A new start for the Vienna Document
Last December at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Athens, foreign ministers called on the Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC) to explore ways to strengthen current arms control agreements and confidence-and security building measures (CSBMs), including the Vienna Document 1999. In the same decision, they asked the FSC to contribute to improving OSCE crisis management procedures and mechanisms.
The FSC has set about this task with vigorous and serious discussion. On 19 May 2010, it adopted a decision to launch an incremental process of regularly revising the Vienna Document 1999 while maintaining the continued functioning of the existing document until its replacement by an agreed modified version. On 29 September, the FSC decided to focus as a matter of priority on Chapter V, which treats prior notification of certain military activities, and Chapter IX, on compliance and verification.
With these developments, the OSCE participating States are finally beginning to fulfil their commitment, already enshrined in the Charter for European Security adopted at the 1999 Istanbul Summit, to “seek the timely adaptation” of the Vienna Document 1999 and other FSC documents (paragraph 30). In the eleven intervening years, the political will to fulfil this commitment has been lacking in the OSCE. Now that a new impetus has been given to strengthening the Vienna Document, it seems timely to recall the basic functions and undiminished relevance of the most important security- and confidence-building document within the OSCE’s politico-military dimension of security.
The Vienna Document’s significance
Ever since détente began to thaw the Cold War freeze in Europe, arms control and confidence-building agreements have played a crucial role in overcoming suspicion and distrust among States. They have provided a framework of politico-military stability and strategic reassurances, which – together with political agreements – have allowed for a historical change of paradigm from all-out confrontation through peaceful co-existence to full-scale political and security co-operation.
In the late 1980s, NATO and Warsaw Pact countries negotiated the CFE Treaty, which aimed at numerical parity of land-based conventional forces in Europe at lower levels. The objective was to abolish military capabilities for launching surprise attacks or large-scale offensive operations. This necessitated not only asymmetric reductions but also the creation of a “dynamic balance of forces” providing for regional and sub-regional limitations, in order to scale down concentrations of opposing military forces at former frontlines, ensure geographical distances between them and prevent their rapid redeployment.
In this context, all of the CSCE participating States felt an urgent need to prevent the periodic large-scale deployment of military forces during military exercises of the two alliances from being used for surprise attacks or large-scale military offensive operations on short notice. The aim was early warning, transparency and limitation of unusual military activities rather than geographical limitation of military holdings. Herein lie the origins of the Vienna Document.
Participating States adopted the first Vienna Document in 1990. It built on CSBMs agreed previously, in Helsinki in 1975 and in Stockholm in 1986. The Helsinki Final Act already contained a provision which required early notification of military exercises involving 25,000 or more military personnel, with an optional observation clause. At the CSBM conference held in Stockholm in 1986, further measures were agreed that still form the core of the Vienna Document’s early warning function: prior notification and observation of military exercises and unusual military activities, annual calendars and constraining provisions, strengthened by verification measures.
The Vienna Document 1990 added important new provisions: an annual information exchange on force structures and major weapon holdings, including verification; a set of military contacts; a communication system; an annual implementation assessment meeting and a risk reduction mechanism for de-escalation in case of unusual military activities and incidents.
The culture of openness, mutual trust and co-operation established by this document served both long- and short-term goals. The transparency it provided on force structures, major weapon holdings, introduction of new equipment and defence planning made it possible to predict long-term development of military capabilities. Its requirements for prior notification of certain military activities and constraints on large-scale military exercises entailed the potential to make short-term build-up of military offensive options transparent.
The culture of openness, mutual trust and co-operation established by this document served both long- and short-term goals.
During the precarious transition that took place in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, the CFE Treaty and the Vienna Document were an anchor of stability. After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, CFE rules were applied for the division of its military heritage among the successor states, and eight of these, which had territory in the area of application, acceded to the CFE Treaty in 1992. During the war in the former Yugoslavia, powers in Europe refrained from exploiting the crisis for geo-strategic competition and instead, France, Germany, Italy, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States formed the “contact group” to search for a peaceful solution. The CFE Treaty and the Vienna Document were used as blueprints for the stabilizing Article II and Article IV Agreements following the Dayton Peace Accord. All successor States joined the CSCE (OSCE) and adhered to the agreed CSBMs.
It is doubtful whether such joint action would have been possible without the restrictions of military options and political ambitions secured by the provisions of these arms control and confidence-building agreements. The Vienna Document became particularly important as a tool of transparency and early warning belonging to all OSCE participating States, and it has been implemented and modified despite the continued existence of unresolved territorial disputes, which has constituted a major obstacle in the way of further progress on the adapted CFE Treaty.
Past modifications of the Vienna Document
The changes in the OSCE area’s politico-military landscape challenged the conceptual foundations of these key arms control and confidence-building agreements, however. Especially the CFE Treaty, with its bipolar structure and numerical parity concept, was geared to stabilizing a bloc-to-bloc confrontation that had become obsolete. The Vienna Document, with its multi-polar structure and inclusive OSCE membership, its lack of limitations of military holdings and its non-legally binding nature, seemed better adaptable to these changes, all the more as it did not require lengthy ratification processes. Consequently, the Vienna Document was modified three times between 1990 and 1999.
In 1992, it was updated to take account of the fifteen new participating States on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Lower thresholds for observation of military exercises were defined, which to some degree reflected smaller sizes of divided and restructured forces. In addition, more detailed provisions for verification were incorporated.
In 1994, after the collapse of former Yugoslavia, participating States modified the document again, adding additional parameters for prior notification and observation.
At the 1999 OSCE Summit in Istanbul, political preparations for NATO’s enlargement, overshadowed by renewed crises over Kosovo and in the North Caucasus, triggered the adaptations of three major European security documents. All three were included in the Summit’s final document: the Charter for European Security (a follow-up to the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe); the Agreement on Adaptation of the CFE Treaty and the Vienna Document 1999.
The Vienna Document 1999 included a chapter on regional measures, which was a response to sub-regional conflict. Also, a new chapter on defence planning aimed to improve long-term predictability of military developments.
The need to update the Vienna Document 1999
In contrast to the frequent modifications in the 1990s, and in spite of the pledges given in Istanbul, the Vienna Document has not been updated since 1999. New threats and challenges have emerged; unresolved territorial conflicts, recurrent violence and military action have created new distrust; and further enlargement of NATO and the EU have changed the political landscape in Europe. While the general trend of force reductions in Europe has persisted, there has been a sharp increase of major weapon holdings in the Caucasus area. At force levels which would have been assessed “minor” in Cold War times, a war was fought. One might legitimately ask why the Vienna Document 1999 and other CSBMs have not played their expected role in early warning and conflict prevention during recent conflicts.
All of these changes suggest that, if the Vienna Document is to keep its relevance to maintaining the culture of transparency and predictability as well as early warning and crisis prevention, further modifications are overdue. The following are just a few considerations in this regard.
In Chapter V, “Prior notification and observation of certain military activities”, the threshold values for prior notification and observation of military exercises and unusual force deployments still reflect the past bloc-to-bloc confrontation. In Cold War times, a force deployment exceeding the size of an army corps or at least a division was deemed “significant”. Today, national military holdings have become smaller and often do not even reach these thresholds. Yet, in the context of territorial disputes, they obviously are still too high to ensure stability. Dangerous force deployments that preceded the August 2008 war did not even require the invitation of observers, according to Vienna Document 1999 provisions.
Similarly, manpower and hardware involved in modern exercises normally do not exceed Vienna Document 1999 threshold values for notification. Consequently, there is less transparency with respect to routine military activities. Yet, given the higher efficiency of forces through net-based and multinational operations, which can take place simultaneously on the territories of several participating States, they are not militarily insignificant.
An adaptation of the provisions of Chapter V of the Vienna Document therefore seems necessary. As an example, one could consider personnel and equipment figures equivalent to the level of a reinforced brigade for prior notification and observation.
Regarding Chapter IX, “Compliance and verification”, the number of evaluation visits to participating States has declined sharply. This is due to the fact that smaller States have emerged and forces have been reduced, while the Vienna Document 1999’s quota for visits – a minimum of one visit per 60 units a year – has remained unchanged. This in itself means a loss of the culture of transparency.
The number of inspections is similarly low. A participating State is obliged to accept only three per calendar year. That means that after the usual run on inspections at the beginning of the year, there is no more possibility for observation of military activities during the rest of the year, since they rarely exceed the current high threshold values for required observation of certain military activities under Chapter V.
Lower force levels have also led to a wider geographical distribution of units, which therefore cannot be easily visited by the rather small number of inspectors during defined time limits.
Increasing the number of evaluation visits and raising the inspection quota, their reasonable distribution over the calendar year, extending the time available for evaluation and inspection and providing for a higher number of inspectors allowing for two sub-teams to work in parallel could help to improve the situation.
Conclusion
Several valuable proposals for modifying the Vienna Document 1999, with an emphasis on Chapters V and IX, have been tabled in the FSC by participating States and are currently under consideration. As consensus is reached on individual “packages” of provisions, they will supersede the relevant sections of the current version of the document. In future, more areas requiring modification might be tackled in line with the ground-breaking FSC decisions of 2010. Special attention might be given to crisis prevention and crisis management.
The renewed determination among participating States to improve the key document on security and confidence-building across the entire OSCE area indicates a significant change of climate and a general political will to work constructively on promoting the OSCE’s politico-military security dimension. The Vienna Document 1999 is likely to become an important topic during the OSCE Summit in Astana. The Summit Declaration might take note of this positive development and encourage further deliberations and consensus building which could conceivably lead to the replacement of the current Vienna Document 1999 by an updated version - perhaps a “Vienna Document 2011”.