Watch Out For The ‘Bait And Switch’ Routine On The New Conventional Arms Control Treaty

(Washington, D.C.): Published reports in today’s Washington Post suggest that President Bush is prepared to accommodate Soviet violation of the new Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in order to clear the way for its ratification. Were he to do so, he will surely encourage future Soviet breaches of this agreement.

Worse yet, the Bush Administration’s preoccupation with forging a cosmetic solution to the present controversy — which arose when Moscow cynically announced that three Treaty-limited army divisions no longer were constrained because they had been attached to the USSR’s naval infantry forces — helps to obscure a far larger and more dangerous problem: The Soviets are circumventing the CFE Treaty by redeploying over 60,000 tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery tubes and other equipment to the east of the Ural Mountains.

This redeployment fundamentally debases the value of the CFE agreement.maintain forces which the United States and its allies had anticipated would be destroyed, not simply relocated. If the Soviets retain a larger organizational structure west of the Urals than is required for their military forces deployed there, assets moved east of the Treaty’s zone could become a renewed threat Europe — East and West — with a minimum of warning. It enables the USSR to

Unfortunately, predictions that this threat will not eventuate because the Soviets will decline to maintain these stocks of relocated materiel have proved to be nothing more than wishful thinking. To the contrary, Moscow is reported to be taking steps to preserve such assets in fighting trim.

While the possibility that Moscow has chosen to circumvent the new CFE Treaty so as to preserve its offensive military potential against Europe is the most powerful reason for demanding that this practice — as well as the "naval infantry" gambit — be reversed, it is not the only reason. Two other explanations are scarcely more palatable:

• The Soviet central authorities may believe that this additional firepower could come in handy in the event massive repression of separatist republics, striking workers and democratic forces is undertaken. The greater their uncertainty about the reliability of certain elements of the armed forces in implementing a violent crackdown, the more important it may appear to have sufficient quantities of tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc. at hand. The present experience of Moscow’s Iraqi client, Saddam Hussein, in putting down his internal insurrections has certainly added weight to such a calculation.

 

• For a nation whose economy is in extremis and whose options for earning hard currency are exceedingly limited, the export value of selling off even a portion of these thousands of pieces of advanced military hardware cannot be ignored. Notwithstanding the less than impressive performance turned in by some Soviet equipment in recent conflicts (especially in the Middle East), a fire sale of this inventory could generate billions of dollars for Moscow’s coffers. In all likelihood those who will be equipped with such materiel will be disposed to make use of it in ways quite detrimental to U.S. and allied interests.

"It is ironic that President Bush is considering accepting a compromise solution that will enable Gorbachev to get away with violating both the spirit and the letter of the CFE Treaty," said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "Even Senator Joe Biden — a man whose fatuous enthusiasm for arms control agreements can only be described as the unfailing ‘triumph of hope over experience’ — has apparently written the Soviet leader urging him to back down."

The Center believes that the United States and its allies must accept nothing less than full Soviet compliance with the terms of the Treaty and a prompt, monitored undoing of Moscow’s far more serious circumvention of this accord through relocation of 60,000-plus pieces of equipment to territory outside the affected zone.