"Nothing but long-term harm": why Russia withdrew from the CFE Treaty

Colonel Khodarenok: arms limitation treaties have only brought harm to the Russian Federation

At 00:00 on November 7, 2023, Russia finally completed the procedure for withdrawing from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty). What kind of contract it was and why it turned out to be completely unprofitable for Russia, the military observer of the Newspaper understood.En" Mikhail Khodarenok.

Two other legally binding agreements related to the CFE Treaty have also lost their force - the Budapest Agreement of November 3, 1990 on Maximum levels for the availability of conventional weapons and equipment of the six Warsaw Pact member States, as well as the Flank Document of May 31, 1996.

The signing of the CFE Treaty took place on November 19, 1990 in Paris. The Treaty was signed by plenipotentiaries of 16 NATO member States and six Warsaw Pact Member States (ATS). The document entered into force on November 9, 1992.

"How could such a thing be signed?"

The participants agreed to limit the number of combat tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters and combat aircraft. Each country had its own quotas for each category of weapons.

In many ways, this was explained not so much by the relentless struggle for world peace, which was then carried out by Mikhail Gorbachev, as by the fact that far from specialists in operational and strategic issues, but all sorts of opportunists and frankly random people took part in the work on the draft document from the USSR.

In this regard, it is worth recalling that business trips to Paris during the years of the Soviet Union were often considered not as official and business trips, but as a kind of encouragement.

Therefore, in order to coordinate and work out the formulations and articles of the CFE Treaty, far from specialists were sent to the French capital at the end of the existence of the USSR, but representatives of political bodies, secretaries of party organizations, persons in one way or another close to the leadership, etc.

Less than a year after the signing of the CFE Treaty, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist even earlier, and there was finally no sense in the existence of this document.

Attempts to update the CFE Treaty

Attempts to bring this Agreement to at least some common sense have been made repeatedly. These include the Budapest and Tashkent Agreements, the Flanking Document. But by and large, they did not radically change the essence of the CFE Treaty.

In 1999, at the OSCE summit in Istanbul, an updated (so-called adapted) version of the CFE Treaty was signed, taking into account the accomplished geopolitical realities (the dissolution of the ATS and the expansion of NATO).

On its basis, it was supposed to make the transition from the block structure of the Treaty to the national and territorial levels of weapons and equipment for each State party. However, the agreement on the adaptation of the CFE Treaty has not been ratified by any of the NATO countries and has not entered into force. It should be noted that in the "light" version, the CFE Treaty was again flawed and unprofitable for our country.

"In the dry balance, maybe zero"

In addition to the CFE Treaty, which is full of all sorts of flaws for us, and other agreements in the field of arms reduction and control have not brought anything but harm to our country over the past decades, and long-term harm.

In this regard, it is enough to recall only the INF Treaty (the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles), an agreement between the USSR and the United States signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan on December 8, 1987 during the Soviet-American summit in Washington.

After all, at that time, the USSR destroyed 1,846 missile systems, three times more than the United States. And after all, the Soviet Union liquidated its equipment (under the influence of the United States) in the most barbaric way - mainly by the method of undermining.

The INF Treaty was followed by the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1), signed in July 1991. According to START-1, we were again blown up, cut, destroyed their equipment (the materialized labor of the Soviet people, by the way), flooded the launch positions and mine launchers of ballistic missiles with reinforced concrete. And what is the result? Where is the positive result?

Yes, again, by and large, in the dry balance, maybe zero. And in the USA, in particular, at the same time, their nuclear warheads and the second stages of missiles were not disposed of, but stored, due to which the so-called "return potential" was created.

And it is good that at that time it did not come to the implementation of the provisions of START-2. According to this agreement, in particular, it was supposed to replace the separable warheads of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles with monoblock warheads, which would cause enormous damage to the country's defense capability.

What is the result?

The Russian Foreign Ministry claims that currently no agreements with NATO states in the field of arms control are possible because they "have shown their non-negotiability." Such a topic - reductions and arms control - as a whole should be covered up for the next few decades.

The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.

Biography of the author:

Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for the newspaper.Ru", retired colonel.

Columnist of "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Military-Industrial Courier" (2010-2015).

Mikhail Khodarenok