Security Community Issue 1/2016
Early Confidence- and Security-Building Measures of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
In the current context of geopolitical tension in the OSCE region, the measures for military security co-operation adopted during the Cold War by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE – predecessor of the OSCE) hold some useful lessons.
During the past decade, the security acquis of the OSCE has deteriorated, with the cornerstone of European conventional arms control, the 1992 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, unraveling and no replacement in sight. Instead, a new sense of geopolitical competition has developed, emanating from growing crisis potentials and new security challenges, in particular the crisis in and around the Ukraine.
These developments have changed the European security landscape and called into question fundamental principles of Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security co-operation. They have also led a number of participating States to believe that enhanced deterrence and defense measures are needed to counter perceived threats against their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Indeed, during the past two years the number of close-border overflights, army exercises and fleet maneuvers reached a level in terms of number and size unknown since the end of the Cold War. Against this backdrop, it might be worth recalling that even at the height of bloc confrontation in Europe in the 1960s, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held that détente, coupled with the offer of security co-operation, should complement deterrence, as recommended in its “Harmel Report” of December 1967.
This attitude, matched by the Soviet Union’s declared objective of ensuring “peaceful coexistence” between different political and ideological systems, provided the basis for the convening of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki in 1973. Thirty-five states – members of one or the other military bloc or neutral and non-aligned states – participated. The road to Helsinki was paved by a number of bilateral agreements between West Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, the two German states’ accession to the United Nations and the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) by the Soviet Union and the United States and the initiation of the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction talks on conventional arms control in Central Europe.
The conference ended in 1975 with the adoption of the Helsinki Final Act, which specified a wide range of measures for co-operation, grouped into three main “baskets”: security; economic and technological cooperation and humanitarian and other issues. The first basket contained not only ten principles guiding relations between states (interpreting existing international law as to their concrete meaning and application in a divided Europe) but also a set of military confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs).
Helsinki measures
While the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction talks concerned NATO and Warsaw Pact member states only, the CSBMs contained in the Helsinki Final Act took account of the risk perceptions of all 35 CSCE participating States. The measures responded to concerns that recurrent large-scale military exercises and force movements could be used for launching surprise attacks or preparing for largescale offensive operations on short notice. A provision was agreed requiring prior notification of military exercises involving 25,000 or more troops (including amphibious and airborne troops), with an optional observation clause. The notification was to be given no later than 21 days prior to the beginning of the exercise, with an exception made for short-notice snap exercises, which had to be announced as early as possible. For airborne or seaborne (amphibious) operations, it was suggested that the levels required for notification should be significantly lower, but they were left unspecified.
These provisions referred to personnel strength; the Helsinki Final Act did not include any thresholds for armaments or equipment. However, participating States were encouraged to provide additional relevant information on the exercises, such as their purpose, number and components of troops involved, schedule, timeframe and geographical areas covered. The Helsinki CSBMs took account of the particular political sensitivity and operational relevance of unusual military activities in border areas.
For smaller maneuvers involving fewer than 25,000 personnel but taking place in close vicinity to other participating States, notification was also advised. For a participating State with territory extending beyond the European continent, the Helsinki CSBMs only applied within 250 km from the border with a European participating State. While the exchange of observers and additional contacts such as mutual visits of military delegations were not mandatory under the Helsinki Final Act, they were advised and the principle of reciprocity underlined. Moreover, the CSCE envisaged that the experience made with the initial application of the measures agreed in Helsinki could lead to the development of further more detailed provisions.
Limited implementation
Unfortunately, the political climate worsened in the years following the adoption of the Helsinki Final Act. The crisis regarding the fielding of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe approached its nadir; the Soviet Union deployed forces to Afghanistan; martial law was introduced in Poland; and progress in the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction talks was blocked. In addition, sharp differences in the interpretation of the Helsinki Final Act, particularly regarding human rights and fundamental freedoms, deepened mutual distrust. For more than a decade after the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, therefore, its CSBMs were implemented in a limited and selective manner only. Seventy-two large-scale maneuvers were notified between 1975 and 1986, of which 47 were observed, though under narrowly defined restrictions.1 In addition, 53 smaller exercises were notified during this period, of which 19 were observed. 2 No tangible progress on the development of new CSBMs was possible during the CSCE follow-up conferences in Belgrade (1977-1978) and Madrid (1980-1983). In Madrid, participating States did, however, agree to convene a conference in Stockholm in January, 1984, to promote the implementation and further development of CSBMs.
The negotiations at the Stockholm conference received an unexpected boost when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began to revise the policies of the Soviet Union towards reform. This led to mutual signals of détente, including offers of compromise on conventional arms control and intermediate- and medium-range ballistic missiles. In Stockholm, the CSCE participating States succeeded in 1986 in adopting a package of revised CSBMs, enumerated in the Stockholm Document, which still today form the core of the early warning function of the Vienna Document which succeeded it: prior notification and observation of military exercises and unusual military activities; annual calendars and constraining provisions, strengthened by verification measures. The Madrid mandate for the Stockholm Conference specified that the area of application for new CSBMs should cover the whole of Europe as well as the adjoining air space and sea area, which was understood to also cover ocean areas adjoining Europe. This last specification was new as compared to the Helsinki CSBMs. In the adjoining sea area and air space, CSBMs would be applicable to military activities of all the participating States only when these affected security in Europe and constituted a part of their notifiable activities within the whole of Europe.
The Stockholm Document
The negotiations at the Stockholm conference received an unexpected boost when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began to revise the policies of the Soviet Union towards reform. This led to mutual signals of détente, including offers of compromise on conventional arms control and intermediate- and medium-range ballistic missiles. In Stockholm, the CSCE participating States succeeded in 1986 in adopting a package of revised CSBMs, enumerated in the Stockholm Document, which still today form the core of the early warning function of the Vienna Document which succeeded it: prior notification and observation of military exercises and unusual military activities; annual calendars and constraining provisions, strengthened by verification measures.
The Madrid mandate for the Stockholm Conference specified that the area of application for new CSBMs should cover the whole of Europe as well as the adjoining air space and sea area, which was understood to also cover ocean areas adjoining Europe. This last specification was new as compared to the Helsinki CSBMs. In the adjoining sea area and air space, CSBMs would be applicable to military activities of all the participating States only when these affected security in Europe and constituted a part of their notifiable activities within the whole of Europe.
The advance notice required for certain military activities was increased in the Stockholm Document from the 21 days specified in the Helsinki Final Act to 42 days. Again, an exception was made for snap exercises: they were to be announced at the time when the troops involved commenced such activities. The Helsinki threshold of 25,0000 troops engaged in such activities was reduced to 13,000 if they were involved in the same exercise, conducted under a single operational command and organized into a divisional structure or at least two brigades/regiments. These troops (now termed “land forces”) were defined to include not only army, amphibious and airborne but also airmobile forces. Also, an additional threshold of 300 battle tanks was introduced. Smaller exercises had to be notified as well if amphibious landings or parachute drops involved at least 3,000 troops. For the first time, the
participation of air forces had to be included in the notification if, in the course of the activity, 200 or more sorties by aircraft (excluding helicopters) were going to be flown.
The information to be included in notifications was spelled out in detail: designation and general purpose of the activity; names of the states involved, level of command, start and end dates, types and total number of troops, divisions, amphibious landings, parachute assaults and major weapon systems participating (including battle tanks, mounted anti-tank guided missile launchers, artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers of 100 mm calibre or above, helicopters and envisaged sorties by aircraft and naval ship-to-shore gunfire). With regard to multinational exercises, the Stockholm Document stipulated that the host country on whose territory the activity took place had to notify the exercise if the combined number of various national forces exceeded the thresholds, even if national contributions stayed below the notifiable level. Also, the arrival of significant forces transferred from outside the zone of CSBM application to within the zone or from inside the zone to points of concentration in the zone had to be notified.These provisions ensured the transparency of military reinforcements arriving from outside of Europe or of significant operational reserves being transferred within the zone of application.
The rather vague recommendations for the observation of unusual military activities in the Helsinki Final Act were replaced in the Stockholm Document by concrete provisions. Participating States were required to invite observers from all other participating States to notifiable exercises and force concentrations whenever the numbers of troops involved met or exceeded 17,000 personnel. For amphibious landings or parachute assaults, the thresholds were set at 5,000 troops engaged. Each participating State had the right to dispatch two observers. Their mission was to confirm that the military activity was not threatening in character. To that end, they were entitled to use appropriate maps and observation equipment, receive daily briefings about the developing situation and the daily schedule, visit geographical key positions in the area of operations and get in contact with commanders and troops of major combat units. In the case of snap exercises, inviting observers was mandatory only if their duration exceeded 72 hours.
Another new element of the Stockholm Document was the requirement that participating States provide an annual calendar by 15 November of each year for notifiable activities during the following calendar year, together with detailed information on the dates, general characteristics, purpose, size and duration as well as number and type of troops engaged. In addition, constraining provisions were included: planned military activities involving 40,000 troops or more had to be communicated for the second subsequent calendar year together with the pertinent information, and no military activities involving more than 75,000 troops were to take place unless they had been the object of such communication; participating States would not launch military activities involving more than 40,000 troops unless they had been included in the annual calendar. These provisions ensured that snap exercises exceeding such thresholds were not allowed without prior long-term information and thus sought to prevent the development of scenarios which could be used for surprise attacks.
As a further confidence-building measure in cases in which compliance was in doubt, participating States were given the right to conduct challenge inspections on the territory of other participating States within the zone of application. No state, however, was required to accept more than three inspections on its territory per calendar year. Inspection requests had to specify the area where a notifiable military activity was believed to be taking place, and the specified area was not to exceed that required for an army-level military activity. The inspected state had to grant unhindered access to inspectors, except for sensitive points or small restricted areas such as defense installations, military vehicles, aircraft or vessels. Responses to inspection requests had to be given within 24 hours. The inspection team was to be received within 36 hours at the latest, at a point of entry as close as possible to the specified area, and was to be granted the right to inspect for a maximum of 48 hours, on the ground or from the air or both.
The final section of the Stockholm Document contained an explicit reference to the implementation of the CSBMs, emphasizing the contribution that it would make to reducing the dangers of armed conflict and of misunderstanding or miscalculation of military activities.
Follow-up
By the time the conference in Stockholm ended, détente was making rapid progress. In May, 1987, the Warsaw Pact announced a change in its military doctrine towards a defensive strategy. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States was signed in December of that year. A new mandate for negotiating conventional arms control was agreed in January 1989, leading to the conclusion of the CFE Treaty the following year. The first mutual observations under the Stockholm Document were carried out in Central Europe in 1987. The results were encouraging: compliance with the Stockholm provisions could be confirmed and the first professional militaryto- military contacts helped to develop mutual trust. In early 1989, at the Vienna CSCE follow-up conference, participating States decided to continue negotiations on strengthening the
Stockholm CSBMs. The deliberations took place in Vienna and resulted in the Vienna Document 1990. It was the first in a series of Vienna Documents, the latest being the Vienna Document 2011, which incorporates the OSCE’s current CSBMs.
Lessons learned
The early CSBMs of the CSCE, as contained in the Helsinki Final Act and the Stockholm Document, focused on unusual military activities and provided for early information, notification and verification. Although they were based on threshold values that corresponded to the high quantity of armaments and large military bloc capabilities which existed up to 1991, the principles applied for introducing and implementing them could still be of value in our time and deserve due consideration.
(1) The early CSBMs could be enhanced and implemented once a general understanding about détente was in place, together with the political will to promote open dialogue and co-operative security based on common norms and reciprocal restraint commitments. Also today, a co-operative security environment would be conducive to further developing CSBMs in order to increase transparency and trust.
(2) Reciprocal restraint can best be attained through conventional arms control aiming at concrete limitations of offensive military capabilities. Therefore, in parallel to the early CSCE deliberations on CSBMs, conventional arms control was pursued with a focus on the key armaments needed to conduct offensive combined warfare operations. Also today, revitalizing conventional arms control would have a positive effect on the prospects for the OSCE’s endeavors to enhance transparency.
(3) Early CSBMs were militarily relevant because they responded to realistic scenarios and predominant risk perceptions. Special attention was devoted to unusual military activities, particularly in border areas. Such a focus is still valid today. However, threshold values for multinational observations and quota for inspections need to be adapted to the realities of present-day Europe.
Colonel (ret.) Wolfgang Richter is a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) in Berlin. He was head of the military component of and senior military advisor to the Permanent Mission of Germany to the OSCE from 2005 to 2009.