The Future Of Conventional Arms Control In Europe

This study is an attempt to examine the political, military and technical issues as well as the opportunities and pitfalls associated with conventional arms control in Europe, providing a short outline of the developments that have led to the renewed interest in conventional arms control since 1985.

This title was first published in 2000: The aim of this text is to explore conventional arms control in Europe. The early chapters provide a primarily historical perspective, looking at the context, foundations, main provisions and institutional structure of the main agreements. The later chapters explore the continuing and likely future roles of the OSCE and NATO in the arms control process. The final chapters examine more contemporary developments by looking at the Adapted CFE Treaty and Vienna Documents agreed at the OSCE Istanbul Summit in November 1998 and the challenges posed to existing arrangements by the changing and emergent security threats that potentially face Europe.

This book is an outcome of the conference on 'Arms Control and Conventional Defense in Europe' held in West Berlin in 1987. The discussion in the conference led to several conclusions regarding the prospects for conventional arms control.

RAND's research effort to provide analytic support over the past two years to the Office of Non-Nuclear Arms Control, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has ranged widely. First, it aided preparation for the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) Implementation Review Conference held in May 1996 and, more recently, reinforced U.S. negotiations in the CFE Adaptation Talks. Over the ensuing months, the project has explored U.S. negotiating options and the consequences associated with potential new foreign arms control proposals. This report is a record of our analytic support. The report describes the main activities and involvements of the project. It features two principal chapters, one dealing with the big questions about the future of CFE and one that describes more-technical details and modeling of arms control pacts. A final chapter suggests what can be learned from the past two years of arms control support and offers some brief recommendations for the United States' conventional arms control agenda. The author counsels in this report against undertaking additional pan-European conventional arms control initiatives. To the extent that arms control will be useful in the near future, it will involve more-local agreements tailored specifically to address grievances among neighbors. Unless circumstances alter dramatically, Europe-wide negotiations will make little sense, especially in the face of NATO enlargement, for which, presumably, allies will not negotiate arms control pacts with each other.

This book analyzes the military situation in Europe and the contending views about the military balance and important military variables there. It provides very useful insights into what has often been a confusing debate about the true state of the military situation.