So, too, were the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Versailles Conference after World War I. Neither gathering eliminated wars or upheavals in Europe. If nothing else, the cold-war standoff kept the peace there for more than 40 years. Now, with the sudden collapse of communism, trouble is brewing among restless nationalities from the Balkans to the Baltic (box, page 48). Any flash point–the breakup of Yugoslavia, for example, or an eruption of the ethnic feud between Hungary and Romania–could trigger a conflict that might threaten other European countries. And so far, says Rozanne Ridgway, the former top expert on Europe at the State Department and now president of the Atlantic Council, “the states of East and Central Europe are unable to answer the question: who will come to my help in the event things go bad?”
Separatism in the Soviet Union complicated the treaty on conventional forces in Europe (CFE). In the final stage of negotiations, sources say, Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, chief of the Soviet general staff, demanded one last concession from the West: a small adjustment in the deployments his Army would be allowed to make in two Soviet military districts. Moiseyev’s top objective, one Western official says, was to keep “a Russian Army” intact to deal with unrest among other Soviet nationalities. The main influence on Kremlin military planning, this source adds, is “no longer the West, but the perceived security needs of the Russian Republic in relation to the other republics of the Soviet Union.”
Deep cuts: The CFE treaty imposes tight limits on tanks and other weapons deployed in the European theater, requiring especially heavy cuts by the Soviets. Conservative critics will find at least a few things to complain about when the treaty comes up for ratification by the U.S. Senate. The agreement was finalized only last week, so virtually no one in Washington has read the full, final text of the 400 page treaty. “In fact, I’ve even been told that it doesn’t exist in Washington,” says Frank Gaffney, a Defense Department official in the Reagan administration.
Critics also will complain that thousands of Soviet tanks have been moved east of the Urals, so that they will not have to be destroyed. “If there’s a change of government in the Soviet Union, these [tanks] can move back and be used for aggressive intentions,” says Sven Kraemer, a National Security Council staffer under Reagan. Bush’s arms-control experts discount the danger. “All that stuff is going to sit outside in the icy Siberian winter and rust,” says one. “The Soviets are piling up the biggest junk heap in the world.”
To some extent, CFE has already been overtaken by events, including the sudden Soviet military withdrawal from much of Eastern Europe and, more recently, the crisis in the Persian Gulf. The United States is sending half of its European ground combat forces, including 1,650 of its most modern tanks, to Saudi Arabia. “We’re stripping Europe for the gulf,” says a Pentagon official. In theory, the tanks will return to Europe once the crisis is over. Whether they go back or not, the CFE treaty drastically reduces the chances for one kind of war. Conventional-forces analyst Ivo Daalder of the University of Maryland says the agreement “effectively eliminates the threat of military conflict between East and West in general and the Soviet threat to Western Europe in particular.”
It does nothing. however, to prevent regional strife. That task falls mainly to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a loosely constructed organization that includes the United States. Canada and 33 European nations (one of whom Albania, is not represented in Paris). Several steps are being taken to strengthen the CSCE, including a schedule for regular consultation among the members and the establishment of a permanent secretariat of about half a dozen officials in Prague This week’s summit also will set up a conflict-prevention center in Vienna through which any country that feels threatened can convene all the others to ash for help.
But there is no mechanism as Yet for actually stopping conflicts or punishing aggressors. The United States has grudgingly played along with the CSCE; Bush would rather rely on NATO to keep the peace. Washington has little confidence that the CSCE can avert regional conflicts in Europe. Ridgway concludes that the organization ‘may well be. in a very practical sense, an inadequate answer to the question,‘Who comes to defend me ?’ But it’s a way to begin. and it’s what is available to them at this time. ‘The question is whether Europe will have enough time to develop stronger institutions for mutual security.
