Negotiating European Security: Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR)
This article has four objectives. The first is simply to indicate where the MBFR talks are and from whence they have come. The second is to summarize the negotiating principles that underlie the positions of East and West. The third is to outline the major outstanding issues that continue to block agreement in Vienna. And the fourth is to assess future prospects for MBFR, the relative merits of alternative forums for serious discussions about arms control in Europe, and the pressing need for an MBFR strategy.
Mutual Force Reductions: A Military Perspective
Negotiations over the "mutual reduction of forces and armaments and associated measures" in Europe started in October 1973. iifter initial agreement on the precise geographic area where reductions are to be made, and on the principle of including associated measures (i.e., constraints on military forces for the purpose of enhancing political confidence), the negotiations in Vienna have made no progress, taking a back seat to more pressing negotiations in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Western negotiators in what the West calls MBFR (Mutual Balanced Force Reductions) have focused on ground forces, seeking to achieve a parity of strength through asymmetric reductions. Thus NATO proposed in the first phase that the United States would reduce 29,000 men and the Soviets 68,000 men, to include a tank army of 1700 tanks; in the second phase, the ground forces of both sides would be reduced ro a common ceiling of 700,000 (which according to Western data would mean a total reduction of 199,000 for the Pact and 92,000 for NATO). NATO has sought to make this proposal more attractive by stipulating that if the Pact accepted a collective common ceiling as the basis for negotiation, the United States would in addition withdraw 1,000 tactical nuclear warheads, 54 F-4 nuclearcapable aircraft and 36 Pershing medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs). The most recent (October 1977) Western proposals waive the requirement that a complete tank army (which are the best equipped, most forward, and most ready Soviet divisions) be withdrawn, substituting instead any 5 Soviet divisions and the equivalent number of personnel and tanks (1500-1700) in these divisions. Warsaw Pact negotiators have sought equal reductions, first a "symbolic" reduction of 20,000 men by each side and then equal percentage reductions of ground and air forces and nuclear-delivery systems in Central Europe of 5 percent to be followed by a second 10 percent cut by each side. The Pact proposal emphasizes national subceilings, limits upon the modernization of forces inside the reductions area, and restrictions on new defense arrangements among the parties to the agreement. The Warsaw Pact is thus seeking to freeze by international agreement its present military advantages in Europe. The specific Warsaw Pact goals seem to be to limit the growth of the German Bundeswehr and (paradoxically) to contain the downward volatility of American deployments in Europe. The West's main goal has been political, to hold the line
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1