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The Potential Demise of The CFE Treaty: A Major Concern For Turkey

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  • The Potential Demise of The CFE Treaty: A Major Concern For Turkey

    Turkey Analyst,
    vol. 4 no. 8
    18 April 2011

    THE POTENTIAL DEMISE OF THE CFE TREATY: A MAJOR CONCERN FOR TURKEY

    Richard Weitz

    Moscow's decision to `suspend' its compliance with the Conventional
    Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty since December 2007 now remains one of
    the few visible sources of tension in the otherwise significantly
    improved relationship between Turkey and Russia. Yet, like other NATO
    countries, Turkey has sought not to bury the CFE but to praise and
    revive it. Turkish officials are calling for further negotiations and
    mutual concessions in order to restore the treaty framework. Perhaps
    the most immediate concern behind Turkish unease at the potential
    demise of the CFE regime is that it could worsen tensions between
    Armenia and Azerbaijan.

    BACKGROUND: Turkish strategic thinkers have traditionally seen their
    country as surrounded by unstable, potentially hostile geographic
    regions. Turkish foreign and defense policy has sought to reduce this
    instability'and ideally transform Turkey's pivotal geopolitical
    position from that of a liability into an advantage. In this context,
    the landmark CFE Treaty has served as a tool to dampen security
    tensions in some of these regions by enhancing defense transparency
    and establishing other confidence-building measures.

    The CFE Treaty established a sophisticated system of monitoring,
    inspections, and verification of the military deployments and
    activities of its State Parties. The treaty, which entered into force
    in 1992, set ceilings of five categories of `heavy' conventional
    weapons in the geographic zone extending from the Atlantic to the
    Urals. Besides the limits on the permissible number of tanks, armored
    vehicles, artillery pieces, combat aircraft, and helicopters'which
    were converted from bloc to national restrictions in 1999'the treaty
    imposed additional ceilings on the number of allowable `active' units
    in each category. It also created several regional `flank zones,' most
    notably along northwest and southwest Russia, and established an
    extensive system of military confidence-building measures that have
    helped eliminate the possibility of large-scale surprise attacks in
    Europe.

    Yet, NATO's expansion and Moscow's continued military deployments
    outside Russia have led to mutual accusations that the other party is
    violating the treaty. Western governments accuse Moscow of failing to
    carry out its commitments, made by then-President Boris Yeltsin at the
    November 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul, to withdraw all Russian
    military forces and equipment from the former Soviet military bases in
    Georgia and Moldova.

    On December 12, 2007, the Russian government `suspended' its
    participation in the CFE Treaty due to `exceptional circumstances'
    that jeopardized Russia's `national interests in the sphere of
    military security.'The effect of the suspension, an option not even
    provided for in the original 1990 treaty, has been that Moscow has not
    provided information about the size, location, and activities of its
    military forces west of the Ural Mountains, the Russian territory
    covered by the treaty, for more than three years. Another consequence
    has been that security concerns in countries located near Russia,
    especially Turkey, have been exacerbated.

    In fact, tensions between Turkey and Russia arose almost as soon as
    the CFE treaty entered into force since the Russian government quickly
    exceeded its southern flank limits by deploying additional military
    forces in the South Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia) and North Caucasus
    (especially Chechnya) after the Russian military intervened to
    suppress the separatist forces there. Russian authorities said that
    the CFE limits applied only under "normal" conditions, which did not
    exist. Although the government of Turkey, like those of Azerbaijan,
    Georgia and Ukraine, considered the surge of Russian forces in their
    neighborhood unsettling, they were forced to tolerate them since the
    other CFE parties were unwilling to confront Russia on the issue. Many
    of Ankara's NATO allies declined to press Moscow on CFE since they
    were eager to secure Russian acceptance of NATO's enlargement.

    Despite these concessions, Russian officials pressed for more
    permanent relaxation of the flank limits in the treaty. Nonetheless,
    the overall improvement in Russia-Turkey relations during the past
    decade has made this issue less salient. Then the Russian suspension
    decision, soon followed by the Russia-Georgia War and the upswing of
    Islamist militancy in the North Caucasus, alarmed the Turks about
    their regional security situation and catalyzed several initiatives,
    as discussed in the August 29, 2008 issue of the Turkey Analyst.

    IMPLICATIONS: Moscow's decision to `suspend' its compliance with the
    CFE Treaty since December 2007 now remains one of the few visible
    sources of tension in the otherwise significantly improved
    relationship between Turkey and Russia. At the time of the suspension
    decision, an official in the Turkish Foreign Ministry disputed
    Moscow's assertion that Russia needed to increase its defenses along
    its southwestern border to counter terrorism: `Russia claims it is
    facing a terrorism threat and cannot deal with it properly due to the
    restrictions imposed on it by the Treaty. We have told the Russians
    that we cannot see any immediate terrorism threat directed toward
    them.' The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Russian
    suspension decision `particularly perplexing' given the
    `multidimensional dialogue' that Turkey and other NATO governments had
    conducted with Russia, which offered `a constructive way forward that
    would preserve the integrity of the Treaty with all its elements
    including the Flank regime, and would allow the ratification of the
    Adapted CFE Treaty responding to Russian concerns.'

    The importance of the treaty as a form of security reassurance between
    Turkey and Russia was evident in the number of their mutual
    inspections. At the time Russia suspended its involvement in the CFE
    inspections, the Russian Federation had conducted 92 inspections in
    Turkey, more than any other party. And of the 162 inspections
    conducted by Turkey as of December 2007, 57 were in Russia, and 25
    more were of the Russian military units in Armenia and Georgia.

    Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs still characterized the CFE
    Treaty `the cornerstone' of Europe's security architecture. The
    government has supported the `parallel actions package' proposed by
    NATO as the means to restore the CFE regime and bring the adapted
    treaty into force. The Ministry affirms that, `Turkey supports the
    position of the NATO Alliance that the ratification process on the
    adapted CFE cannot start unless Russia fulfils entirely the Istanbul
    commitments on Georgia and Moldova.'

    At the June 2009 OSCE Annual Security Review Conference, the Turkish
    Ambassador to the OSCE, Yusuf Buluç, called the CFE Treaty a `unique
    and irreplaceable¦compendium of measures to build confidence and a
    wide array of tools crucial for early warning, conflict prevention and
    resolution as well as crisis management.' Alluding to Moscow's
    suspension, Ambassador Buluc added that, for the sake of European
    security, `We have to do much better by rededicating ourselves to the
    principles of common security and to fulfilling our commitments.' He
    said that Moscow's suspension of its CFE obligations has led `to its
    progressive corrosion, the gradual diminishing of the relevance of the
    measures prescribed in the Vienna Document, [and] a lessening reliance
    and political will to apply decisively and effectively the tools for
    conflict prevention, displayed so alarmingly lately in the South
    Caucasus across our borders' as well as `a severe shortage of mutual
    trust and confidence.'

    Many critics of Moscow's action argue that, since the CFE contains no
    provision for a `suspension,' the Russian government has effectively
    abrogated the treaty by violating its provisions. This position can
    also be supported by pointing to Russia's deployment of a higher level
    than permitted by the CFE of conventional forces in its southwestern
    flank. Yet, like other NATO countries, Turkey has sought not to bury
    the CFE but to praise and revive it. Turkey has also sought to
    strengthen other OSCE-related security measures.

    At the December 2009 OSCE Ministerial Council meeting, Foreign
    Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu, while not explicitly naming Russia, made
    clear his irritation with Moscow's suspension policy: `The arms
    control and confidence and security building measures are the OSCE's
    unique and fundamental contribution to the security and stability of
    Europe. It is essential to preserve and implement these arrangements.
    Unfortunately, the CFE Treaty is at present suspended by one State
    Party. The continued suspension erodes and invalidates this landmark
    regime.' DavutoÄ?lu then noted how the Russia-Georgia War `has
    demonstrated the necessity of maintaining strong international
    security mechanisms, in particular those designed to provide
    transparency and stability through a system of regional and
    sub-regional limitations on conventional armaments.'

    Nonetheless, Ankara is not eager to see NATO members or other States
    Parties retaliate in kind, which could easily lead to the treaty's
    collapse. Instead, Turkish officials have called for further
    negotiations and mutual concessions in order to restore the treaty
    framework: `We call upon all partners to redouble their efforts to
    restore the viability of the CFE regime and to avoid any further
    actions, which would result in its erosion.'

    The Turkish government has sought to strengthen related OSCE and other
    European security processes regardless of the Russian CFE suspension.
    These include proposals to improve the implementation of the 1999
    Vienna Document, the Open Skies Treaty, and additional CSBMs.
    'However, like other governments, Turkish representatives recognize
    `that the legally binding provisions of the CFE Treaty cannot be
    replaced with politically binding commitments, nor can their loss be
    compensated through reinforcing other instruments such as the 1999
    Vienna Document.'

    CONCLUSIONS: Although a military confrontation between Turkey and
    Russia is improbable, long-term rivalry cannot be excluded and Turkey
    certainly would like to keep Russian military power in its vicinity
    within reasonable bounds.

    Turkish officials have found the OSCE-CFE framework for Europe so
    useful that they have joined with other states, especially Kazakhstan,
    and sought to extend the CFE concepts to Asia in the form of the
    Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia (CICA).
    Turkey holds the CICA chairmanship for the years 2010-2012 and has
    developed an ambitious action plan, though tensions with Israel and
    between other Asian countries have thus far limited its
    implementation.

    Perhaps the most immediate concern behind Turkish unease at the
    potential demise of the CFE regime is that it could worsen tensions
    between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Although Turks sympathize with
    Azerbaijan, and are therefore unenthusiastic about Russia's extensive
    military support to Armenia, Turkish diplomacy has striven to end this
    conflict. Elements in both Armenia and Azerbaijan are eager to re-arm
    beyond the levels permitted by the CFE Treaty. Already substantial
    unaccounted-for equipment is present in the separatist region of
    Nagorno-Karabakh contested by both countries. If Armenia and
    Azerbaijan decide the CFE quota limits no longer apply, Turkey could
    experience a full-scale arms race in a neighboring region already
    primed for conflict.

    Richard Weitz, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Director, Center for
    Political-Military Analysis, Hudson Institute

    © Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint
    Center, 2010. This article may be reprinted provided that the
    following sentence be included: "This article was first published in
    the Turkey Analyst (www.turkeyanalyst.org), a biweekly publication of
    the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint
    Center".

    http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/turkey/2011/110418B.html




    From: A. Papazian
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