very hard and often painful decisions by participating governments to destroy and limit major and expensive weapons systems.

The United States has participated before, of course, in complex negotiations over military hardware with the Soviet Union. CFE, however, had initially 23, finally 22, participants each with its own national defense considerations, each with its own policy agenda. Negotiating this treaty was less like conducting a bilateral nuclear arms negotiation than like steering a complex 111-page bill through a 22-member (multinational) legislature, with the added feature that unanimity was required for passage.

Add to these aspects the momentous changes taking place in Europe, and an assignment to finish the negotiation before the end or 1990, less than two years after it began, and you can see that we faced, shall we say, a substantial challenge.

Thus it should not surprise anyone when I say that what emerged is not perfect from the standpoint of the Unitid States. Compromises were necessary to produce provisions which all 22 could support and defend to their publics and parliaments. Vhat strikes me, however, is how well the treaty fulfills and, in some cases, exceeds our original goals-and, in particular, what a solid framework it will provide for the more predictable and confident Europe we are helping to build.

I mentioned before the proround changes that took place during the CFE Negotiation, and the treaty's changed role as a result. That it was able to slip into that new role so easily was no nccident, for we saw to it that the treaty evolved, during the negotiation, just as Europe was evolving. I've alluded to one criticism we heard frequently-that CFE, with its alliance-to-alliance structure was obsolete and unnecessary, if not regressive, in terms of East European independence. I'd like to address that notion with some specific examples:

• This view-to the extent it still exists-will not survive a conversation with representatives of the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. The treaty will especially benefit their countries, first and foremost by the reductions and limits and the transparency it will impose on Soviet military forces and activities.

• Treaty rights and obligations fall on individual states-not on alliances.

Perhaps the treaty's most lasting contribution will be the transparency it affords to military forces and activities. Frequent onsite inspections, on short notice, the majority without right of refusal, will put military activities in Europe in a completely new light-both from the standpoint of the inspecting and the inspected state. During the 4-month baseline inspection period alone, the Soviet Union will be subject to some 180 onsite inspections. The reductions process, which will stretch over the 40 months following entry into force of the treaty, will be subject to inspection without quota.

The people who changed the face of Europe in 1989-90 were not we negotiators in Vienna. This extraordinary feat was the work of ople with names such as Havel and Walesa and the crowds in the streets of Leipzig; it was the work of those in uniform in NATO who have stood guard for two generations; it was the work of some visionary leaders-including, preeminently, I might say, leaders in this country-who deftly navigated this very fast and rocky stream over a 2-year period. We in Vienna followed along closely and did our best to lock up the gains produced by others.

We have to understand, however, that nothing ever really stays locked up in international aftitirs. All one can do with a treaty of this kind-and what we did, I believe-is to construct some barriers, some fences if you will, to cause delay and reconsideration if any nation in Europe should again lapse into the path of extremism, tyranny, and aggression that has so marred that continent in this century. I would urge the Senate to approve these efforts.

Senator BIDEN. Could you tell me a little bit about CFE-1A.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. The agreement that is embodied in the Article XVIII of the CFE Treaty is that the follow-on negotiations would concentrate on manpower and on developing an aerial inspection regime.

We technically began the CFE-1A negotiations just a few days after the CFE Treaty was signed last November 19, but by late November, certainly by early December, it was clear that the Soviet position on article III, namely the effort to move equipment into the navy and to the coastal defense forces, was a major compliance issue and one that we needed to concentrate on very hard.

And in light of that-all 21 other countries agreed to maintain the form of having CFE-1A meetings-eventually we came to have only a plenary meeting at the beginning and end of each round.

But in substance there was no negotiation on CFE-1A until the Settlement was reached formally on June 14 of this year concerning article III. So although theoretically the CFE-1A negotiations have been going on since last November, in fact, they only had a session or two here at the end of June and beginning of July before the talks recessed a few days ago.

We said in the treaty that we would seek to complete those negotiations by the time of the Helsinki II conference beginning next March. We insisted on and it was agreed that that not be a deadline.

We have not committed ourselves to complete it by then; negotiating under deadlines is a rather bad idea I think. But we did say we would seek to complete it and presumably there will be a lot of effort by all of the countries involved to reach agreement by next spring, at least on manpower and hopefully also on aerial inspection.

Some countries will also, doubtless, propose some stabilizing measures to be discussed as part of those talks, although there will be stabilizing measures also dealt with in the parallel, now 35 nation, CSBM talks.

Following the completion of CFE-1A, I think there is probably general expectation that some type of security negotiations, the form and substance of which is still to be determined, would continue at 35 nation participation at some later time.

Senator BIDEN. I ask you this, Mr. Ambassador, Ambassador Lehman as well.

Senator Helms in his opening statement indicated that the intelligence community has concluded that the Soviet Union deliberately left equipment in the zone that they said was removed from the zone, and that the discrepancy between our estimates of Soviet equipment in the zone and the Soviet declarations constitute a violation on the part of the Soviets of the treaty.

Would each of you comment on Senator Fielms's statement.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Let me start if I could on that, Mr. Chairman.

General Galvin gave an excellent answer with respect to the 18,000 number. He spoke about the difficulty of estimating numbers of pieces of equipment, particularly given the fact that much of Soviet storage, especially west of the Urals is covered storage, warehouses and the like.

It is my understanding that this number of pieces of equipment which the Soviets say they either transferred east of Urals or destroyed, converted or exported prior to November 19 is approximately 68,000.

There is another nearly 9,000 pieces of equipment that they modified from being armored personnel carriers to being armored personnel carrier look-alikes. Those are still in the zone, that is west of the Urals and we will have an opportunity to inspect those once the treaty is in force.

So I am talking now just about the 68,000 pieces of equipment that the Soviets said they either exported, transferred east of the Urals, or exported, destroyed or converted prior to November 19.

The intelligence community, I understand, has gone to a lot of effort to try to see exactly how much of that 68,000 they can verify was, in fact, let us say, destroyed or transferred east of the Urals by November 19.

And this number, up in the range of let us say 10,000 to 20,000, that has been discussed in the press and been discussed here today, as I understand it, represents the following: what the community has essentially said is that, let us say, approximately 50,000 or so of that 68,000 they can confirm was west of the Urals as of November 19, but the balance--

Senator BIDEN. You mean east of the--

Ambassador WOOSLEY. No, I am sorry, you are right. Had been moved out, 50,000 of the 68,000 had either been destroyed or moved out as of November 19. The balance, they cannot confirm was in fact destroyed or moved out as of November 19.

In other words, I do not understand this to be a clear estimate that there were precisely 68,000 pieces of equipment. I understand it to be an uncertainty. If the community, essentially, in answering a question of that sort, was being asked to prove a negative, and as General Galvin pointed out, it is very difficult to count equipment that is in warehouses and to tell whether or not it is there or not there.

That is what the treaty verification regime is about, is to be able to permit visits to closed structures. So I think that this number, this 18,000 number, is something that will continue to be reviewed, but in my understanding it is not a clear estimate of a difference between the data as submitted by the Soviets and what the intelligence community says was in fact the case.

Senator BIDEN. My recollection from the testimony of the intelligence community before this committee several days ago conforms with what you have just stated.

And to put a slightly different spin on it, they could not tell us with certainty whether or not that equipment was en route, had. crossed the border into the zone, was actually in the zone or was in fact not en route and not out of the zone. All they could confirm for us was what they could in fact see and count that was out of zone at the time that the treaty was signed.

And I will ask you to correct me if I am wrong, Ambassador Lehman, my understanding is that essentially they say, we can tell you what was out, we can tell you that we think the rest of it was en route, but we cannot p'rove to you that it was all out by the date of the signature or that it is all out now. However, once signed and we inspect, we will be able to tell you what the real count is, at least what is in.

Now, is that correct?

Ambassador LEHMAN. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

The committee has been briefed iff detail in closed session on this issue and as you know, the analysis is complex and the sources and the methods used sensitive, but as you predicted, Ambassador Woolsey has done an excellent job of trying to make a complex thing simple.

I would highlight a couple of points. The first is that it would appear that what the Soviets have given us is their projection of what they expected to have in the zone at the time. And the question before us, did they make it?

The image in the minds of many people, a bit oversimplistic is of the Oklahoma land rush. A lot of equipment was moving east, did they make it or did they not? They may not even know for sure how much actually got across in time.

There is an inherent uncertainty in that type of analysis because the analysis of whether or not somebody got across the line is a bit different than the analysis of what are the force levels they are maintaining or building up in a given area? So there is an inherently complex problem.

I should highlight, though that they nevertheless had an obligation, an obligation to report accurately and we are continuing to pursue this issue in the JCG.

Senator BIDEN. The intelligence community did say openly, as I recall, that a small number of pieces of equipment, tanks and aircraft did not make it, but they did not say it was deliberate. They could not make that judgment. When pressed by me, and I believe others, our intelligence community raised the question about the efficiency and capability of the Soviets to either, (a) move; (b) know whether it was moved; and (c) know where it was in transit, that might account for some of the discrepancy.

But they said they were not going to-their job was not to guarantee motivation, only to eventually ensure that we would be able to count it once this occurred. Ambassador LEHMAN. They did make some adjustments in the data and I think Jim would be the appropriate person to discuss that. A part of the difference was equipment that they said was destroyed which we now believe to be destroyed. But the question was, again, was it destroyed in that time frame?

I would defer to Jim.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Mr. Chairman, maybe I could add a little bit to what has been said to date, because in addition to being the CFE negotiator, up until June, I was also the Joint Consultative Group representative until Ambassador Hansen succeeded me.

And we believed, based on information that had been provided to us by the intelligence community that there were problems, concrete data problems with a somewhat smaller level of equipment and I can divide this up most logically I think between talking about the aircraft on the one hand and the ground equipment on the other.

With respect to the aircraft, there were approximately 1,000 aircraft, much of it in storage in air fields, looking to us as if it were older aircraft, that the Soviets did not try to hide, but did not declare. And we raised this issue in the Joint Consultative Group and after discussions there they increased their notified holdings by between 100 and 200 aircraft. There were still 800 or so aircraft that they did not notify.

Now some of that aircraft appeared to have been in the process of being destroyed at the beginning of the period, some of it, much of it has been destroyed since. And it may be that the Soviets did not get all of that destroyed by November 19, as they should have if they did not declare it, because under the treaty, if they did not destroy it before November 19, then they should really wait until after the baseline period of the treaty which is 120 days after the treaty enters into force to begin destruction. There should not have been destruction between November 19 and the end of the baseline period.

Some of this destruction may have occurred late, but in any case, this does appear to us to be relatively older aircraft and much of it has now been destroyed. There were also about 1,000 pieces of round, less than that, I think on the order of 800 pieces of ground- based equipment which we have reasonably good confidence was not declared properly and we continue to raise that issue.

We have raised it from the beginning in the Joint Consultative Group, just as we have raised other data issues including of course the article III problem which was a data issue of the first order.

Now in addition to this, approximately 800 or so aircraft and 800 or so pieces of ground equipment, there are an additional, let us say, in the very low thousands, pieces of equipment that, I believe it is fair to say we believe we have some evidence to suggest were not destroyed in time and/or alternatively did not get out in time, that is, were not destroyed by November 19 or did not get out by November 19.

These are also issues that we have continued to raise with the Soviets in the Joint Consultative Group and have been the subject of extensive exchanges.

Senator BIDEN. One of the issues that is sometimes raised by critics as constituting a loophole in the treaty concerns the idea that, as I understand the treaty requirements, the reduction requirements that have to be met are not actual ceilings on treaty-limited equipment. That means the Soviet Union can legally move into the zone thousands of tanks and other equipment.

I am advised that the reason we did not set ceilings on holdings in the zone was because we thought it would be too cumbersome to verify ceilings at the various stages. In short, the need to make each treaty provision independently verifiable created a loophole. It is not a loophole that I would expect the Soviets to exploit. I cannot understand why they would, because the action would be rightly regarded as an aggressive act. But nonetheless, it is being raised with me as a loophole.

Could you explain why we did not set ceilings during the 40-month period, and whether you are concerned about the potential for the Soviets during that 40-month period to be able to legally move into the zone whatever they wished to move into the zone- into the treaty-covered area-as long as it was out by the end of the process?

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Let me take a stab at that, Mr. Chairman. First of all, it is clear in the treaty that the Soviets could not move, now, old equipment into the zone for purposes of having that old equipment destroyed. They have to meet their destruction obligations, their reduction obligations, by what was in the zone as of November 19.

So the question is, in order to keep them from bringing new equipment or units into the zone during this 40-month period and then getting it out again before the ceilings take effect 40 months after the entry into force, why did we not have interim levels of reduction that had to be met and could be verified along the lines of the reduction schedule in the INF Treaty?

First of all, there are requirements in the treaty for the reductions themselves to be undertaken according to a specific schedule, but it is true that if a country wanted to, whether it is the Soviets or for that matter us, or Canada, or Turkey-any of the four participants with territory outside the zone-if they wanted to bring it into the zone during this 3-plus-year period, or take it out again, they could do so, and the treaty would permit that.

If that were done in numbers, and large enough to constitute what any country felt was a threat to its national security, of course it could withdraw from the treaty under article XVIII, but if it did not constitute such a threat, if it were simply a move in and a move out, it is legal under the treaty. I think the principal reasons that we did not try for such an INF-style regime of sequential ceilings during this period are two.

First, the cascading is very important to us, as General Galvin just testified. We need some time to work out the cascading operation. As you know, it requires legislation. It requires transportation. It requires arrangements of various types, find by cascading we reduce our reduction obligations.

To try to make that cascading occur during this period, at the same time we were trying to meet new ceilings during the period, would have been a complex matter, even in a two-sided treaty, even in a two-party treaty, but this is not a two-party treaty, this is a 22-party treaty.

We have in the West, as General Galvin testified, equipment coming not only from us, but from Germany and the Netherlands and going to six other countries in Northern Europe and Southern Europe. The intricacies of trying to manage and draft and conceive and verify interim ceilings during that 3-plus-year period while one is cascading in different directions and changing one's reduction obligation was something that I think would have very substantially complicated both the negotiation and the implementation of the treaty, so I do not think it was really practical.

Senator BIDEN. Is there any threat that exists to us in the absence of such a guarantee that they could do that? You have explained, Mr. Ambassador, why it would have been so difficult to do it. What is the flip side of that?

Ambassador LEHMAN. Mr. Chairman, usually when we put these kinds of intermediate ceilings into an arms control agreement, and in INF and START we have done such things, it is usually a scenario in which one side is concerned that it is going to do massive reductions and the other side will wait until the end and then in essence say, gotcha.

But CFE is a bit different. You are talking about a 40-month period. not 7 years as in the case of START, and you are talking about a massive amount of equipment that the Soviet Union is going to have to be reducing at a fairly rapid pace.

So, for example, when we do the kind of pacing on SS-18's, as you will see when we complete the START Treaty, that is an important issue to us. This scenario is plausible.

But remember, in CFE the destruction requirement on the West is not that great. In fact, our main concern, as Jim points out, is making sure that we have the ability to do the kind of management of things like cascading. There is a good theoretical case for intermediate ceilings. But CFE is very different, and the circumstances of CFE are very different from other agreements and the scenarios that cause us the most concern that would drive that just do not play very strongly in this treaty.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Mr. Chairman, if I could add one point, if we had had these interim ceilings, we would not have wanted to ptit them in the treaty without them being binding and verifiable. This would, of course, have complicated the verification provisions during the reduction period when what we were trying to focus on was verifying the reductions themselves.

Ambassador LEHMAN. That is right.

Senator BIDEN. It seems to me that the way you have proceeded is reasonable, rational, and appropriate, but as you know, you have heard and you will hear that this creates some kind of significant vulnerability-which I have trouble with. I mean, if there is a movement of such consequence, it would almost certainly be termed an aggressive act ihat would be able to be identified as such, unrelated to the existence of a treaty.

Ambassador LEHMAN. I think that is right, Mr. Chairman, and I think that is an important point to make. Verification is very important to us, and it is also a bellwether of intentions, but we should never let the question of whether or not a party is in compliance with a specific provision tell us whether or not their intentions are benign or not. If they are engaging in a massive buildup and they are not in technical violation of a treaty, we nevertheless ought to recognize the threat and act appropriately.

Senator BIDEN. Let me ask you, Ambassador Woolsey, this question. Could you give us an idea of how insistent, if insistent at all, the East European countries were on retaining the right to inspect their neighbors and the Soviet Union? Was that a big concern for them? Was that important to them?

Ambassador WOOSLFY. It was important to them, Mr. Chairman. We had to strike a compromise there, because we did not want, let us say, the East Europeans' inspections of the Soviet Union-although as time went on we saw not only their point of view, but also saw that it was generally useful for them to be able to make those inspections-we did not want those inspections to undercut substantially the NATO countries' ability to inspect the Soviet Union.

Senator BIDEN. That was going to be my next question. Explain, if you would, the onsite inspection. Not challenge inspections, but the onsite inspections, how they operate in terms of the recipient country-the country receiving the inspection, how that formula works, and how individual countries have a right to send inspection teams.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Well, the Soviets have declared now slightly, over 900 objects of verification, which is the treaty term that equates to-it is a lengthy definition, but essentially a regiment, a wing, a storage depot.

We would like to see them have declared more, and we will work in the Joint Consultative Group to declare more, but assuming their numbers stay close td 900, during the 120-day baseline period for verification, the other countries would thus be able to have slightly over 180 inspections-20 percent of slightly over 900-of the Soviet Union. A share of that could be challenge inspections, but need not be. It is 180 inspections-onsite inspections. Senator BIDEN. 180 onsite inspections within that 120 days?

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Within that 120 days.

Senator BIDEN. You will need a good traffic cop.

Ambassador WOOSLFY. During that period, if they choose to do so, each of the East European countries could conduct-and I hope the intelligence community people here will correct me if I am wrong-could each conduct rive inspections of the Soviet Union. They may well not choose to do so. We hope they will not take quite so many.

Senator BIDEN. That comes out of the 180?

Ambassador WOOSLEY. That comes out of the 180, because the passive obligation, the passive quota of the Soviet Union for the period, is approximately 180.

Senator BIDEN. Yes. Ambassador WOOSLEY. If they each chose to do so, then the NATO countries would be able to conduct 180 minus 25 inspections during the period. If they do not choose to use all of theirs, NATO countries would conduct much closer to 180. NATO among itself has divided up the inspections and works through its own mechanisms.

Senator BIDEN. That is not a treaty obligation?

Ambassador WOOSLEY. It is a duty under the treaty for the countries of the Group of 16, as it is called under the treaty-NATO-to make their own allocations of how they are to divide up their right to inspect the other group of states parties.

NATO has, and will continue to work on allocating its division, essentially, of its right to conduct this 180, or slightly fewer than 180, inspections of the Soviet Union during that 120-day period, and the United States will conduct a substantial share of that. Senator BIDEN. Now, on that score, assume none of the former Warsaw Pact countries chose to exercise their right of up to five inspections, in the baseline period, of the Soviet Union, a total of 180 inspections that they could be subject to, can the NATO countries put together a NATO team that conducts all 180 inspections? How does that function?

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Each of the NATO countries-let us assume for the sake of argument here for the moment that each of the East European countries decides to conduct one inspection of the Soviet Union during the baseline period, so that is five from approximately 180-so NATO would conduct, then, 175 inspections. NATO will divide up, essentially, the leadership of those inspections, and if the United States conducts, say, a fifth of them, the United States subject to agreement with the other countries, may entirely man about a fifth of those inspection teams, 9-man teams, and conduct the inspections. We may also cooperate with other countries and decide that we will have a representative from, say, Germany, and a representative from, say, England.

Senator BIDEN. But that is a NATO decision.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. That is a NATO decision, and they could come on our team, and we might put one on one of theirs. Senator BIDEN. Right. Now, so that I do not keep you too much longer and save a few more questions, if I may, for Ambassador Lehman, who would be willing to stay, I direct this to Ambassador Woolsey. Could you describe why it was we put the language in the treaty making it clear that no country can station forces on the territory of another country without the agreement of the host country? Why was that important to do?

Ambassador WOOSLEY. That suggestion originally came from the Hungarian representative in the negotiations. It was quite clear, Mr. Chairman, by early 1990 that as the withdrawals were going to take place of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, the East Europeans wanted, as much as possible, for us to help them in shifting the basis of obligations under the treaty from what you might call group-to-group obligations to individual national obligations. A number of them proposed different measures, and we worked out a number with them which had the effect of making that shift.

They also wanted, as much as possible, to have this multilateral 22-nation treaty guarantee things which otherwise would only be the subject of bilateral agreements between them and the Soviet Union. This suggestion was one that we readily agreed to and proposed. The Soviet Union agreed to it, and no country really opposed it, and it went into the treaty quite readily.

Senator BIDEN. I think it is important.

Ambassador Woolsey, you are already 10 minutes late for your 12:30 speech. I do not want to get into trouble with the group that I just found out I am the vice chairman of. By the way, I am only joking. I say that for the record.

But why do you not go ahead and go, and I will submit to you with your permission my rema .ning questions in writing. We thank you for, in my view and I think in the view of all of us, a phenomenal job that you did, even though you are not an admiral.

Ambassador WOOSLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Senator BIDEN. Ambassador Lehman, I really only have two or three more questions for you. Did we know, when this great exodus, I think is a phrase that you used-sort of like the Oklahoma Territory, you know, being settled, with everybody lined up in their buckboards and heading out for 40 acres wherever they could find it-were we aware that this, what was in fact a massive movement of equipment from West to East, was underway?

Ambassador LEHMAN. Yes, Mr. Chairman, and again, perhaps the image of the Oklahoma land rush does not apply exactly in the terrain of the Urals. But remember, the Soviet Union had announced maior unilateral withdrawals from Eastern Europe. We favored those. Obviously, we were watching to make certain that that equipment was leaving Eastern Europe.

It became, I think, quite clear that much of it was moving to east of the Urals. After awhile it became clear that perhaps more than that was going east of the Urals, and after more time it became clear that the rate was accelerating.

In open session I cannot go into sort of exactly when we saw how much, but I think in closed session or for the record, I could supplement or the intelligence community could supplement what they have given you.

But clearly, at a certain point, we suddenly realized that it was a rather massive and major effort to move equipment east of the Urals. There was no treaty provision that prevented it, and it was clear that they wanted to save some of that equipment for various purposes and reduce the burden of reductions by destruction. So they were trying to get it out of the area.

And that complicated, obviously, our approach and our analysis, but as we have explained, we went back, we took a new look. We used not one, but several methodologies to focus not on the generic force structure question of how many units there are and how much equipment is there out there with those units? But more on the question of many of the units are staying where they are, but their equipment is leaving. Let us find it and find out where it is.

And ihat obviously meant that it was going to take some time to see how we could get the best numbers we could get. I think you and Jim describe the situation fairly well.

We have now found that a lot of equipment that used to be west of Urals is not there, we have found a lot more equipment east of the Urals. But there is this question as to, with respect to the rest of the uncertainty, how much of it was across the line on November 19, 1990.

Senator BIDEN. Well, what I am driving at is a slightly different point, and that is, it seems to me that the intelligence community and the military must have been in a bit of a quandary.

When the wagon trains headed east, there was probably a feeling of relief and boy, you know, things are changing, and they are unilaterally moving forward. The more they get out of there the better.

And then, at the same time this treaty is being negotiated, it appears on that graph, the movement is such that they took out all they said they were taking out and now it seems as though they are taking out equipment in order to beat the treaty.

At that point, and I agree, I do not want to discuss with you in open session when you found that out and how we found that out, et cetera, but at that point, did we raise with the Soviets the issue of why they were doing what they were doing?

Ambassador LEHMAN. Yes, Mr. Chairman. In fact, I would say that our inquiries escalated as our estimates escalated and eventually we got a political commitment in writing to have destructions east of the Urals, and with the commitments with respect to some of that equipment east of the Urals.

The negotiation of that was a bit complex. But the bottom line is that we not only raised issues, but we at least had some partial redressal of the issue. But we are continuing to address the issue and press in the JCG.

Senator BIDEN. Let me shift just a little bit with you and move to the other hat that you wear, an area you know a great deal about.

Tell me a little bit if you will about the looming verification problems as they relate to the destruction or dismantlement of nuclear warheads since we are now moving in an area where we are no longer talking about launchers. We are talking about a treaty, God willing, that we will get after this summit which will state the number of warheads each side may possess.

Will it require a regime that allows us to verify the dismantlement of, the rendering useless of a nuclear warhead? That is my first question.

Then if it does, do we have the technical capability to do that now? Third, do the Soviets have the technical capability of doing that now?

Ambassador LEHMAN. Mr. Chairman, actually we have had to deal with this related issue of what is it you are limiting, what is it you are reducing, what is it your are destroying from the beginning.

As you know, the SALT I Agreement and SALT II Treaty dealt basically with the launcher or in SALT II, the case of the delivery vehicle of the bomber. But in addition to the launcher you have the missile and the INF Treaty and parts of START concentrate very much on the missile. In START there are warhead limits, but they deal with the question of the number of deployed warheads attributed to a deployed missile.

In INF, we actually got into this question of how do you destroy the so-called warheads? What we meant there and in the treaty was basically the front section but not the nuclear device and materials on the inside.

So actually in the INF Treaty we actually destroyed the front section. So I think the thrust of your question is about that end of this cycle which is this nuclear device on the inside. We have done a lot of study of that over the years. By and large we have not seen it as particularly necessary or useful for the INF or START experience. Two basic aspects of the problem--

Senator BIDEN. Not necessarily useful, you mean, not necessarily useful to dismantle the nuclear component?

Ambassador LEHMAN. That is right. But let me explain. You asked it from a verification point of view and that is a part of the answer, but the answer has to be bigger. But from a verification point of view, you have got, again, at the risk of some oversimplification, two problems.

One is knowing that that device that you have aueed to destroy is now destroyed and is not reusable, but the second thing, if that is to be anything other than a cosmetic reduction, is how do you know they are not building another one or do not have another one somewhere else that they will simply use as a substitute?

At the levels that we are talking about, let us take START, obviously you are going to see a major reduction in the number of deployed warheads. But both sides have had large numbers of warheads out there. We do not have a particularly accurate account of exactly how many usable say, ballistic missile warheads the Soviets might have around on the shelves somewhere.

They have a very real ability to produce, so we have an inherent uncertainty. At the levels we are talking about, even with the deep reductions of START, the judgment was that from a verification point of view, this was not something that we really needed to do, in particular, because there is another aspect aside from the verification problem. And that is, cost, crisis stability issues and things of that nature.

Let me begin with the crisis stability issue in its narrowest form. We obviously design our warheads so that we have great confidence in their safety, security and, reliability; but, clearly, we want to make sure that they are not vulnerable to countermeasures or that the other side could not know information that would compromise our security. So there is that question. We have never really found a good solution to that part of the problem.

There is another problem which is--

Senator BIDEN. To say it another way, we do not want them looking inside?

Ambassidor LEHMAN. Well, if it helps-first of all, we do not want to expose any vulnerability to them, but second, we do not want them to learn how to make theirs better by copying ours.

Senator BIDEN. Yes, I am not being critical of why, but that is what the end result is.

Ambassador LEHMAN. Yes. But there is another factor related to the current state of the American nuclear weapons facilities and that is if you have an approach that said, destroy the weapons you take off, but at the same time maintain the viability of whatever forces remain, where do we get the material? Where do we get the warheads?

Do we have to build them all anew? Are we prohibited-these get to be very, very big and difficult and in some cases, extremely costly questions. So down the road somewhere, does this begin Co become an issue? Obviously, if you are talking about the elimination of nuclear weapons, you had better start looking at this question.

But between where we are now and the some kind of warhead elimination oftion? Where do you begin to start phasing this kind of thing in? I think we decided in any case that it was not for START and it was not for INF.

Senator BIDEN. Well, let me ask you one last question. For the record, in closing this hearing out, could you explain what efforts were made during the negotiations to ensure that all Soviet equipment based on land would be covered?

In other words, when we completed article III which says that all equipment is included unless explicitly excluded, did the Soviets understand the implications of this when the negotiation was going on? I understand it has ultimately been resolved, but did they understand the implications during the negotiations?

Ambassador LEHMAN. You mean the original negotiations or the article III articles?

Senator BIDEN. The original negotiations.

Ambassador LEHMAN. The original negotiations. We believe they did. Our question, as you know, the last time I appeared before your committee, we were asked why did the Soviet Union say what it said?

And I suggested that there were a number of explanations possible, some having to do with a possible misunderstanding in one ministry or another, particularly the defense ministry. Another possibility was an element of the domestic politics of the Soviet Union.

These are all possibilities, but we believe the language was clear, We believe that the people with whom we were negotiating understood that the language was clear and it came as a bit of a surprise to us when they presented the article III issue and that is why 21 nations disagreed with them.

Senator BIDEN. Let me ask you the last question. I said that was the last one, but this will be the last one. Mr. Ambassador, the Congress may soon pass a law, maybe in the next 4 or 5 days or less, directing the Secretary of Defense to prepare to deploy by 1996 an ABM system at Grand Forks, ND.

Then the administration will be urged to seek amendments to the ABM treaty to permit deployment of additional ground-based systems and to negotiate other issues. Meanwhile, the Congress has pushed way down the road the so-called Brilliant Pebbles program.

Can you speculate as to whether the administration would support such a compromise, pushing the Brilliant Pebbles way down the road and going forward with Grand Forks which would be treaty-compliant, but which, I believe, in essence, is not treaty-compliant and saying, we want to build more of these so go renegotiate a treaty.

Are you in a position to be able to speculate on what the administration's position is?

Ambassador LEHMAN. I am in a very strong position to say that the administration has not changed its position and I support the administration's position. We have a program. We have submitted it. We support that program.

Senator BIDEN. So this so-called compromise is not something you would greet with open arms?

Ambassador LEHMAN. We understand that there is increased interest in defenses from a stability point-of-view, but that there is not unanimity as to how one should proceed, and what should be the relationship of these proposals to the ABM Treaty and in what time frame.

But we have a program and that is what we support. Obviously, as you know, over the years, the executive branch and the legislative branch sometimes have to decide if they are going to work together and solve a problem.

I would not want to prejudge what might happen. Let me simply say that I personally like the administration's request and I mean that sincerely.

Senator BIDEN. I thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. As I said, for the record we will submit some additional questions.

Is there anything you would like to say in closing?

Ambassador LEHMAN. Just, Mr. Chairman, we are making great progress and have made great progress in an amazing number of areas of arms control, and there is this web of constraints, this new emerging regime, and it is a rather remarkable accomplishment.

But at the same time I think we have to recognize some realities. We have some real dangers out there, among theni are instability even in places like Europe where we have made so much progress. We also have the problem of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons proliferation.

With respect to this treaty, it is an important part of that. It is very important to the people of not only the United States and Western Europe, but very important to the people of Eastern Europe. And I think the sooner we get this treaty ratified and in place the better.

Senator BIDEN. I quite frankly thought we would be able to do that all ly the time we recessed, but having spoken with some of your colleagues in somewhat senior positions in the administration, I gathered they were not as anxious to get that done before we recessed as I was, but we will get it done soon, God willing and the creek not rising, it will all work out.

Again, thank you very, very much for your testimony and for your help and your cooperation in making available to the Foreign Relations Committee the data on arms control matters that heretofore had only been made available to the arms control observer group. I think you will find that it is beneficial for your position.

Ambassador LEHMAN. That has been a good relationship for us and we look forward to having a good working relationship with the committee as always.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you. Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:59 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]

Next Section

Return to Top
Return to Table of Contents