Two techniques for verifying conventional reductions

Conventional forces, long the forgotten stepchild of the arms control process, have recently taken on an unprecedented importance. In the United States, the Bush administration has placed the question of the conventional balance in Europe at the top of its negotiating agenda. And the NATO summit meeting in May 1989 resolved a difficult intra-alliance dispute on nuclear modernization by pledging to reach a conventional reductions agreement with the Eastern bloc in the short span of one year. The author attempt here to develop two approaches to minimize data exchanges - the envelope scheme and tagging - which could be applied in the event of conventional arms control agreements in Europe. In this context, they confine themselves to a scenario imposing restrictions on the levels of certain categories of weapon systems used for waging offensive warfare or mounting surprise attacks. NATO and the Warsaw Pact have already agreed at Negotiation Conventional armed Forced in Europe (CFE) that such treaty-limited items (TLIs) would include tanks, artillery, armored troop carries, combat aircraft, and helicopters, though precise definitions are still to be worked out. The emerging CFE agreement is expected to cover troop levels as well, but this article will focus on verification ofmore » armaments.« less