Chapter 5 -- Final Preparations -- NATO and WTO Nations

Among the other NATO nations preparing to implement the CFE Treaty, a three-stage training pattern emerged: mock inspections with the national military forces, mock inspections with allied inspection teams and their organizations, and finally, mock inspections with the inspection agencies of the former Warsaw Pact nations and their military forces. These latter mock inspections usually were planned and organized on a reciprocal basis, with inspections in one nation followed by inspections in the other. Because nation-to-nation relationships varied considerably across the European continent, there was no set order or sequence to this pattern of inspections. In some nations, mock inspections with allied nations preceded training inspections with their own military forces. In others, mock training events with former Warsaw Pact nations were scheduled before similar events with NATO allies.

Group Captain D.A.G. Bremner, Commandant of the United Kingdom's Joint Arms Control Implementation Group (JACIG), explained that British inspector training began with an intensive four-week course on the CFE Treaty and other current arms control agreements. Then team training began with the agency's inspectors "simulating a foreign inspection group and a JACIG escort team conducting mock inspections at United Kingdom sites."²⁸ According to Group Captain Bremner, these inspections developed team skills and standard operating procedures for both the British military installation commanders and the British inspection group's escort and inspection teams. Next, the British group arranged and conducted bilateral mock training inspections with teams from the inspectorates of the NATO nations, and then they set up a series of mock training exercises with the nations of the Warsaw Pact from mid-1991 to mid-1992. The French experience, according to Colonel François Rozec, Commandant, L'Unité Française de Vérification, followed a pattern similar to that of the other NATO nations' inspection agencies. "All of the verification agencies," Colonel Rozec explained, "more or less, worked along the same lines. We first started doing mock inspections on a national level, then bilaterally with the NATO allies. Then, as a third step, we started working on mock inspections with the Eastern bloc countries, especially with Russia, Belarus, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia."²⁹

German escorts, representing the host state, took Eastern teams to inspection sites.

Germany developed one of the most extensive training programs of the NATO nations. To begin with, the unified German nation, because of its incorporation of East Germany's military forces and equipment, had more than 900 CFE Treaty OOVs, more than any other NATO nation. All of these sites had to be surveyed and their personnel trained and prepared for on-site inspections under the CFE Treaty. Since most, if not all, of the former GDR's military equipment was either Soviet-made or built to Soviet military specifications, it provided a training windfall for German CFE Treaty inspection teams. Germany was one of the principal NATO nations for implementing the CFE Treaty. German inspection teams would be leading and conducting 20 percent of the NATO alliance's inspection quota. Another important operational consideration driving Germany's training was the fact that many of NATO's military installations and CFE reduction sites were located on German territory. When the Eastern group of states' CFE teams conducted inspections on stationed forces' military units and equipment located on German territory, German escort officers had to meet them at the point of entry, transport them to the declared military installation, and, following the inspection, accompany them back to the exit point. Germany had to anticipate, over the 40-month reduction phase, dozens of inspection teams arriving at designated points of entry in the former German Democratic Republic, traveling under escort to the reduction sites, and then, for a period of days, monitoring TLE destruction. Finally, because of Germany's strategic position in middle Europe, its national political leaders encouraged and supported joint training with all the Central European national verification agencies during preparations for implementing the CFE Treaty. For all these reasons, the German verification agency was extremely active during the 20-month treaty preparation phase.³⁰

By the time of the CFE Treaty's entry into force in July 1992, the Germans had conducted more than 200 mock inspections and escort missions. Brigadier General Doctor Heinz Loquai, Director, ZVBW, recalled a particularly important series of mock inspections:

"We arranged with the Eastern European countries, the former Warsaw Pact countries, a series of test inspections or mock inspections in order to establish with them practical cooperation. I think one of the most crucial mock inspections was our inspection in the Soviet Union. It was agreed on at the ministerial level and took place in August 1991. Two guest inspectors participated in this inspection, a Dutch and a French inspector. Two weeks later, the Soviets came to Germany, conducting an inspection on a German site.... These were revolutionary times, with the attempted coup d'‚tat in Moscow, but I was convinced that if the coup had succeeded, the new government would have done everything to fulfill the obligations of the CFE Treaty."³¹

The Russian experience in training paralleled in many respects the experiences of the other large state parties to the treaty. In explaining Russia's training concept, General-Major Tsygankov, Deputy Director of the Russian NRRC, was characteristically forthright: "The most important task was to prepare the training for our forces. Objects of verification must be prepared, beginning with diagrams of the declared sites. The correct stand on these issues must come from the NRRC."³² The Russian center handled virtually every aspect of treaty preparations, from drawing up site diagrams, to designating administrative zones, to defining the OOVs. Every Russian military district, according to General Tsygankov, had an arms control department, staffed with 10 to 16 persons. Officers from the Russian NRRC trained these district officers on the CFE Treaty. Every Russian army division had two or three CFE Treaty specialists assigned to the division's training brigade. The scope of the CFE Treaty and the size of the Russian Army meant that training had to be reinforced by regulations and regular training visits from NRRC officials. In July 1992, at the time of the CFE Treaty's entry into force, Russia declared 9,342 tanks, 8,346 artillery pieces, 19,399 armored personnel carriers, and 4,624 aircraft. This vast array of treaty equipment was maintained at 488 declared sites and 503 OOVs throughout Russia.³³

"The most important task was to prepare the training for our forces."

General-Major Tsygankov,
Deputy Director, Russian NRRC

Logistics requirements increased for OSIA's European Operations Command under the CFE Treaty.

From April to July 1991, General Tsygankov had the CFE Treaty section plan and organize mock inspections with several military commands and units of the army, air force, and air defense forces. Their objective was to train the inspection teams and Soviet forces on the practical aspects of treaty implementation. They conducted full-scale CFE inspections at several facilities of the army, air force, and air defense forces. "Our approach," General Tsygankov stated, "was that we call it a training inspection if we carried it out with our people on Russian territory, but we call it a mock inspection if inspectors from a foreign country participated."³⁴ From August 1991 to April 1992, the Russian NRRC conducted mock inspections on a mutual basis with seven treaty states--the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Turkey, Holland, and France. Observers participated in the post-training inspection debriefing in all these mock inspections.³⁵

It is important to remember that throughout this lengthy, 20-month CFE Treaty training phase, Eastern Europe was in turmoil. The Soviet Union was in revolution, and it ceased to exist as a nation in late 1991. After its collapse, eight new states became signatory parties to the CFE Treaty. Throughout these changes, CFE inspection teams from the NATO nations and the Warsaw Pact nations, including the successor states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, conducted several hundred CFE Treaty mock inspections. They refined all aspects of treaty implementation, from communications, to inspection/escort procedures, to logistics. Slowly and deliberately, a consensus emerged over time among the national inspectorates on certain "understandings of the treaty," as did a general agreement on what constituted "standards of an inspection." These by-products of extensive bilateral and multilateral mock training inspections would become even more significant when the treaty entered into force. Consensus, especially when based on actual experience, became a powerful instrument in implementing this multinational arms reduction treaty.

In negotiating the CFE Treaty, diplomats in Vienna had reached an understanding of the treaty's language, protocols, and requirements. Now, in preparing to implement the treaty, leaders of the national inspectorates were trying to reach a similar measure of understanding about the practical, operational aspects of conducting recurring on-site inspections. Given the turmoil across Central and Eastern Europe in 1991 to 1992, the significance of these national agency-to-agency, military-to-military mock training inspections cannot be underestimated. They occurred, like the CFE Treaty itself, on the cusp of major political and economic changes across the European continent.

READINESS FOR ENTRY INTO FORCE

When the diplomats met at the CSCE summit in Helsinki on July 10, 1992, they signed documents that permitted the CFE Treaty to enter into force provisionally. Ten days later, CFE Treaty baseline inspections would begin. Were the respective national verification agencies ready? Were the military forces prepared? Had the site diagrams been drawn properly, were the POEs ready, were the nation-to-nation communications systems ready to go?

By and large, directors of verification agencies were confident. At the German verification center in Geilenkirchen, General Loquai stated unequivocally that they were ready. Only a few weeks before, the German center had organized a maximum-level mock inspection exercise involving inspection teams from the United States, Canada, France, Great Britain, and, of course, Germany. Within one week, these national teams conducted 10 on-site inspections, exercising every element of the inspection process: notifications, communications, security, logistics, site preparations, escort procedures, inspection rights, photography, emergency procedures, and report sequencing. "The normal military logic," General Loquai observed, "is that you should perform training exercises under conditions more difficult than real life."³⁶ After completing this training exercise without incident, General Loquai knew the German agency was ready. Germany had conducted more than 200 mock training inspections prior to entry into force.

Directors at other agencies also were ready. At the Belgian verification agency, Lt. Colonel Fred Janssen, Director of Operations, expressed his confidence, declaring, "Without any doubt we were ready, more than ready, I should say. We were eager to go in."³⁷ The Belgians had conducted 56 mock inspections prior to entry into force. At the French verification unit in Creil, Colonel Rozec acknowledged, "I think we were ready, considering that you can never be completely ready for this kind of job.... Some of our new inspectors were not on the list of inspectors, but we were as ready as we could possibly be."³⁸ In Warsaw, Colonel Malinowski noted that the period from treaty signature to entry into force was "a long time." He believed that Polish armed forces were well prepared and that the verification center was ready: "I wouldn't like to boast, but I think that Poland, the United States, Netherlands, Germany, and Britain were very well prepared at that time."³⁹ In Moscow, General-Major Tsygankov had reached a similar conclusion: "The center was ready. The center had a mission, and we were responsible for carrying it out. We knew that when the treaty entered into force, there would be no time for further preparations."⁴⁰ In Frankfurt, Colonel Kelley, speaking of the U.S. effort, concluded, "I think that although the butterflies were there, and although there were certain areas where we were not quite satisfied that we had the optimal solution, communications, liaison officers, transportation, operations center, we did feel at entry into force that operationally, we were ready."⁴¹

Colonel Kelley's next comment, provided with the perspective of thinking back over all the inspection and escort operations conducted during the CFE Treaty baseline phase, was both short and insightful: "And, that turned out to be the case."⁴²