A Countdown for Conventional Arms Control

After years of deserved obscurity, conventional arms control is pushing its way up the East-West political agenda. In Vienna, the 23 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact are discussing a mandate for new conventional force “stability” talks to cover the whole of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. So far, Mikhail S. Gorbachev has been the only leader making proposals, part of his energetic peace offensive in Europe. To reverse this unhealthy trend, NATO now needs to put forward its concept of how conventional arms control could contribute to European security. We suggest one approach.

The central question is: Can arms control help eliminate the Warsaw Pact’s conventional advantages over NATO? In Central Europe, the East outnumbers the West in actual combat divisions, fixed-wing tactical aircraft, tanks and artillery pieces. Some weapons balances are better and some worse, but in no case does the West have an edge. The ratios tend to favor the East by 2-1 or more.

The question of the seriousness of the imbalances is a matter of substantial debate and analysis. Not only do numbers come into play but other factors such as the quality of weapons and troops, the geography, the advantages to the defense and to the attacker--and most important of all, the scenario for conflict. This includes such issues as the nations involved (would France fight with the West at the outset? would Poland stick with the Soviets?) and the time both sides have to ready forces and move them into position.

When the many uncertainties are accounted for, most Western analysis indicates that NATO would do badly today in a conventional war in Europe. We agree.

The West could theoretically take care of this problem through a combination of additional ground and air units but the needed increases are substantial and are not in the cards. During the current period of declining defense budgets, no member of the NATO alliance is ready to spend the money. In addition to cost, our allies have always been wary of too much emphasis on conventional defenses for deterrence. They fear that overly strong conventional forces will “decouple” the American strategic nuclear deterrent from Europe’s defense and increase the chances of conventional war on the Continent. After all, conventional deterrence failed Europe in 1812, 1815, 1870, 1914 and in 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941. Nuclear deterrence has kept the peace.

This leaves arms control as the way to wrestle with the conventional imbalance in Europe. The West’s proposal ought to aim at improving imbalances and thus reduce the requirements for a stalwart conventional defense. In this way, arms control could work together with conventional defense efforts to enhance security, without trashing nuclear deterrence.

One notion is to have a first-phase agreement with only U.S.-Soviet reductions and try to negotiate larger cuts on the part of the two alliances later. For many reasons, this is a bad idea.

Small reductions, even if quite asymmetrical--such as one U.S. division for six Soviet divisions--would not improve the balance. The Warsaw Pact force of 200 divisions west of the Urals is simply too large for such a cut to have much effect on Eastern war-fighting capacity. To the contrary, any such agreement could cut dangerously into NATO’s few forces held in reserve to stem breakthroughs. In addition it would have to be accompanied by no increased committments that could hinder U.S. reinforcement in a crisis mobilization and block some efforts to improve the West’s defenses

Any accord should go a long way toward improving the alliance’s vulnerability. This means very large cuts in Warsaw Pact forces, including those that can be initially held back and then used to create and exploit weaknesses in NATO’s forward defenses. Small reductions would be worse than nothing.

Emphasizing U.S.-Soviet first-phase withdrawals is unwise for other reasons. Many of our allies already worry about the effect of a missiles agreement and fear this marks the beginning of U.S. disengagement from Europe. A proposal from Washington that Western reductions should start with U.S. cuts would only jangle their nerves more. Additionally, withdrawal of some forces back to the United States would not improve our global capabilities as some have argued; the forces would probably disappear altogether for budgetary reasons.

Instead of a superpower emphasis, it is preferble to reduce the number of offensive weapons in the two alliances to equal ceilings. In the Central European setting, the tank is clearly the pre-eminent offensive weapon. It could be used to spearhead blitzkrieg attacks designed to seize Western territory. Although tanks are also the best anti-tank weapon, NATO’s need for tanks springs largely from the fact the Warsaw Pact has them, and in great numbers. Thus, if the pact sharply cut tank forces, NATO could also reduce tank holdings.

But the reduction or even elimination of tank forces would not eliminate offensive capabilities. Warsaw Pact infantry, on foot or in vehicles, could also break through if artillery knocked holes in NATO’s forward defenses. Thus it would be wise to include artillery reductions and ceilings as well. It is tempting to expand the list to cover additional weapons, but other ground and air force weapons do not have the same offensive capacity as tanks and artillery; including them would both make the proposal more complicated and difficult to verify.

Verification is a conventional arms-control nightmare. Consider manpower. The Warsaw Pact has about 3 million men in its armed forces in the Atlantic-to-the-Urals area. If the East reduced these troops by 200,000, imagine trying to verify compliance with a residual pact ceiling of 2.8 million soldiers spread across thousands of military installations in millions of square miles. Think of the problems of sending inspection teams to a much smaller area, say to Oregon, to count an uncooperative population. Those clever Oregonians could thwart the count by prolonging the period between inspection request and the arrival of inspectors, by moving people around, by declaring large areas off limits to inspectors and by curtailing inspectors’ time on-site. All this from folks who did not invent the Potemkin Village.

So the West should not include manpower in its proposals. Tanks and artillery are far easier to keep track of but still no simple task in the enormous Warsaw Pact area from the inner-German border to the Ural Mountains. Thus the West would be wise to insist that tank and artillery reductions be taken by the withdrawal of units--not divisions but their components (regiments and battalions). There would have to be a comprehensive data exchange on the two sides “order of battle,” a listing of major units, their components and tank and artillery holdings by individual units. This would be coupled with an intrusive, extensive and mandatory on-site inspection regime. But even with that monumental stride in Moscow’s military glasnost , conventional arms control does not lend itself to the strict verification standards that have characterized the Reagan years. Either verification will become an impenetrable barrier to a conventional arms-control treaty or the United States will have to be willing to accept some uncertainty in verification. In our judgment, given the nature of the beast, the U.S. verification emphasis should be on uncovering violations that make a military difference.

This, then, is our proposal: Both sides should cut tank holdings to equal collective ceilings of 20,000. Cut artillery, including multiple-rocket launchers and heavy mortars, to 15,000 in the Atlantic-to-the-Urals area. In the smaller zone of Central Europe, the corresponding figures would be 10,000 and 4,000. It is important to have the smaller zone to be sure that the most immediately threatening forces--those in Eastern Europe--are withdrawn or destroyed. The cuts would be sizable. We figure that the Warsaw Pact would have to eliminate about 30,000 tanks and 25,000 artillery pieces all told. NATO would reduce about 4,000 tanks and 2,000 artillery pieces.

These cuts would make a positive difference. The Warsaw Pact would have to eliminate more than half the tanks and artillery west of the Urals. But, since tank and artillery regiments rather than divisions would be withdrawn or deactivated, the East would not have to eliminate 50% of their 200 plus divisions. The result would be substantially restructured and less offensive forces--and parity in the most offensive weapons on the two sides. Analysis at RAND indicates that NATO could afford these reductions only if the pact made such sizable cuts. With this large mutual drawdown, the analysis suggests that NATO’s unmet need for a significant conventional buildup would be mostly eliminated.

Obviously, many details would need to be worked out, but by putting such a concept forward, the West would be making a forceful statement about its aims in conventional arms control:

--To increase stability in Europe and transform the military balance away from reliance on offensive weapons.

--To maintain the U.S. military commitment to the security of Europe--and the credibility of extended deterrence.

--To challenge the Soviet Union to take a bold step consistent with Moscow’s recent rhetoric, including its assertion that its military doctrine is defensive, thereby changing the fundamental nature of the East-West military competition in Europe.

Acceptance of this proposal is unlikely in the short term. The Soviets have accumulated their offensive military power in Europe for many reasons, especially intimidation of Western Europe and political suppression of Eastern Europe. Now Gorbachev says he wishes to alter the Soviet Union’s postwar security patterns. Perhaps he does. But until Moscow changes its destabilizing posture, which it has yet to do, it is unlikely to agree to a fundamental shift in the military balance. Still, fears of a drawn-out negotiation should not prevent NATO from initiating a dialogue with the Soviets now on what the West believes it needs for its defense. More than ever, we should test real Soviet security goals through specific and fair Western negotiating proposals.