Budgetary and Military Consequences of the CFE Treaty: An Update

On November 19, 1990, the sixteen members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO and six members of the Warsaw Pact signed a treaty limiting conventional armed forces in Europe CFE. This historic document, referred to as the CFE treaty, will require significant reductions in the number of conventional weapons located on European soil between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains in the central part of the Soviet Union. Weapons held by either alliance in this region in excess of those permitted by the treaty will have to be destroyed. The Warsaw Pact, which currently controls far more weapons than does NATO, will have to destroy many more weapons and reduce its inventories by a much larger proportion. Specifically, the Warsaw Pact will have to destroy over 34,500 weapons, including tanks, armored combat vehicles, pieces of artillery, and combat aircraft representing more than 30 percent of its current arsenal. After excluding weapons once controlled by East Germany, NATO will be required to destroy about 3,700 weapons, or only 5 percent of its total arsenal. The treaty also permits each side to conduct extensive inspections of the other sides military facilities to ensure compliance with its provisions. The treaty has not yet been submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification because of controversy over an interpretation by the Soviet Union that certain of its weapons are not constrained by the treaty. No other parties to the treaty support the Soviet interpretation. The numbers used in this analysis are based on declarations made by the parties to the treaty at the time of its signing. Depending on the outcome of the controversy, some of the numbers could change but not enough to change the estimated savings or basic conclusions presented in this memorandum.