Revitalizing Arms Control

Eroding arms control, snap military exercises and close military encounters: these are dangerous developments bringing uncertainty to the European security landscape.

The OSCE Security Day hosted by Secretary General Lamberto Zannier in Vienna on 3 October provided impetus for the urgently needed inclusive dialogue on these matters. OSCE delegates and security experts generated concrete proposals for preventing and managing military incidents, strengthening multilateral crisis response and reducing risk. They also elaborated on Chairperson-in-Office Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s recent call for revitalized arms control in Europe.

Patricia Flor

Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control of the German Federal Government

Start a structured dialogue

“I heard many voices saying that security in Europe today is not in good shape. We have hybrid conflicts; we have close military encounters; we have large snap exercises which come as a surprise to others. So we have to do something about the security environment in Europe. And I heard many point out what that means: working on updating the Vienna Document, which is about confidence building, transparency, doing inspections, and working on modernizing the regime of the Open Skies Treaty, which allows member states to overfly territory of others, and thus gain a picture of what’s happening there. But it also means looking at the tools of conventional arms control with this question: how do we need to adapt them to today’s challenges?

We have to start by looking at threat perceptions, the fears people have, the security perspectives they bring to the table. Minister Steinmeier’s proposal is to start a structured dialogue about exactly these issues.

Conventional arms control means that you try in a mutually binding agreed framework to limit your military capabilities. You agree that at some stage it doesn’t make sense to always increase what you can do, more weapons, more tanks, more military weaponry. We need to find a common area of interest in Europe, where everyone can say: let’s agree on certain rules, on certain arrangements, on certain limitations, ceilings, transparency and verification measures. At the end of the day, we believe, that will increase security in Europe for all of us. But it’s going to be difficult.”

Alexander Grushko

Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to NATO

It is necessary to talk

“Today we had a frank exchange on instruments we should use to improve the current tense security situation, addressing specific military concerns that have resulted from intensified military activities in different parts of the European continent. In our view these discussions are very important. It is also necessary to talk about the need to reverse the very negative general trend in European security. NATO’s military activity on its eastern flank, the conversion of the Baltic region into an area of military competition, have seriously damaged the situation. It is not enough to look only at the instruments enshrined in the Vienna Document; we expect a complete reversal of NATO’s policy. I do believe that the OSCE is the proper forum – everybody is on an equal footing, every delegation can raise any issue, the OSCE has a lot of relevant tools and instruments.

European arms control is like a fallen bicycle. When you have a process based on legally binding instruments, with all the necessary formats for addressing specific issues, it’s easy to build on it. But the machinery of arms control in Europe has stopped, because NATO countries failed to ratify the adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which Russia did in 2004. The old CFE Treaty is not relevant anymore and the adapted version is outdated. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Germany came to the conclusion that the time was ripe to re-launch fundamental discussions on the role of arms control in the new security environment in Europe.

For many years, security in the central part of Europe was based on restraint. We were working on a strategic partnership with the European Union, building constructive relations with NATO helping ISAF in Afghanistan, for example. The biggest ever project in countering drug trafficking from Afghanistan was implemented under the auspices of the NATO-Russia Council; jointly we trained more than 4,000 officers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian countries.

Today the situation has changed drastically. NATO has suspended all concrete projects of co-operation. Some expert reports claim that Russia has refrained from invading the Baltic States only because NATO took the decision to deploy battalions there. If that is the perception, then it is a gross misperception. However, the real problem is that the military planning is based on such misperceptions.”

Alexander Vershbow

Deputy Secretary General of NATO

We have conflicting visions

“As long as Russia is not ready to back away from its aggression against its sovereign neighbor Ukraine, the suspension of practical co-operation that’s been in place in recent years in the NATO-Russia framework will remain. The implementation of the Minsk Agreements would be one step away from the current impasse. But Crimea will still be illegally annexed, and that won’t be solved overnight – it might take years, even decades.

However, we are still talking to the Russians in Brussels. Transparency and risk reduction has been one of our priorities – at least to identify ways to pull back from the brink. Issues would then have to be sent to the appropriate forums for actual negotiations, and the OSCE is the number one on our list.

Air safety is another issue where there may be some encouraging signs, building on the work of the Baltic Sea states, including Russia, to strengthen predictability in management of civil-military air traffic. Military and non-military incidents  in many cases reflect deliberate choices by the Russian Federation to raise tensions, to send an intimidating message, even to stake out spheres of influence, which we think have no place in the 21st century.

We have conflicting visions of how European security should be built. I think we in NATO, and in most of Europe, believe in the principles of the Helsinki Final Act and respect the sovereignty of every single state. Russia wants to go back to a kind of Yalta-2, based on spheres of influence. Until we all come back to the same space, we have to be realistic – not fatalistic, but realistic about how much we can do on the technical side.

Regarding the updating of the Vienna Document, there are a number of proposals on the table from different allied countries relating to lowering thresholds for exercise notifications, lowering the thresholds where mandatory inspections are required, at least narrowing if not closing the loophole that allows Russia to carry out unlimited “snap” exercises with up to a hundred thousand troops with no notification at all. Poland has put forward proposals on some provisions regarding hazardous military activities.

Russia actually used to be for a lot of these things. It’s a bit of a tragedy in my career that often both sides have the same position, but not at the same time. Let’s hope that Russia will see that it’s in its own interest to restore some of the predictability that the Vienna Document was meant to provide, to update it to the new, more challenging conditions.”

Read more:

OSCE Security Days: www.osce.org/sg/secdays

“More security for everyone in Europe: A call for a re-launch of arms control”. Article by OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 26 August 2016: //www.osce.org/cio/261146 (in English and German)