Russian President Vladimir Putin (center), Russian Defense Minister, Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov (2nd left) and Russian Army Main Intelligence Department Head, Army General Valentin Korabelnikov (left)
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Cool War
The emergency conference of member states of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe ended last Tuesday in Vienna. Russia is threatening to stop participating in the treaty, while the West is insisting on preserving the status quo. Vlast analytic weekly reviewer Boris Volkhonsky has concluded that it is all just the latest struggle over influence in the post-Soviet countries.
The CFE became one of the major topics in the world media after Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his address to the Federal Assembly that Russia may withdrawal from the treaty's obligations. He made it clear that his position was a response to American plans to place a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia promised an asymmetrical response to those plans in February. The announcement of Russia's possible withdrawal from the CFE was that response, or at least part of it. The West reacted nervously. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reacted most sharply when she criticized his words. Western commentators unanimously pointed out that the CFE Treaty did not allow for moratoria on its implementation.
That is correct. The treaty says nothing about a moratorium, and withdrawal from it is possible only under two circumstances, which are describes in Article 19. First is if the member state decides that its “supreme interests” are threatened or another member state exceeds the quota on arms established by the CFE “in such proportions as to pose an obvious threat to the balance of forces within the area of application.” Moreover, Russian legislation requires that any cessation of implementation of an international treaty be confirmed by federal law.
The next month was taken up by a battle for position. Both sides made statements that were more or less harsh depending on each other. On May 28, Russian officially made a request to the depositor-country of the CFE, The Netherlands, to call an urgent meetung of the CFE member states.
At the same time, a discussion was unfolding around the missile defense system. At the G8 summit at Heiligendamm on June 7, Putin made an announcement that stunned world media. He suggested that U.S. President George W. Bush use the Gabala radar base in Azerbaijan jointly with Russia. By Russia's logic, that station is significantly more effective than the proposed facilities in Europe and able to oversee the area from which the danger of a surprise missile attack may come (that is, Iran and North Korea). Bush was delighted by the unexpected suggestion. But the almost immediate reaction from Washington was that agreement to use Gabala together would not mean the rejection of the missile defense system in Europe.
There was no real sensation in that announcement. On May 2, the Azeri informational website day.az reported the beginning of Russian-American negotiations on the use of the Gavbala base. And., according to the Azeri site, the suggestion was not made by Moscw, but by the Pentagon.
By officially making the suggestion that Washington use Gabala, Russia not only drew attention to American plans in Europe, it allowed for the loss of its monopoly over an important region on its border. Considering the complex relations between Azerbaijan and Russia and that country's undisguised desire to join the West, the proposal was fraught with new tension.
Considering that, Russian diplomats again turned their attention to an asymmetrical response to Bush. A week before the conference in Vienna, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the issue of Russia's withdrawal from the CFE would not be brought up, but he noted that the Russia's further activities within the treaty would be discussed on the level of the presidency, government or Security Council, depending on the outcome of the Vienna conference.
Anatoly Antonov, director of the security and disarmament department of the Russian Foreign Ministry and head of the Russian delegation in Vienna, stated that Russia would not and could not “fulfill the outdated agreement at the price of damaging its own security.” He noted that no moratorium had been declared, but that possibility, like the possibility of withdrawing from the treaty, existed.
What is so important about the CFE Treaty that so many announcements have to be made? Military experts say that the limitations on the number of tanks, planes and other non-nuclear military hardware are losing their meaning for modern war. As the German Handelsblatt wrote the day after Putin's speech to the Federal Assembly, the number of soldiers in the majority of NATO member states is significantly lower than what is agreed on in the CFE. That is because of the high cost of maintaining them.
It can also be noted that American plans to create a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic cannot be called an excess of weapons levels “in such proportions as to pose an obvious threat to the balance of forces within the area of application.” That means that Russia has no bases for withdrawing from the treaty under its article 19. As Bush noted on the last day of the G8 summit, the missile defense system that is to appear in Europe does not pose any threat to Russia. He said that the system would be able to intercept many ballistic missiles, but it would be helpless against the huge number of Russia's nuclear warheads.
The CFE Treaty really is outdated in the military sense and there is no strategic meaning to it, just as the planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia. But the more Moscow hints at its possible withdrawal from the CFE, the Washington opposes that step. U.S. Undersecretary of State Daniel Fried, head of the American delegation in Vienna, called the debate about the CFE a “rhetorical arms race” and said that “there is no point in returning to a rhetorical arms race and every point in maintaining and strengthening this very successful arms control regime, which has done so much good for Europe for so many years."
The real meaning of the debate over the CFE is not the limitations it imposes or the countries that are, or are not, party to it, but in factors that are not even formally mentioned in the treaty, which was adopted in Istanbul in 1999. Western countries are tying the ratification of the treaty directly to the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia and Moldova (that is, from the territory of the unrecognized states of Transdniestria and South Ossetia, which have unilaterally voted for independence). That issue has gained significance in light of the problems with Kosovo. Russia rejects the Ahtisaari plan, which is supported by the West, and, in the final analysis, proposes independence for what is still formally a part of Serbia. But it is clear that it cannot withstand the pressure for long. That will be a political loss within the country. A significant portion of the electorate has nationalistic inclinations will not approve of the “betrayal of the brother Serbs.”
The Kremlin has an asymmetrical response ready for that too. As Putin has repeatedly stated, recognition of the independence of Kosovo, that is, the recognition of the rights of a nation to self-determination over the principle of territorial integrity, opens the way to acknowledgment of other unrecognized states.
The CFE is a stumbling block exactly for that. Limitations on flanking countries and the possibility of transferring quotas among member states creates the possibility of a radical shift in the military balance in Europe as a whole and in its most critical spots. If Bulgaria or Romania, which cannot even hypothetically be subject to Russian attack, transfer their quota to Moldova or Georgia, and Russia cannot respond by increasing its contingent because of the treaty, the likelihood of a forcible solution to the problems of Transdniestria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in favor of Tbilisi and Chisinau increases tremendously.
Moscow cannot allow that to take place. It would undermine confidence in the country's leadership at home and put an end to Russia's pretensions to rebirth as a great power or even leadership in the former Soviet Union. That means that Moscow is going to renounce the CFE sooner or later.
Preparations for that are being stepped up. The day after the beginning of the Vienna conference, the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, issued a statement saying that the CFE does not meet the interests of stability in Europe, the treaty's viability and effectiveness have passed and its further existence is subject to question. Regardless of what the Russian delegation did, it was obvious that, since Russia's claims to influence in the former USSR will not go away, the Vienna conference would not solve anything.
The History of the CFE
The Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact has changed beyond recognition since it was signed in Paris on November 19, 1990, between the 16 NATO countries and 6 Warsaw Pact countries.
The signatories were obliged to cut down their military hardware in Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains, including the European part of Turkey, within 40 months. The limit for both blocs was 20,000 tanks, 30,000 armored vehicles, 20,000 artillery systems, 6800 fighter planes and 2000 military helicopters.
One of the main goals of the CFE was to make large-scale aggressive operations impossible by making it impossible to concentrate strike weapons in one place. For that purpose, limits were placed on the quantity of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery in four zones. In particular, each side was allowed more than 4700 tanks, 5900 armored vehicles and 6000 artillery systems in the flanking countries (Bulgaria and Romania and the Transcaucasian, Leningrad, North Caucasus and Odessa Military Districts of the USSR for the Warsaw Pact and Greece, Iceland, Norway and Turkey for NATO).
After the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet quota had to be divided among the new independence states. On May 15, 1992, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Ukraine signed an agreement in Tashkent on the principles and procedures for fulfilling the CFE. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania did not participate in the agreement. Russia took on the obligation to have no more than 6350 tanks, 11,280 armored vehicles, 6315 artillery systems, 3416 fighter planes and 855 military helicopters in the CFE zone. The CFE was ratified by all its signatory states on November 9, 1992, and its conditions met. By 1995, the parties had taken 60,000 pieces of military hardware out of service.
Problems with the conditions of the treaty arose at the time for Russia in the flank zone in the Leningrad and North Caucasus Military Districts. Russia was allowed 700 tanks, 580 armored vehicles and 1280 artillery systems. In reality, it had much more military hardware there, in part because of the military operation in Chechnya. As a result, the flank zones were reconsidered at Russia's insistence. Pskov, Volgograd and Astrakhan Regions, the eastern part of Rostov Region and the corridor in the south of Krasnodar Territory was excluded from the zones.
By the end of the 1990s, geopolitical conditions had changed in Europe. A number of the one-time members of the Warsaw Pact had joined NATO and the existing limits on military hardware lost their meaning. On November 19, 1999, 30 countries (the NATO and Tashkent Agreement member states, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia) signed an agreement adapting the CFE. That agreement introduced national and territorial limits in place of the quota system. The territorial limits allowed for the placement of other countries' military hardware on the territory of sovereign states within agreed limits.
The maximum number of weapons in the European part of remained the same as established under the Tashkent Agreement. In addition, the flank limits for the Russian Federation was set at 1300 tanks, 2140 armored vehicles and 1680 artillery systems. Russia was also obliged to withdraw its excess forces from Georgia and Moldova. The total NATO quota at the time of the signing was 19,096 tanks, 31,787 armored vehicles, 19,529 artillery systems, 7273 planes and 2282 helicopters. (Those numbers today are 22,424, 36,570, 23,137, 8038 and 2509, respectively.)
The Baltic states and Slovenia did not sign the adapted agreement. It will be necessary for all the original signatory states to ratify the agreement for them to join it.
At present, the adapted CFE has been ratified by Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. Georgia and Moldova are refusing to ratify it until all Russian forces are withdrawn from their territories. Russia is in no hurry to relocate its forces, citing the fulfillment of flank quotas and the lack of a concrete agreement on their withdrawal. Russian politicians also speak of a disproportion arising. The total quota for the 22 NATO signatory states exceeds that of the remaining eight countries 1.8 times for armored vehicles and artillery systems, 1.7 times for tanks and helicopters and 1.6 times for planes.
On April 26, 2007, Putin announced during his address to the Federal Assembly that it would be expedient for Russia to declare a moratorium on the fulfillment of the CFE “until all the NATO countries without exception ratify it.”
Alexander Kukolevsky
“The U.S. Missile Defense System Poses No Threat to Russia”
Andrey Ionin, an expert at the Center for the Analysis of Strategy and Technology, talked to Vlast analytical weekly about possible asymmetrical responses to the American missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
The Russian leadership is always talking about an “asymmetrical response” to the placement of the American missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. What's that about?
The political aspect of the placement of an American missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic is obvious. It is not just a matter of anti-Russian sentiments in those countries. Most of all, it is a show of loyalty to the West and to the U.S. in particular. That is the only serious political resource the Eastern European countries have, and they are trying to take maximal advantage of it. They know very well that they are most interesting to the U.S. because of their geopolitical situation. The military aspects of the missile system are less straightforward. Even though the plan provoked a huge, incomprehensible response in the Russian media, in its present form, the plan does not pose a threat to Russia's defense capabilities.
As for possible responses, Russia's concern is to maintain its strategic nuclear potential at a level that guarantees it the ability to strike the U.S. or its allies in spite of any missile defense system.
Let's leave the purely military issues aside and concentrate on the political. What will Russia do in that arena?
On the purely political level, Russia has no influence over the U.S. or its Eastern European satellites. In political and military relations, possible asymmetrical Russian responses are meant show the West, and particularly the U.S., that the missile defense system will seriously affect relations with Russia and undermine its own security, and not only in nuclear matters.
The Russian decision to freeze the CFE and possibly withdraw from it is one step in that direction. The CFE, signed in 1990, was inequitable toward our side from the very beginning and was seen by the West as a means of undermining Soviet military power in Europe. The expansion of NATO in former Warsaw Pact countries ad the Baltic states made the treaty completely meaningless. Rejecting the CFE would mean that Russia would have a free hand with conventional weaponry.
Another possible step would be Russia's withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty on mid- and short-range missiles. Although that decision would be controversial, it is clear that even limited deployment of the missiles banned under that treaty, that is, those with a range of 500 to 5500 km. (such as the R-500 land-based cruise missile that was recently tested as part of the Iskander-K complex), could create a serious threat to the Eastern European states that are so eager for their territory to be used by the Americans.
Isn't President Putin's proposal for joint use of the Gabala radar station an asymmetrical response?
In essence, it is. It is known that the best conditions for interception are at the beginning of a missile's flight. The U.S. has every chance of doing that, since Iran is surround on practically all sides by the most modern American forces: in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey. The Gabala radar station would close the circle around Iran completely and bring the likelihood of intercepting a hypothetical Iranian missile at the beginning of its flight to 100 percent, using inexpensive antimissile complexes that already exist.
The Russian president seized the initiative quite successfully with the Gabala proposal. Before the question was whether Russia trusted the U.S. to act unilaterally with a European missile defense system. Now the question is whether the U.S. is ready to trust Russia and create collective missile defense to protect not a single country or group of countries, but all the world's countries, from nuclear attack from any side. If that proposal is rejected without good reason, the real motives of the U.S. for the establishment of missile defense will be clear to all of Europe and the world, and not just Russia.
Quotas and the Real Presence of Military Hardware in the CFE Area
| Country | Tanks | Armored Vehicles | Artillery Systems | Military Airplanes |
Military Helicopters |
|---|
| *Present | **Limit | *Present | **Limit | *Present | **Limit | *Present | **Limit | *Present |
**Limit | *Present |
| Armenia | 220 | 110 | 220 | 140 | 285 | 229 | 100 | 16 | 50 | 8 | | Azerbaijan | 220 | 217 | 220 | 185 | 285 | 260 | 100 | 62 | 50 | 15 | | Belarus | 1800 | 1525 | 2600 | 2341 | 1615 | 1442 | 294 | 176 | 80 | 22 | | Belgium | 300 | 141 | 989 | 543 | 288 | 182 | 209 | 101 | 46 | 46 | | Bulgaria | 1475 | 1351 | 2000 | 1871 | 1750 | 1607 | 235 | 204 | 67 | 20 | | Canada | 77 | 0 | 263 | 0 | 32 | 0 | 90 | 0 | 13 | 0 |
| The Czech Republic | 795 | 244 | 1252 | 640 | 657 | 326 | 230 | 85 | 50 | 35 | | Denmark | 335 | 187 | 336 | 276 | 446 | 256 | 82 | 62 | 18 | 8 | | France | 1226 | 1049 | 3700 | 2993 | 1192 | 718 | 800 | 476 | 374 | 257 | | Georgia | 220 | 129 | 220 | 204 | 285 | 152 | 100 | 9 | 50 | 7 | | Germany | 3444 | 2150 | 3281 | 2403 | 2255 | 1391 | 765 | 382 | 280 | 196 |
| Great Britain | 843 | 373 | 3017 | 2117 | 583 | 413 | 855 | 501 | 350 | 276 | | Greece | 1735 | 1674 | 2498 | 2252 | 1920 | 1872 | 650 | 557 | 65 | 20 | | Hungary | 835 | 158 | 1700 | 1138 | 840 | 709 | 180 | 77 | 108 | 45 | | Iceland | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | Italy | 1267 | 1205 | 3172 | 3159 | 1818 | 1509 | 618 | 457 | 142 | 127 | | Kazakhstan*** | 50 | – | 200 | – | 100 | – | 15 | – | 20 | – | | Luxembourg | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | Moldova | 210 | 0 | 210 | 178 | 250 | 148 | 50 | 0 | 50 | 0 |
| The Netherlands | 520 | 298 | 864 | 680 | 485 | 298 | 230 | 143 | 50 | 21 | | Norway | 170 | 165 | 275 | 228 | 491 | 66 | 100 | 57 | 24 | 0 | | Poland | 1730 | 969 | 2150 | 1374 | 1610 | 1096 | 460 | 125 | 130 | 99 | | Portugal | 300 | 187 | 430 | 347 | 450 | 377 | 160 | 104 | 26 | 0 | | Romania | 1375 | 1254 | 2100 | 1806 | 1475 | 1178 | 430 | 102 | 120 | 32 | | Russia | 6350 | 4882 | 11280 | 9126 | 6315 | 5754 | 3416 | 2095 | 855 | 438 | | Slovakia | 478 | 263 | 683 | 517 | 383 | 363 | 100 | 46 | 40 | 18 | | Spain | 750 | 513 | 1588 | 997 | 1276 | 913 | 310 | 168 | 80 | 28 | | Turkey | 2795 | 2194 | 3120 | 2972 | 3523 | 3129 | 750 | 343 | 130 | 28 | | Ukraine | 4080 | 3138 | 5050 | 4290 | 4040 | 3437 | 1090 | 578 | 330 | 182 |
| The United States | 1812 | 317 | 3037 | 912 | 1553 | 224 | 784 | 209 | 396 | 43 |
*National quota under the adapted CFE
**As of January 1, 2006
***No data on the zone that falls under the CFE |
All the Article in Russian as of June 18, 2007
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