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 (), a biweekly publication of
the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint
Center”.
From: A. Papazian