The CFE Treaty, signed in Paris on Nov. 19, 1990, governs the number of conventional forces stationed between the Atlantic and the Ural Mountains and was a turning point in ensuring relative stability in the Euro-Atlantic region after the demise of the Soviet Union.
The arrangements made later within the CFE Treaty, under which the number of conventional arms that the participants could hold was defined, has become a significant security guarantee for the flank countries, including Greece, Turkey and Norway.
"Withdrawal of Russia from the treaty will turn the regional security balances upside down. For that reason, keeping the treaty intact has a vital importance for Turkey, too," said another diplomat.
The possibility of Russia's eventual withdrawal from the treaty will allow Moscow to violate the CFE Treaty limitations on conventional arms, mainly in the disputed regions in Turkey's proximity, provoking an arms race in which Ankara will find itself a part.
Signaling Russian determination to go ahead with its policy on the CFE Treaty, the Duma, the Russian parliament's lower house, voted unanimously last week to back a Kremlin decision to suspend Russia's involvement in the treaty.
This move follows an announcement by President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 12 that Russia may leave the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty -- which eliminated ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers -- if the treaty was not expanded to include other nuclear-armed nations (Jane's Defence Weekly, Nov. 20, 2007).
Both of these recent announcements are regarded as responses to the ballistic missile defense program that the Bush administration is looking to establish in Eastern Europe.
The vote in the Duma will take effect on Dec. 12 if the upper house and Putin approve the legislation.
Moscow considers the original CFE Treaty to be outdated since it does not reflect the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the break-up of the Soviet Union or recent NATO enlargement. The Russian Defense Ministry argues that over the last decade NATO has exceeded the treaty-limited equipment level permitted by the CFE for its members by nearly 6,000 tanks, 10,000 armored vehicles, over 5,000 artillery pieces and around 1,500 combat aircraft (JDW, July 11, 2007).
NATO members in turn insist on Russia's withdrawal from Moldova and Georgia as a precondition for ratification of the treaty.
Russian Chief of Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said Russia must abolish its northern and southern "flank limitations." He mentioned that after 1999 two Baltic nations (Latvia and Estonia) increased their armored vehicles nine-fold and artillery pieces three-fold. The general observed that the treaty was discriminatory and that its dismantling would affect Europe more than Russia (JDW, July 11, 2007).
As a matter of fact, negotiations on flank limitations back in the second half of the 1990s has been the most critical part of the deliberations. Flank limitations were originally designed to prevent destabilizing concentrations of Soviet forces opposite Turkey and Norway, as large numbers of forces and equipment were pulled back from central Europe.
From early 1993, Russia argued that these limitations restricted its ability to meet its security requirements in the north Caucasus, where Russia was restructuring its military forces following the collapse of the USSR (Disarmament Diplomacy, Issue No. 14, Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty Flank Document: Congressional Testimony, Statement of Lynn Davis, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Policy to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 29, 1997).
The flank limits were established during the CFE Treaty negotiations primarily to address Norwegian and Turkish concerns that the withdrawal of Soviet forces from central and eastern Europe might result in a significant build-up of Soviet forces on or near their borders.
Now back to square one; Russia has again been complaining, among other things, about flank limitations, simultaneously posing a security threat to nearby Turkey.
US President George W. Bush and his neoconservatives have been pursuing a policy of creating enmity of Russia by Europe, something that Turkey has always avoided, a Turkish diplomatic source who followed the CFE negotiations closely from the start told me.
"Turkey may end up paying the price of being a strategic partner to the US if Russia finally violates the CFE Treaty limitations," the same source warned. My fear is that Turkey's hard-liners may use this Russian attempt over the CFE Treaty for further militarization of the Turkish political scene.
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