EPILOGUE: CONTINUITY OF ARMS CONTROL AMIDST REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES

Within the United States government, all treaties moved through a sequence of actions from treaty negotiation to implementation. The process began with diplomatic negotiations to develop the treaty text, protocols, and annexes. Presidential approval and formal signature, usually at a summit meeting, were followed by a presidential directive defining roles and missions for carrying out each aspect of the treaty. The Constitution required the President to submit the signed treaty to the U.S. Senate for its advice and consent. Following Senate hearings, debate, and ratification, the treaty was returned to the President for his signature and a formal exchange with the other signatories. Actual entry into force and implementation of the treaties began after the formal constitutional provisions had been met.

For the two Nuclear Testing Treaties, TTBT and PNET, and their new protocols, the initial phases, diplomatic negotiations and presidential signature concluded with the Washington Summit of June 1, 1990. In defining which government departments and agencies would carry out the provisions of the treaties, the President's National Security Council staff surveyed existing laws, directives, and precedents. They incorporated President Bush's directive to expand the On-Site Inspection Agency with the laws and policies governing the Department of Energy's and the Department of Defense's conduct of underground nuclear tests. The result was President Bush's directive in mid-July l990. In defining the roles and missions for those departments and agencies responsible for the nuclear testing treaties. The Department of Energy would carry out all of its statutory obligations in planning, scheduling, and conducting the U.S. underground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. The On-Site Inspection Agency would manage and support the on-site monitoring of the nuclear tests conducted under the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. Management included providing for team leadership, linguists, logisticians, and administrative support personnel. Support included responsibility for treaty training, funding, communications, logistics, and the construction of facilities including inspector housing and treaty-required seismic stations. Because of the technical nature of conducting controlled, underground nuclear tests and the complex rights and obligations under the new protocols to the treaty, the President stated that extensive coordination would be necessary between the Department of Energy, the On-Site Inspection Agency, and the other agencies of the Department of Defense involved in nuclear testing.⁴

While the Bush administration was working through these Nuclear Testing Treaties decisions and constitutional processes, negotiations on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty were moving toward a conclusion in the summer and fall of 1990. This was a complex, multinational treaty with multiple protocols for inspections, reductions, notifications, reclassificiation, and categorization. Personnel from OSIA, who had extensive experience in implementing the INF Treaty, advised American treaty negotiators working on the CFE Treaty. As the treaty negotiations grew progressively more detailed and intense, General Lajoie succeeded in placing some of the agency's most experienced INF team chiefs and inspectors as technical advisors on key backstopping committees and treaty working groups in Vienna, and Washington.⁶

When CFE Treaty negotiators in Vienna began focusing on inspection and reduction protocols, Lt. Colonel Paul Nelson, an experienced Army foreign area specialist and INF Treaty team leader, went to Austria and served as technical advisor to the U.S. delegation. After a month, Colonel John C. Reppert, US Army, a senior Soviet specialist and INF team leader, lent his expertise to the delegation. While these CFE negotiations were underway, General Lajoie dispatched Irene Nehonov, OSIA's Russian Language Coordinator, and Lt. Colonel Vitali Mostovoj, USAF, an OSIA team chief, on an extensive round-the-world trip to California, Hawaii, Japan, and Europe, to interview and evaluate hundreds of linguists for training and then assignment to the agency. More than one hundred and fifty linguists would be needed by 1992 to carry out the inspection and escort provisions of the new treaties. The first group of a continuing stream of these military linguists were entering formal training when the CFE Treaty was signed in Paris in mid-November 1990.

President Bush went to Paris on November 19, 1990, where he joined the leaders of 21 nations in the formal signing ceremony for the CFE Treaty.⁷ Immediately thereafter, the President's National Security Council began the process of defining the roles and mission of those U.S. Government departments and agencies responsible for implementation. Since this was a treaty which focused exclusively on conventional arms--tanks, artillery, aircraft, and other military equipment--the U.S. Department of Defense was assigned principal responsibility. Within DOD, the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and the On-Site Inspection Agency received specific missions in managing and carrying out the United States' treaty rights and obligations. At OSIA, General Lajoie acted quickly, instituting a major internal restructuring of the agency less than three weeks after the treaty was signed.