This study shows that arms control agreements reflect rather than affectrelations between the parties. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces inEurope CFE codi... » 

This study shows that arms control agreements reflect rather than affectrelations between the parties. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces inEurope CFE codified parity between NATO and the Sovietled Warsaw TreatyOrganization WTO in November 1990. CFE thus reflected the status quo at theend of the cold war but the benefits were short lived at least for Russia.Although still widely viewed in the west as the cornerstone of security andstability in postCold War Europe from the Russian perspective CFE was soonovertaken by events. With the collapse of the WTO and the Soviet Union in 1991it became impossible to talk of a military balance between east and west inEurope especially as all the former WTO states opted for membership in NATO.The other state parties worked hard to adjust and adapt the treaty to meetRussian concerns about its new weakness relative to NATO but three sets ofissues complicated Russian acceptance of CFE limits. The first was NATOenlargement which though not directed against Moscow certainly underscoredRussias weakness relative to NATO. The second was Russias heavy handedsuppression of the Chechen independence movement begun by Boris Yeltsin in1994 which after September 11 2001 President Putin rationalized as part ofthe global war on terrorism. Putin also used 911 as an excuse not to withdrawtroops and equipment from Georgia a commitment made by Russia when the adaptedCFE Treaty was signed in Istanbul in November 1999. The third was Russianopposition to increasingly aggressive USled military operations in the postCold War era in the Balkans in the 1990s and against Iraq in 2003. Russiacooperated with the operationagainst the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002 butwas increasingly concerned with what appeared to be permanent US military basesin central Asia. «