Chapter 8 -- The CFE Treaty: A Durable Structure

RLVP:

November 17, 1995-
March 16, 1996

RESIDUAL LEVEL VALIDATION PERIOD: NOVEMBER 1995 TO MARCH 1996

Following the 40-month reduction period, the treaty provided for a brief 120-day phase during which every nation had the right, under the group of states quota system, to verify the treaty-limited weapons and forces possessed by the nations in the other group of states. Based on the number of OOVs in the Eastern group of states on November 17, 1995, the end of the reduction period, the NATO nations could conduct up to 247 on-site inspections over the next 120 days, while the Eastern group of states could conduct up to 254 inspections. Designated in the treaty as the residual level validation period (RLVP), this phase preceded the treaty's final stage: the residual period. That final period would be of unlimited duration, with compliance monitoring by on-site inspections continuing indefinitely, though always based on a percentage of a nation's OOVs. The RLVP was an important period, because it allowed states to verify the accuracy of the other treaty nations' postreduction numbers in order to establish a basis for monitoring the national TLE holdings in the residual period.⁴

This RLVP phase resembled the treaty's baseline period in both intent and duration. Both were periods of intense inspection activities, with the treaty allowing inspections by the group of states of up to 20 percent of all declared OOVs. The major difference between the two periods lay in the length of time for planning and preparation. The CFE Treaty's final ratification developed quickly in June-July 1992 as the states decided to implement the treaty provisionally. Entry into force came immediately after the Helsinki Summit on July 17, 1992; it caught some nations, especially some of the newer Eastern European republics, by surprise. This element of surprise was not part of the treaty's RLVP phase. All treaty nations knew that RLVP would begin on November 17, 1995, and end on March 16, 1996.

These dates were known to Colonel Kenneth D. Guillory, U.S. Army, who assumed command of OSIA's European Operations (EO) Command in January 1995. He took over an active, experienced, 145-person inspection command. The treaty's RLVP was 10 months away, but he initiated an intensive planning effort immediately. Guillory knew that the process of inspecting, escorting, and conducting liaison operations would be the same as during the baseline and reduction periods, but he recognized that the pace during RLVP would be much faster. The command would be called upon to conduct twice as many inspections in 120 days as it normally did in an entire year. On the escort side, U.S. vulnerability to being inspected would not be as great as during baseline.

Colonel Kenneth D. Guillory, Commander of OSIA's European Operations Command, leads an OSCE inspection in Bosnia.

Since 1992, thousands of U.S. troops had been withdrawn from Europe and dozens of U.S. military bases closed. Consequently, Colonel Guillory expected that the 56 U.S. Army and 5 U.S. Air Force OOVs in Europe would be inspected 12 times during RLVP (20 percent of 61 OOVs). Further, Guillory assumed that American liaison officers would be extremely busy during the period, since the NATO nations' passive quota was 254 inspections. United States policy dictated that a U.S. liaison team travel to every site subject to inspection in order to protect U.S. facilities and units stationed or deployed there. As he added up numbers of inspections, escorts, and liaison missions for the RLVP phase, Guillory concluded that the command would be doing twice as much work in one-third the time. To ensure the command's readiness, he initiated an intensive planning effort to nail down every aspect of OSIA's RLVP mission.⁵

In mid-February 1995, Guillory brought the European Operations Command staff together and explained his initial planning guidance. All RLVP planning and preparations would be a joint staff effort involving operations, support, and logistics. Further, the effort would involve extensive coordination with Headquarters and with OSIA's operating commands and consultation with the staffs of the NATO nations' verification agencies, other foreign verification agencies, and NATO's VCC. Finally, he directed at this initial meeting that the effort would be coordinated by the operations division's planning cell. In November 1995, just as the RLVP operation was getting under way, Colonel Guillory recalled his objectives. "We went to work," he explained, "to develop an operational concept and four interlocking plans."⁶ This work, he said, produced the following⁷:

An operational concept as part of the NATO plan. Since the beginning of the CFE Treaty, the United States had conducted its treaty responsibilities in concert with the NATO nations. This would continue during RLVP.
An aggressive liaison plan to ensure an American presence at any U.S. facility in the NATO nations.
An augmentation plan to ensure that OSIA's EO Command had the necessary manpower to conduct the escort and inspection missions.
A logistics plan to support all EO inspectors, escorts, liaison officers, and augmentees.
An aggressive training plan to prepare new EO members and augmentees for CFE Treaty operations.

As the planning got under way in the spring of 1995, Brigadier General Gregory G. Govan, Director of OSIA, decided that the agency would augment the EO Command with people from Headquarters and the other operational commands. By mid-summer the plan called for 41 augmentees. All would be trained by September and would deploy to Europe in early November. These OSIA people would serve on liaison teams, inspection teams, and escort teams. They would also work in communications, planning, and administration. As the date grew closer, Colonel Guillory reevaluated the command's requirement for augmentees. He reduced the required number from 41 to 33, largely on the basis of new personnel arriving earlier than anticipated and a new estimate of the logistics division's operational capability. At Rhein-Main, three officers--Lt. Colonel Thomas Carraway, USA; Lt. Colonel William L. Lefevers, USAF; and Major Jon Rebholz, Jr., USMC--played key roles in shepherding every aspect of the RLVP planning effort. Just as Colonel Lawrence Kelley, USMC, had checked and rechecked every detail of the command's planning prior to baseline, these three officers forced every division, section, team, and individual to know and understand their role during RLVP.⁸ What were the results?

During the residual level validation period--from November 17, 1995, to March 16, 1996--NATO nations conducted 246 inspections of Eastern bloc nations. The United States led 38 inspections and provided guest inspectors on 56 other national teams. U.S. inspection teams hosted 65 guest inspectors. During RLVP, U.S. inspection teams exercised all their treaty rights; when appropriate, they wrote comments on the inspection reports. They declared 11 ambiguities, which were referred to the JCG in Vienna for resolution. As in every other period in the treaty, U.S. inspection teams and inspectors set high standards in their knowledge of the treaty, its protocols, TLE status, and national force data.⁹

Brigadier General Gregory G. Govan, USA, Director, OSIA.

Brigadier General Thomas E. Kuenning, Jr., USAF, Director, OSIA.

From November to March, Eastern nations inspected NATO nations 183 times. This tempo was somewhat slower than expected, although it was at an inspection level of 72 percent of the maximum possibility of 254 inspections. Eastern nations used sequential inspections to cover as many sites as possible in a single visit to Western Europe. The United States was inspected 11 times, with 10 inspections occurring at U.S. facilities in Germany and 1 in Italy. OSIA's EO Command deployed full escort teams to each site to conduct the foreign inspection teams through the U.S. facilities. During RLVP operations, the U.S. liaison teams deployed on 163 Eastern nation inspections. They provided invaluable assistance to U.S. military units and personnel, particularly in Turkey, Italy, and Germany.¹⁰

In March 1996, when the RLVP ended, Colonel Guillory evaluated the American effort. He developed a method to compare the "expected" level of operations with the "actual" level. Using pluses and minuses, he evaluated the strengths and weaknesses in the command's planning, training, operations, logistics, and international coordination. In early May, Brigadier General Thomas E. Kuenning, Director of OSIA, and the senior staff held an all-Agency operations conference at which Guillory briefed his analysis of U.S. operations during RLVP. The operation was a success, he thought, because the early, intensive planning effort had defined the requirements and had produced an operations plan that was comprehensive and realistic. The expected and actual levels of operations matched up across the board, except for a few minuses concerning forecasting efforts that had been unsuccessful in anticipating other nations' inspection activity. On the plus side, Guillory gave high ratings to NATO's VCC deconfliction work and its coordination of guest inspectors, the continuous dialogue among the NATO nations' verification agencies, the West-to-East dialogue between verification agencies planning cooperative missions, the work of the augmentees from OSIA Headquarters and operational commands, the determination of the U.S. liaison officer teams, the professionalism of the Inspection Support Staff and its coordination efforts with the interagency policy community in Washington, and the early planning and standardized packages developed by the command's logistics experts.¹¹

In the end, the fact that there were many more pluses than minuses was less important than the presence in the command of a vigorous planning effort; rigorous training standards; extensive NATO nation coordination; thoroughness in inspections, escorts, and liaison teams; responsiveness in logistics; and a willingness to conduct an honest postoperation evaluation. Measured in this way, OSIA's European Operations Command demonstrated that the leadership and professional standards that had been present in the execution of the U.S. CFE Treaty on-site inspection mission during the baseline and reduction periods had continued during RLVP.