Bush’s Troop Cut Proposal Jeopardizes US Interests

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy today raised serious concerns about President Bush’s latest arms control gambit. In his State of the Union address last night, the president unveiled a new proposal designed to reduce U.S. and Soviet forces in Central Europe to 195,000 apiece, eighty thousand fewer than the level now being negotiated in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks.

The Center noted that there are at least three major problems with the new Bush initiative:

• Why Should the U.S. Legitimize the Presence of Even 195,000 Soviets Troops in Eastern Europe? As a practical matter, Moscow is coming under intense pressure from most — if not all — of its Warsaw Pact allies to remove all Soviet occupation forces. Under these circumstances, any CFE accord simply offers the USSR a legal pretext for resisting such pressure. Worse still, by entering into such an agreement, the West becomes party to preserving the Soviet Union’s power in Eastern Europe to the detriment of both the interests of reformers there and Western security. While 195,000 Soviet troops are to be preferred over 275,000, that level still amounts to 195,000 too many.

 

• Why Should U.S. Force Levels in NATO be Tied to the Soviet Presence in Eastern Europe? In the current setting, the more the arms control framework is relied upon for decisions in sizing U.S. forces in Europe, the more such decisions will be shaped not by Western security interests but by the demands of Moscow’s allies for an end to the Soviet occupation.

 

• The simple fact is that for geographic, political, strategic and economic reasons a continued U.S. military presence in Western Europe will be necessary — even if every last Soviet troop is removed to the USSR. Getting the Soviet forces out of Eastern Europe should neither be contingent upon nor made more difficult by the determination of the United States and its allies to continue to retain significant numbers of forward deployed American forces.

 

• Are NATO’s Military Authorities Really Saying 195,000 U.S. Forces on the Central Front Are Enough to Implement Alliance Strategy, or Are They Changing the Strategy? NATO planners have long wrestled with the unhappy reality that a forward defense of Western Europe requires large numbers of forces. This is doubly true in the absence of a credible, in-place Western theater nuclear deterrent — which will be the likely result of the INF Treaty and upcoming negotiations on short-range nuclear arms.

 

• While reduced numbers of Soviet forces in Eastern Europe or even their complete withdrawal to Soviet territory would theoretically affect the offense-defense ratio in a future conflict, it is not self-evident that such a beneficial effect would offset the detrimental ones likely to result from such problems as: the West’s difficulty in properly assessing warning of an attack; the even greater difficulty in an alliance context of deciding to act promptly and appropriately in the face of such warning; and the relatively lengthy time involved in reconstituting American forces in Europe should that be judged necessary.

   

 

• In fact, the net effect of the Bush proposal, if adopted, may simply be to make Western forward defense impossible. It will, at a minimum, greatly exacerbate NATO’s longstanding dilemma of having either to give up territory or resort to the early use of nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet attack. While the possibility of such an attack seems to many to be an extremely remote one at the moment, the risks of being wrong are so great that NATO strategy must continue to be designed — and its forces equipped — to deal effectively with that eventuality.

   

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director, said, "The Center believes that these problems with the president’s approach cause it to be seriously flawed. When combined with the larger questions concerning the inadvisability of embarking upon radical arms reduction agreements with a Soviet government of such dubious prospects, it seems obvious that a different approach is in order:

"First, the United States and its allies should at this juncture be strongly encouraging the East Europeans’ efforts to have all Soviet forces removed from their territory. One tangible manifestation of such encouragement should be in the form of a stipulation that Western economic, financial and particularly technological assistance is henceforth contingent upon the termination of Warsaw Pact military, espionage and security ties. Naturally, such a step will lead to the end of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe that has been conducted under the aegis of the Pact.

"Second, NATO should not permit the CFE talks to interfere with the first goal. For the time being, this may require the alliance to slow the pace of "progress" being made toward an agreement — an accord that could otherwise legitimize and help shore up the very Warsaw Pact links that must be ruptured. At the very least, freely elected governments throughout Eastern Europe ought to be in place and given an opportunity to express their attitudes toward the continued presence of Soviet forces in their territory before the CFE deal is finalized.

"And third, the United States must make it clear to the Soviets and to its own NATO partners that continued, effective U.S. military presence in Western Europe is a function of the desire of America’s allies for such a presence — not Moscow’s ability to impose its will and its troops on Eastern Europe. The Center believes such a presence will be required for the foreseeable future. It will certainly be a powerful factor in influencing the strategic character and allegiances of the coming, reunified Germany."