Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

trations of forces led to the original CFE Treaty’s geographic
structure of limitation, to the adapted Treaty’s
national <strong>and</strong> territorial construct, <strong>and</strong> to the VDoc’s
thresholds for notifying <strong>and</strong> observing, <strong>and</strong> its constraints
on conducting military activities—including
stationing <strong>and</strong> activities within national territory. On
the other h<strong>and</strong>, basic principles of honoring national
sovereignty were embedded in the CFE Treaty, <strong>and</strong>
reinforced in its Adaptation Agreement, in the form of
requiring formal host nation consent for the stationing
of forces outside national territory.
In the first instance, the parties have accepted
limits on their own sovereignty by adopting ceilings
on the amounts of forces they may hold in the area
of application, <strong>and</strong>, derivatively, where those forces
may be located, by zone or territory. In a couple of
cases of disproportionately large geography <strong>and</strong> force
size (i.e., Russia <strong>and</strong> Ukraine), zonal <strong>and</strong> territorial
boundaries cut across national boundaries to establish
further sublimits on force concentration in sensitive
areas. Enter the enduring “flank” debate, whereby
Russia has perennially chafed at these sublimits as an
infringement on its sovereignty—which of course it is,
like all the other provisions of the Treaty (<strong>and</strong> treaties
in general)—hence the need for its agreement, signature,
<strong>and</strong> ratification. Nevertheless, the debate goes
on, <strong>and</strong> has loomed large in Russia’s “suspension” of
its CFE obligations since December 2007.
Looming even larger, in the second instance, is the
issue of host nation consent, hung up on the residual
Russian presence in Georgia <strong>and</strong> Moldova, which
combined with the flank issue essentially to derail the
CFE Adaptation Agreement, resulting eventually in
Russia “suspending” its participation, <strong>and</strong> in turn the
reciprocal countermeasures recently undertaken by
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