East-West Agreement Took 3 Years, but Import Is That It Happened at All

The conference began in January, 1984, at a time of maximum bluster and rhetoric. The Soviets had shot down a Korean airliner full of civilians in the Far East. The United States had begun its deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe. In protest the Russians had broken off the Geneva nuclear arms talks and suspended the East-West talks in Vienna on reducing conventional forces in Central Europe.

An observer remarked, as the multinational conference came to an end here last Sunday, that the most important aspect of the new agreement is that there was any agreement at all. Given the Cold War history of the last 40 years, there is a large element of truth in this.

Any arms-control agreement can be improved upon, no matter what its terms, and the new Stockholm agreement on confidence-building measures to reduce the risk of war in Europe is no exception. If its rather modest and limited terms are fully adhered to, in a positive atmosphere of East-West cooperation, common sense and good will, then it can be a turning point for stability and peace.

The obligations that the 35 states undertook at Stockholm are simple, easy to fulfill. The political implications of how they are fulfilled will determine in the end whether Stockholm is rated a “good” agreement or a “bad” one.

Stockholm did not reduce arms anywhere in Europe by a single man or a single gun. But the agreement makes it mandatory after Jan. 1, 1987, for every European country, from the Atlantic to the Urals, to inform every other country by diplomatic communication well in advance of any major military exercise or special activity that it plans, and invite two observers from every country to come and see for themselves.

All the agreement really does, therefore, is reduce somewhat the element of surprise that generally goes with military activities. Still, it imposes a new element of openness in Europe, and it is the first collective military security agreement in history among all the states of Europe.

The Soviets had to pay very little in terms of its own security for the agreement, which does not change the military balance and will not prevent it from proceeding with any military action it chooses to “defend national interests.” If what happened in Budapest, Prague and East Berlin should happen again, it will not be because Stockholm was a bad agreement, but because Stockholm was ignored.

In signing the agreement and opening up its own national territory for the first time to automatic if limited aerial inspections of its big military maneuvers, the Soviet Union is clearly moving to enhance its image as a benign rather than hostile continental power eager to have normal, friendly relations with the rest of Europe.

The probability, therefore, is that the Soviets will be correct, if not enthusiastic, in the way they carry out the Stockholm agreement. In any case, it will not be long before the first returns are in on how the agreement is working.

Reaching agreement took much longer; the first 15 months of negotiations were a total blank, virtually a waste of diplomatic time. Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov had tottered to the end of his brief reign and was succeeded, for a few months, by Konstantin U. Chernenko. Not until a year after the arrival of Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the helm in Moscow were there signs of real movement in Stockholm. Soviet Ambassador Oleg A. Grinevsky was perhaps accurate when he told newsmen on the jubilant Sunday night of agreement that “this never would have happened at all without the new leadership in the Soviet Union.”

For two years, from January, 1984, to January, 1986, the Soviet Union rigidly held up progress in Stockholm with a demand that all Western air and naval activities in and around Europe had to be included in any system of notification and observation. The Western powers just as resolutely held out for an agreement covering land forces only.

Finally, on Jan. 15, 1986, Gorbachev himself broke the ice by announcing that the Soviet Union was ready to “postpone” the issue of naval activity--and things began to move.

The Soviets next accepted the Western idea that each country issue a calendar of planned military maneuvers for a year in advance, with specific details on each exercise at least 42 days in advance. Finally, in September, they sent their chief of the general staff, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, to Stockholm with the portentous announcement that they were now ready to accept automatic aerial inspection of Soviet territory.

Concessions then came from the Western side as well, including a U.S. agreement to give advance notice of planned troop movements by air from the United States to Europe. In the last hectic days, negotiations narrowed to the size of forces that would require notification, along with a detailed operational agreement on how aerial inspection of suspicious activity would be carried out.

In the end, Western negotiators settled for a higher force level on notification than they believed best, but as one negotiator put it, too much had been achieved to permit failure over a couple of thousand men. It will be necessary for each party to notify all the other parties of any planned exercise involving more than 13,000 men or more than 300 tanks. All parties will be invited to send observers to watch any maneuver involving more than 17,000 men or 300 tanks.

The tank figure was included because, in the words of one military man, “it is easier to count tanks on satellite photos than it is to count men.”

The Soviet Union will now permit three automatic aerial inspections over its territory every year, in Soviet planes but with strict rules on how the flights will be conducted and with foreign observers aboard. If, for example, American satellite intelligence should spot what looks like two Soviet divisions maneuvering against each other across the Dneiper River, without advance notification, the United States can request an immediate inspection flight over the Soviet Union--to be granted automatically within 24 hours.

This may not be the best agreement to reduce the risk of war, but it’s the only one we’ve got.