MOSCOW. (Alexei Arbatov for RIA Novosti) - What does Moscow hope to achieve by imposing a moratorium on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) on December 13?
If Russia wanted the treaty to be abolished, it would simply withdraw from it in accordance with the relevant article and notify the other participants about its decision in advance. But Moscow prefers to impose a moratorium on the CFE Treaty, which shows that it wants to save it by encouraging NATO to ratify its adapted version as soon as possible.
In this case, Russia will lift its moratorium and will resume implementing the treaty, which it ratified in 2004.
Moscow is not satisfied with the response of its partners in the treaty. The West keeps criticizing Russia for its failure to abide by the 1999 Istanbul agreements. Russia has recently removed its military bases from Georgia - ahead of schedule, but it still has peacekeepers in Abkhasia and South Ossetia. It also has peacekeepers in Transdnestr, as well as a small contingent guarding an ammunition depot.
NATO keeps voicing its concern in this connection, pleading the Istanbul agreements. Moscow replies that the Istanbul agreements did not imply the withdrawal of troops by a certain date. They only provide for a relevant agreement, for instance with Georgia, where Russia only has peacekeepers rather than bases, which is a fundamental difference. Withdrawal of peacekeepers is linked with the settlement of the relevant conflicts rather than the CFE Treaty.
In general, Russia does not believe that NATO has serious grounds for not ratifying the new draft of the CFE Treaty and considers its adamant refusal to do so as an attempt to conduct policy from a position of strength, all the more so since NATO is expanding eastward, closer to Russia's borders and increasing its conventional forces superiority. So the CFE Treaty is only a hindrance to it.
In turn, Moscow does not find the CFE Treaty in its 1999 version quite suitable. In its opinion, it is merely a step toward the formation of a more stable and equitable system of confidence and security in Europe. But Russia still ratified it in 2004 in the hope that it will be supplemented by a number of important conditions, which it advanced on a special CFE session last summer. If NATO countries ratified the adapted treaty as it is, these conditions could be discussed later.
What would happen if the West continues ignoring Moscow's signals? In this case, Russia will stop granting information on conventional force deployment, receiving NATO inspections, and abiding by the flank restrictions. If deemed necessary, additional troops will be deployed in the Caucasus, say, in Armenia (exclusively as an example). But we won't violate the CFE-imposed limits on conventional arms. We do not have such plans and we are not in a position to surpass these limits, judging by the acquisition of conventional arms by our forces.
Our primary concern is NATO's eastward expansion. Russia also makes wrong signals from time to time, which aggravates the situation, but NATO is still the main problem. Its policy is making both the original and the adapted CFE Treaty versions pointless. NATO could ease Moscow's concern by promising not to exceed, during its expansion, the aggregate ceilings for arms imposed by the treaty in 1990 on its 16 members. But instead it is simply pocketing the arms quotas, which were originally allocated to the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. This is the root of all the problems with the CFE Treaty.
Russia has many more reasons to walk out of the treaty than the United States had for withdrawing from the ABM Treaty in 2002. But Moscow is not rushing to burn the bridges and hopes that the West will display common sense.
Alexei Arbatov is a member of the research council of the Moscow Carnegie Center
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
