INTRODUCTION
With the end of the Cold War and the period of adjustment that followed it, the United States and Russia have an opportunity to take the lead in a number of nonnuclear areas of arms control which cry out for action. These include further reductions in conventional arms, controls on transfer or export of conventional weapons and missile components and technologies, abolition of the use and production of antipersonnel landmines, the application of confidence- and security-building measures to areas of potential conflict, the application of the conventions prohibiting the production or use of chemical and biological weapons, and steps to foreclose introduction of new weapons technologies.

Taking the leadership position in these areas will require political courage on the part of both the American and Russian administrations, but the historical moment of opportunity is unique, and is unlikely to repeat itself. For the United States, decisions to lead the forward progress on these issues require a fundamental shift toward recognition that in the present-day strategic situation all reductions in the number of weapons in the world, and in possibilities for their use, are in the national interest. This would, of course, be a radical shift from the long-standing national habit of giving primacy to maintenance of weapons systems that are useful for specific defense needs.

The U.S. decision not to join the Anti-Personnel Landmine Convention was an example of the traditional American approach characteristic during the Cold War—putting perceived defense needs first, and accepting only those arms control measures that do not have any negative effect on American defense potential. But true leadership on the part of the strongest country in the world must entail at least some willingness to sacrifice parochial interests. Only a confident president can overrule the Pentagon on such matters, and until there is strong political interest in arms control in the United States, it is unlikely that any president will do so.

For Russia, leadership toward nonnuclear arms control would mean accepting commitments not to seek to re-establish the country as a military super power. This will not be easy, because the reduced stature of the country on the world stage, including its more limited military might, has become one of the principal issues in Russian political life, with enormous potential for populist appeal. Russia is also looking to the remnants of its defense industry—once the second most powerful in the world—to contribute importantly to the weakened economy through strong exports of weapons and military equipment. These factors continue to generate pressures on the Kremlin to reassert and reinforce the military establishment, rather than to impose on it new and unpopular arms control commitments.

For both countries, increased restrictions have broad implications for the defense industry, with possible economic effects that will be difficult to digest. Nonetheless, the agenda laid out below deserves careful consideration, because its components could have an historic impact on the potential for armed conflict or the spread of terrorism in the world of the future.

CONVENTIONAL FORCE REDUCTIONS
The steps taken thus far to bring the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty into line with the new realities of the post-Cold War period are constructive as far as they go. The current process of negotiation on the further agenda of Basic Elements for Adaptation, as set out in the Basic Elements Document, signed July 23, 1997, should be pursued, although the participants have shown little inclination to find mutually acceptable solutions. The current members of NATO have proposed a 10 percent reduction in the aggregate total of their entitlements to weapons covered by the treaty, but without actual reductions, because real holdings are less than entitlements. This is not enough. Ultimately, an adapted treaty that can strengthen stability at significantly lower levels of forces in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia should be agreed upon and reinforced through an appropriate inspection regime.

In pursuing these negotiations, the member states of NATO, especially the United States, should bear in mind that the CFE Treaty was designed to address the problems of disparity which existed during the Cold War. These were problems created by the overwhelming imbalance in major conventional weapons between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which broadly favored the Warsaw Pact, and appeared to contribute to instability by reinforcing whatever temptations may have existed to carry out an aggression against the West.

With the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact, as well as the breakup of the Soviet Union, these factors simply no longer exist. In their place is a new imbalance in the other direction, with an overwhelming disparity in major conventional weapons in favor of NATO. While it is true that European countries have declared that they are not enemies, and no one currently believes that any country in Europe contemplates a major military adventure, memories and latent suspicions do exist. This is why the CFE Treaty should ultimately be revised so that the current imbalances do not add to instability instead of eliminating it.

A key related issue is the expansion of NATO, which has thus far added three prospective members to the Alliance. A basic tenet of NATO expansion is that new members must be able to defend themselves on a par with the old members, so that mutual security is not reduced through the expansion process. The logic is that adding vulnerable new members could involve allies in an unwanted military confrontation, thus actually lowering their security. New members are therefore encouraged not only to maintain their inventories of major weapons systems, but to modernize and improve them. In addition, the prospective members have refused any new CFE reductions until they are actually members of the Alliance. These factors have dramatically increased potential NATO inventories of major conventional weapons systems just when neighboring states to the east were, de facto, suffering major reductions through dissolution of alliance and state.

The holdings currently permitted under the CFE Treaty are seriously out of balance, For example, an enlarged NATO (16+3) is entitled to hold 23,522 tanks, and actually has 17,579 tanks in the total of its national inventories. In contrast, Russia is entitled to hold 6,400 tanks, and actually holds only 5,541 (see table).

NATO expansion, therefore, by reversing instead of eliminating weapons imbalances, runs the risk of creating new instabilities, contrary to the principal objective of the NATO allies in undertaking the CFE negotiations. The CFE Treaty process should be used to rectify this effect by carefully negotiated reductions that create regional balances and reinforce growing trust, rather than the opposite. The United States and Russia can play a leading role in steering the CFE adaptation process in this direction.

The NATO extension process is therefore directly linked with that of the future adaptation of the CFE Treaty. The United States should recognize this consideration and make it a central feature of its planning for both of these processes. A greater American understanding for Russian sensitivities and legitimate feelings of vulnerability is needed as the CFE adaptation process moves ahead.

Both NATO and the CFE Treaty should be confidence- and security-enhancing mechanisms, and should not be elements that can contribute to misunderstanding and instability. Care must be taken that, as the two processes move forward, this overall objective is kept in the forefront. In addition, it would be well if all sides recognized the general benefits of moving toward lower overall levels of weaponry, provided the essential requirements of self-defense and regional balance are maintained.

This is not to question the utility of NATO in the present European context. While it is true that the threat of major war has essentially disappeared in the European region, the wars in former Yugoslavia have shown that the potential for conflicts still exists, albeit on a local scale. These conflicts pose the danger of escalation and expansion, and so require adequate control and response mechanisms. NATO has convincingly demonstrated that it is the only organization in Europe currently capable of dealing with such local conflicts, and as long as this is the case, NATO will continue to be needed.

However, NATO was originally conceived to offset the military power of the USSR and its allies, by assembling a single armed force with military capabilities equal to those which threatened Europe from the east. It would be ironic if, at a time when the potential enemy has ceased to exist, the very existence of an enlarged NATO became a destabilizing factor. Without eliminating its potential for re-arming to respond to some future major attack, primary NATO primary energies in the present situation should be directed toward honing its abilities for responding to Bosnia-type challenges.

Planning for an organization which can respond to Bosnia-like conflicts should also permit deeper cuts in major conventional weaponry, and such an objective should be given careful consideration in the ongoing European Security Forum of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). We should bear in mind that in today’s world, Europe appears as one of the few areas of generalized security, where the risk of a major war is low (ex-Yugoslavia being the prominent exception). From this perspective there can be very little justification for the fact that Europe retains the highest levels of major conventional weapons systems in the world.

Another area in which the CFE Treaty should be strengthened is in its prohibitions against transfer to other countries of weapons systems that are reduced under treaty provisions. Since the signing of the Treaty there have been a number of reported instances in which weapons systems subject to reduction were simply transferred to another state. This is not only contrary to the spirit of the Treaty, it also contributes to regional imbalances and instability. The Treaty adaptation process should address this problem by adopting a tough control mechanism to prevent such transfers.

Subregional efforts under the CFE Treaty have had mixed results, but should be pursued, particularly in areas where the potential for local conflicts is relatively high: the Balkans, the Baltic states, and Greece-Turkey-Cyprus.

CONVENTIONAL ARMS EXPORTS
One of the most difficult arms control issues to bring under control has traditionally been the field of exports of conventional weapons. This is because the biggest exporters of conventional weapons are also the most powerful states, conspicuously led by the United States as the world’s number one arms supplier. In 1997, according to the statistics of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States accounted for a full 43 percent of all weapons exports.

Arms exports are an important element in the economies of the countries concerned, and competition for export markets is keen. Exporting countries do not follow the same political guidelines, and a country that is under an arms embargo by one exporter may be a favored client for another. Also, modem warfare depends to a large degree on the application of information technologies to the battlefield, so that computers have become a major component of all major weapons systems, such as tanks, aircraft, and missiles. Tracking the international trade in computer systems with possible military uses is a challenging current aspect of controlling arms exports.

Technological advances play an important part in arms sales, and competition for exports undoubtedly is a factor in maintenance of military research and development budgets. Countries that are in the forefront of technological development may have an edge in overseas sales, though pricing is also an important factor. Thus favoring the sale or control of a specific technology can also result from commercial motivations. Since the United States remains the world’s technological leader, it enjoys an advantage in weapons exports. Russia, on the other hand, can currently offer cut-rate prices on many weapons systems, the quality of which is still high. Western commercial cooperation with Russian military production companies could bring a combination of lower prices and the latest technologies, now that restrictions on the transfer of many technologies to Russia have been relaxed.

Even reliable statistics on arms exports are difficult to develop. Both the United Nations and the OSCE have systems for reporting arms transfers, but individual national practices in reporting under these systems vary widely, and some countries do not report at all. The U.N. Register of Conventional Arms is therefore incomplete and unsatisfactory as a worldwide data base on this issue, and those interested in understanding the scope of the problem must use privately produced documents such as the SIPRI Yearbook.

Arms exports have been justified as part of the game of world influence, and also as a way of establishing national and regional security. In addition, it has been argued with some justification that controls on weapons exports would be extremely difficult to verify. The end of the Cold War appeared to provide a unique opportunity to address this issue, if the leading arms exporters, and especially the United States, were prepared to accept at least some reductions in the economic and political benefits that come from such exports.

Despite an initial decline in total arms exports following the close of the Cold War, however, total exports began to rise again in 1994 and have grown steadily since then. This phenomenon can be seen in the following table, which covers exports of major conventional weapons systems only, since exports of small arms are very difficult to track. Many of these exports go to chronically unstable regions of the world, such as the Middle East, where the danger of a war that could spread and involve the arms exporting countries, is relatively high. The leading importers of such weapons are Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, South Korea, China, Japan, India, Greece and Kuwait.

To its credit, the European Union has begun discussion of a "Code of Conduct" for arms sales, a proposal of two major arms exporters, Britain and France. But any possibility of real progress in this area will depend on Washington’s willingness to take an aggressive leadership role and to sacrifice some short-term commercial interests for the longer range objective of greater world stability at lower levels of armaments.

The United States and Russia should jointly convene a meeting of representatives of the biggest arms exporters (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Germany and China) to consider how to begin addressing this complex issue.

EXPORT OF CONVENTIONAL MISSILES, COMPONENTS, AND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES
Over the years there has been a steady effort to track and control trade in conventional missiles, their components, and related technologies. The basic reference point under this heading is the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which now has 29 member states, including both Russia and the United States, but not China, a key exporter of such materiel, or North Korea.

The point about differing political guidelines for arms exports also applies here, and export by China and North Korea of missile systems, their components, or technologies is a major concern for other states, particularly the United States For example, China’s export of such systems to Iran and Pakistan, as well as North Korea’s exports to the Middle East, have appeared to the United States to contribute to instability and the possibility of conflict in the regions of the Middle East, and South and Southwest Asia.

A related international regime is the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, the successor to the Cold War’s COCOM regime. The Wassenaar Arrangement seeks to control in particular computer technologies such as encryption, which can have military applications. These technologies are essential for the military use of missiles.

Russia joined the MTCR in 1995. However, Russian practice since that date varies from the standards established by the regime, particularly in regard to possible Russian transfer of missile- guidance and solid-fuel technologies to Iran. This has been the subject of senior-level discussions between the United States and Russia.

Clearly, U.S.-Russian cooperation in the area of exports of missiles and missile technologies is a central factor if any international control over this type of export may be possible. A first step is for the two countries to recognize that they have a common interest in preventing the spread of these technologies because of their potential for contributing to possible hostilities, the escalation of local conflicts, or an escalating threat of terrorist attacks. Ultimately, these weapons can be turned against their exporters. The United States and Russia should therefore intensify their bilateral discussions of this problem, with a view to identifying the common ground between them, and using that as a basis for encouraging a broader and more consistently restrictive international practice.

LANDMINE CONVENTION
On December 3-4, 1997, in Ottawa, 121 states signed the "Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines, and Their Destruction" (the APM Convention). Among those countries that did not sign were the United States, Russia, China, and a number of countries from chronically unstable areas such as the Middle East. The negotiation of the APM Convention was subject to a very different dynamic than other similar conventions—it was accomplished outside the U.N. system, and without the leadership of the major powers, especially the United States. In short, the Convention came into being because of a worldwide groundswell of resentment against the human destruction caused by anti-personnel landmines. The APM Convention now has been ratified by 40 countries and will enter into force on March 1, 1999, still without the support of the United States, Russia or China.

The United States and Russia should review their positions on the APM Convention and should adopt the present convention without reservation. The United States, in particular, is in an extremely awkward position as a holdout from such a popular convention. As the leading technological and military super power in the world, the United States cannot claim that it requires exceptions to the APM Convention for legitimate needs. It should find alternative ways to meet the needs of its military forces in Korea, which are certainly legitimate but cannot justify such a glaring disparity between U.S. policy and world opinion.

CONFIDENCE- AND SECURITY-BUILDING MEASURES (CSBMS)
This arms control subheading is often overlooked as "arms control junk food," but deserves full attention as a valid and sometimes uniquely useful approach to security problems. The simple truth is that openness in security matters is the best guarantee of peaceful intentions, and is therefore a fundamental element in international stability. It is a fact of life that a country can be confident about its own security if it is certain that its neighbors have no aggressive intentions toward it.

CSBMs could be an extremely fruitful area for U.S.-Russian cooperation, based on a range of positive mutual experience in dealing with CSBM and other treaty inspection regimes for a number of years. CSBM regimes are particularly useful in regions that have traditional patterns of local hostilities between or among neighboring states. The areas where CSBM regimes could be usefully applied are numerous, including the Korean peninsula, South Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Baltic States, Central Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Often, CSBM regimes can be introduced where mutual suspicions permit no other form of arms control. The regimes the United States and Russia have adopted together, either bilaterally or multilaterally, have generally worked well, and have created useful precedents for other regimes requiring on-site inspection. There is now a wealth of experience in how to deal with inspections, military observations, and exchanges of military information, which form the heart of the confidence-building approach to security problems.

American and Russian mediators together could help in negotiating CSBM regimes between hostile states, could police such regimes, and could train military units in how to carry out and respect them. Such team efforts could help to convince reticent military establishments of the utility of CSBMs, and of the fact that they add to, rather than undercut, defense capabilities.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION (CWC)
The CWC was signed in 1993 but was only ratified by the U.S. Congress on April 24, 1997, shortly before it entered into force on April 29, 1997. The delay in ratification resulted from misgivings over the verifiability of the Convention. Although the CWC may be imperfect, now that it is in place, the United States and Russia should nonetheless take the lead in ensuring that it is carried out and enforced. The United States and Russia should also take the lead in strengthening the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) established by the convention, seconding their best-qualified personnel to it and insisting on technically qualified personnel from other countries. They should support a stringent inspection regime, showing leadership by fully opening their own facilities for such inspections. Countries that refuse to accept inspections should be subjected to international sanction, so that they are discouraged from becoming safe-havens for development of these weapons by terrorist organizations. The United States should provide further financial and technical assistance for destruction of Russian CW stocks and should consider doing the same for other governments that have CW stocks, wish to destroy them, but do not have the technical or financial means to do so. Such activity is in U.S. and the world’s interest, as well as that of the countries concerned, and will be cheaper than having to contain accidents after they occur.

BIOLOGICAL AND TOXIN WEAPONS CONVENTION (BTWC)
This is not a new convention, since it was originally signed and entered into force in 1975. However, it remained on a back burner until the 1990s largely because it made no provision for verification. The fact is, biological agents and production facilities are extremely difficult to differentiate from normal products and laboratories in use for legitimate purposes. However, this verification problem was recognized at the BTWC Review Conference of 1996, and a special Ad Hoc Commission of Scientists was established to develop "potential verification measures." Negotiations on a verification protocol to the BTWC continue, with the objective of reporting to the Fifth Review Conference of the Convention, in 2001.

The United States and Russia, with their combined expertise and influence, should jointly seek to accelerate work on the verification protocol, with a view to ensuring that an effective, workable and broadly acceptable verification regime is proposed and adopted at the Fifth Review Conference. Such a regime should build on the experience of the last decade by introducing a stringent inspection system that includes effective challenge inspection arrangements. More accurate thresholds for holdings of key biological agents should also be fixed, and better definitions of categories of biological agents established. To accomplish these objectives the active cooperation of relevant industrial sectors should be solicited.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES
The United States has the only real capacity now to develop new technologies, though one never knows where a breakthrough will occur. The United States spends more than seven times as much on military research and development as France, which holds second place in this category. Nonetheless, the United States should sacrifice this advantage and advocate a strong treaty mechanism that forecloses introduction of new technologies, especially new types of weapons of mass destruction. This is a real test of the American attitude and of the U.S. administration’s determination to reduce the potential destructiveness of war. The very fact that the United States currently stands virtually alone in its ability to carry out the research and development that could produce new types of weapons, signifies that the present time is unique in history for reaching an agreement on restrictions that will preclude the emergence and deployment of new weapons technologies.

CONCLUSION
The post-Cold War period contains dangers as well as opportunities. The principal danger for Russia is that the economic problems associated with the conversion to a free economic system could produce retrograde political developments and a return to a more authoritarian system of government. For the United States, a principal danger is that its new position as "the world’s only super power" could lead to an arrogance toward the concerns of the rest of the world and a tendency to seek only U.S. national advantages. Both countries must work to avoid these dangers, as well as the common perils of escalating local conflicts and terrorism.

The arms control field is both a test and an opportunity for the two former enemies to show world leadership rather than to focus on their parochial concerns. The areas discussed in this paper are complex, but they are of broad concern to all countries. The challenge to the United States and Russia is to harness their expertise in arms control and the influence they both enjoy, and to use it to lead the wave of general interest which currently exists around the world for reduced levels of armaments. Together, Russia and the United States can make a difference in these areas, during this unique time of opportunity.

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