Conventional Arms Control in Europe: Overcome by Events, or New Perspectives?

Conventional arms control may be moribund and irrelevant to European security crises today. However, if a common vision of what constitutes European security can be agreed upon, experience with conventional arms control and other arms control and confidence-building measures can be used to build a cooperative regime that adds vital predictability and stability to the new security architecture. The OSCE itself is the repository of security principles and of practical experience in supporting them, including through conventional arms control measures. Previous treaties and agreed confidence-building mechanisms, including those outside the OSCE, have contributed valuable lessons learned and suggestions for what might work in future arms control arrangements. Some of the most important include determining what can and should be controlled, the importance of a consultative body to oversee implementation, inspection shortcomings and the possible role for a professional inspectorate within the OSCE, the utility of focusing on activity as opposed to merely size of inventories, and evolving ideas of transparency. There is every reason to believe that it is possible to construct a workable arms control arrangement to meet contemporary and future needs. Such an arrangement would be based on limiting things that can be reasonably counted and are crucial to cross-border military intervention, on transparency, underpinned by declarations and effective inspections, and on an effective implementation body. The most important lesson learned is that the OSCE knows how to do these things, and this is territory that is neither unfamiliar nor forbidding.