The INF Treaty: Eliminating Intermediate-Range Nuclear Missiles, 1987 to the Present

(from Part 4: Arms Control Activities Since 1945)

______________________

The U.S.-Soviet agreement to eliminate intermediate-range (500 to 5,000 km, or 312 to 3,120 mi.) nuclear missiles, known as the INF Treaty, was signed on 8 December 1987 and ratified by the U.S. Senate on 27 May 1988. The agreement was the culmination of a protracted domestic and international debate about the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe and, more generally, about the basic legitimacy of United States-Soviet arms control agreements. As the first agreement between the two sides to eliminate--rather than simply reduce or constrain--an entire class of weapons, the INF Treaty is popularly believed to be a major arms control success story.

The INF Treaty owes its genesis to a decision taken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the last months of the administration of President Jimmy Carter to deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe. In the effort to counter the growing superiority of Soviet nuclear forces targeted against Western Europe, especially the three-warhead SS-20 missile that began to emerge in 1976, the NATO alliance agreed in 1979 that 108 Pershing II and 464 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLMS) would be deployed in five European countries--the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Italy.

To temper opposition from European publics and from the Soviet Union, the NATO members also agreed that these new deployments would be accompanied by arms control negotiations. This so-called dual-track decision was to form two parallel and complementary approaches to the quest for nuclear stability and a credible U.S. nuclear umbrella in Europe. Limitations on European-based weapons were to be pursued after the conclusion of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement (SALT II)-- an accord that subsequently was never submitted for ratification and was replaced under the Reagan administration by the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START).

The declaration of United States-Soviet strategic parity in the late 1970s, codified in SALT II, had focused attention on the military balance in Europe. U.S. and Soviet parity in the strategic balance, accompanied by increasing nuclear and conventional force disparities in the European theater, meant that the U.S. nuclear guarantee to Europe was seen by some strategists as no longer credible. Based on a strategy of "flexible response," U.S. deterrence in Europe required the ability to respond and counter any level of Soviet military aggression. Without European-based weapons of sufficient range and accuracy to reach targets in the Soviet Union, according to this argument, the only way to counter Soviet military advances in the region would be to resort to strategic forces, a situation that might inhibit U.S. leaders in a crisis and cause them to question whether to honor the United States' commitment to European security. The INF systems were intended to redress this imbalance, and to allay European concerns about the U.S. commitment to the collective security of the alliance.

Upon taking office in January 1981, the administration of President Ronald Reagan questioned whether it was bound by the 1979 Carter dual-track agreement; moreover, some Reagan officials hoped that the United States could embark on a full-scale rearmament program before engaging in any discussion of arms control in Europe or elsewhere. Hard-line critics of the Soviet Union and arms control made up most of the new president's cabinet, many of them veterans of the highly successful anti-SALT II lobby, the Committee on the Present Danger. In addition to INF negotiator Paul Nitze, the committee's former chairman, members included Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Fred Iklé, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) Director Eugene Rostow and his successor, Kenneth Adelman, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Richard Perle, among others. The new administration's platform pledged to restore U.S. superiority over the USSR, a promise underscored by an unprecedentedly ambitious military modernization program and harsh rhetoric about the Soviet Union's hegemonial ambitions, disregard for human rights, and record of "cheating" in arms control agreements.

In the first phase of INF-policy formulation, differences in opinion among Reagan advisers about how to proceed revealed the disparate preoccupations of hard-liners, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Perle, along with career foreign policy officials, including Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger, and the State Department's Director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs Richard Burt.

For some, proceeding with the dual-track decision not only represented excessive accommodation of pacifist trends in Europe; domestic credibility also could be undercut. Although Weinberger and Perle had substantive as well as political objections to the dual-track decision, mostly they objected to the idea that they were being pressured to honor an agreement forged by a prior administration they saw as discredited. By contrast, Haig, Eagleburger, and Burt believed that European views had to be taken into consideration for the alliance support of the INF deployments to survive. U.S. indifference to European views not only risked European refusal to proceed with the force-modernization program, they argued, but it could damage NATO cohesion for years to come.

When the Reagan administration resolved to pursue INF negotiations in late 1981, it was clear that this was a reluctant political concession to NATO needed to ensure the scheduled deployments, not an enthusiastic embrace of arms control. By the early 1980s, the support of the NATO allies for U.S. deployments of nuclear-tipped missiles to Europe was clearly on the wane. Growing European peace movements had unified around their opposition to the missiles, and the Soviet Union employed an aggressive propaganda campaign designed to capitalize on this sentiment and to sow dissent within the NATO alliance. The allies began pressuring the Reagan administration about INF as early as January 1981, when West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, facing a domestic peace movement and a fractious parliament, stated publicly that the United States had to give Europe a binding assurance that negotiations on INF would resume without delay. When the case for arms control was made by European governments, especially conservative leaders like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, the seriousness of the peace movements and their effects on the stability of NATO were difficult to ignore.


Negotiations

The administration submitted its first formal INF proposals to the Soviet Union in December 1981. President Reagan had revealed the new U.S. negotiating posture, in what was to become known as the "zero option," in a speech on 18 November. According to this concept, the United States offered to cancel the impending missile deployments in return for Soviet elimination of all intermediate-range missiles deployed in Europe and Asia.

The zero option was aimed at appeasing European opinion while buying time to ensure that the deployments proceeded on schedule. As crafted by Assistant Secretary of Defense Perle, this bold proposal was seen as a way to outmaneuver the Soviet Union politically and to defuse the European anti-nuclear movement, providing maximum appeal to public opinion. For President Reagan, the zero option demonstrated the new administration's determination to replace traditional, incremental arms control measures with a more radical approach that could achieve deeper reductions in armaments.

The State Department had been pressing for a more cautious proposal that would allow U.S. deployments to go forward "at the lowest possible equal level." But critics of this view, including Perle, argued that allowing any number of Soviet missiles to remain was militarily unsound. Accepting a notional level of 600 warheads, for example, overlooked that the Soviets would still have nuclear superiority in Europe, according to this view.

The U.S. proposal, as expected by the hard-liners, was instantly rejected by the Soviet Union. Trading prospective deployments for forces in place, the Soviets argued, was unprecedentedly one-sided and inequitable. This opinion was shared by many analysts in the United States and Europe, who believed that the U.S. proposal was intended to sabotage any prospects for arms control. As Haig in his Caveat later argued, "It was absurd to expect the Soviets to dismantle an existing force of 1,100 warheads, which they had already put into the field at a cost of billions of rubles, in exchange for a promise from the United States not to deploy a missile force that we had not yet begun to build and that had aroused such violent controversies in Europe" (p. 229).

The decision to adopt the zero option ensured that the INF negotiations would be controversial. The proposal met opposition among Reagan advisers and from elements of the military. Aside from its dubious negotiability, the zero option was a contravention of the alliance agreement in 1979 that new nuclear forces in Europe were needed, regardless of the level of Soviet forces, to link U.S. and European security firmly. Many experts argued that deployment of the highly capable Pershing II missile, in particular, was vital as a symbol of the U.S. nuclear commitment.

The Soviet Union countered with a proposal for staged reductions in European-based forces, including French and British forces and U.S. air-and sea-based nuclear-capable forces committed to NATO'S defense. Although the West has always insisted that only U.S. and Soviet land-based systems be included in the negotiations, the Soviet Union maintained that any system capable of targeting Soviet territory should be counted.

In the effort to forestall an obvious stalemate in the talks that could exacerbate political problems in Europe, the United States modified its INF negotiating position several times between February 1982 and October 1983 to allow some Soviet INF systems to remain and to permit a smaller deployment of U.S. forces to go forward. The much publicized July 1982 "walk in the woods" proposal discussed by U.S. INF negotiator Paul Nitze and his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky, for instance, would have reduced the number of SS-20 missiles to 75, canceled the Pershing IIs, and limited cruise missile deployment to 300 warheads. The proposal also would have limited both sides' nuclear-capable aircraft in Europe to 150 and limited Soviet deployments of the SS-20 in the Far East. The plan was ultimately rejected by both governments.

In March 1983, the United States advanced an interim proposal that called for equal levels of U.S. deployments and Soviet reductions, to result in an equal number of missiles and warheads on each side ranging from zero to a total of 572. The Soviets again refused, countering with an offer to reduce Soviet SS-20 missiles to the level of French and British nuclear forces (calculated at 140), on the condition that the United States would cancel its ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) and Pershing II deployments. Regardless of the formulation of U.S. proposals, the Soviet Union would not concede the legitimacy of any new U.S. deployments.

From 1981 to 1983, the negotiations were carried out against a backdrop of deteriorating U.S.-Soviet relations. Despite the twin pressures of European skepticism about the zero option and a growing sense of urgency about the effects of peace movements on the stability of NATO governments, the Reagan administration was not disposed to take Soviet INF-negotiating proposals very seriously. The United States seemed convinced that the Soviet Union was intent only on generating opposition in Europe to the scheduled deployments and was not sincere about arms control. In September 1983, relations worsened when the Soviets shot down a Korean civilian airliner that had strayed into Soviet airspace, incurring bitter denunciation from the United States and forestalling congressional amendments on behalf of arms control.

By November 1983, there was nothing in Geneva to provide a pretext for stopping the scheduled deployments. Faced with a fundamental stalemate over U.S. resolve to proceed, the Soviets walked out of the negotiations on 23 November 1983, the day after the first Pershing missiles arrived in Germany. Two weeks later, the Soviets broke off the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) as well.

As the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union grew increasingly strained, prospects for any kind of agreement seemed remote. The period 1982-1985 was a time of turbulence for the Soviet government, with three changes in leadership in three years. Soviet presidents Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko did little more than replicate the hard-line policies of Leonid Brezhnev, showing no flexibility in arms control. Despite sporadic demarches to the Soviet government from the West, such as a declaration by NATO defense ministers in December 1984 that NATO was willing to suspend missile deployments if an equitable deal could be struck, no breakthroughs on INF were believed possible until after Mikhail Gorbachev assumed control of the Soviet government in early 1985.

The ascendance of Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev as the leader of the Warsaw Pact transformed United States-Soviet relations, ushering in a new era of conciliation and making highly publicized, radical arms-limitations proposals the new currency of arms control. From the beginning, Gorbachev stunned the world by proposing a number of ambitious disarmament plans, proposals designed to appeal to international public opinion but which the U.S. quickly dismissed as propaganda ploys. Against this backdrop, the INF negotiations reopened in Geneva on 12 March 1985, part of a new series of arms control talks that included negotiations on strategic arms and defensive weapons.

Beginning in mid-1985, the two sides moved progressively away from the seemingly non-negotiable zero option. The United States began pressing for global limits on INF systems, while the Soviets countered with proposals for moratoria on further U.S. and Soviet INF deployments. Negotiators were divided over a number of issues, including verification, British and French nuclear forces, and the permitted number of SS-20s the Soviets could deploy outside of Europe. Because of their mobility, SS-20s deployed west of the Urals posed dangerous implications for Europe because they could be moved back in a crisis and aimed at European targets. If INF reductions in Europe simply resulted in the Soviets redeploying their SS-20s east of the Urals, moreover, the security of U.S. allies in Asia could be reduced.

The Soviets were receptive when the United States proposed another interim INF formula in the fall, setting a limit of 100 INF warheads deployed in Europe on each side, with an additional 100 Soviet warheads permitted in Asia and 100 U.S. warheads within the United States. Gorbachev had agreed to delink French and British forces from the INF balance earlier in the year. By the time of the U.S.-Soviet summit in Reykjavík, Iceland, in October 1986, the two sides were prepared to engage in discussions of a wide range of arms limitations. They agreed in principle to eliminate all INF systems from Europe, to freeze shorter-range nuclear systems, to limit Soviet warheads to 100 (equivalent to 33 MIRVED SS-20s) deployed east of the Ural Mountains, and to allow the United States no more than 100 Pershing IIs and GLCMS deployed or stored on its own territory.

A formal INF agreement at Reykjavík was forestalled by sudden Soviet insistence that progress in INF be linked to progress in the negotiations on strategic and space weapons, at that point foundering over a dispute about the U.S. commitment to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Negotiations resumed in February 1987, however, when the Soviets dropped this last precondition. In March, the United States presented a draft treaty that incorporated the basic framework of the Reykjavík discussions and put forward a comprehensive INF-verification proposal. A prior U.S.-verification package, which required each side to agree to permit "anywhere, anytime" challenge inspections without any restrictions, had to be modified to get Soviet agreement and domestic support.

In the final stages of the INF negotiations, the terms were irrevocably altered by the Soviet Union's unconditional adoption of a "double-zero" option--that is, eliminating all INF systems in Europe and all SS-20s in Asia. This global ban eliminated the 200 missiles the superpowers would have retained under the prior formulation. Gorbachev raised the stakes even further by proposing to eliminate all shorter-range nuclear forces (SRINF), missiles with ranges of 500 to 1000 kilometers (312 to 625 mi.). The Soviets had about 100 such systems deployed in Europe and Asia, while the United States had none.

Confronted by sudden and unexpected Soviet acceptance of its own proposals, the United States had to face for the first time the domestic and international controversies associated with an agreement to ban U.S. missiles in Europe and with the far-reaching verification schemes it had put forward in 1986, which required unprecedented Soviet access to Western military installations. The United States had little choice but to accept, and on 8 December 1987, Secretary General Gorbachev and President Reagan signed the INF Treaty in Washington, D.C.


Terms of the INF Treaty

The INF Treaty requires the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate all deployed and nondeployed intermediate-range missiles, shorter-range missiles, their launchers, support facilities, and operating bases worldwide. Intermediate-range missiles are defined as those with ranges between 1,000 and 5,500 kilometers (625 and 3,437 mi.); short-range intermediate missiles (a subgroup of INF missiles) have ranges of between 500 and 1,000 km (312 and 625 mi.). The treaty is of unlimited duration, but, like the majority of international treaties, it contains a withdrawal clause. If either party decides that its "supreme interests" are in jeopardy, it can withdraw by giving six months' notice. The signatories are forbidden from activities that would conflict with the treaty's intent, such as transferring missiles in these categories to other countries.

The United States and the Soviet Union agreed to eliminate a total of 2,695 intermediate- and short-range missiles, with disproportionate reductions imposed on the Soviet Union. The Soviets agreed to eliminate 1,836 missiles: 650 SS-20s, 170 SS-4s, 6 SS-5s, 726 SS-12s, 200 SS-23s, and 84 SSC-X-4s. The United States agreed to eliminate 859 missiles: 247 Pershing IIs, 442 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMS), and 170 Pershing Ias. The INF Treaty does not require the destruction of any nuclear warheads, but it does require the removal of more than 2,000 warheads from deployed missiles, which are to be returned to superpower stockpiles or recycled.

At least as important as the treaty itself are the two attached protocols: missile elimination and on-site inspection procedures. The treaty spells out a specific timetable for the elimination of INF systems--in two phases within three years--to be completed by 1 June 1991. This timetable was accompanied by detailed stipulations showing precisely how the missiles, their launchers, and other support equipment would be removed.

Verification provisions, based primarily on on-site inspections, are contained in a separate protocol. The treaty requires on-site inspections within the United States and the Soviet Union; at U.S. bases in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, and West Germany; and at Soviet bases in what were then East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The protocol on verification also spells out inspection rules and guidelines for on-site inspections that were to be carried out during the first three years the missiles were being removed and for ten years thereafter. On-site inspections were designed to verify inventories, to witness elimination of weapons and facilities, to monitor missile-production facilities, and to conduct "challenge" inspections on short notice. Such "challenge" inspections allow officials to arrive at designated entry points--Washington, D.C., and San Francisco in the United States and Moscow and Irkutsk in the former Soviet Union--and announce which of the designated facilities they intend to inspect, which they must reach within nine hours for the inspection to be valid. Twenty challenge inspections are allowed within the first three years after the treaty is in effect, fifteen inspections in the next five years, and ten in the final five years.

The treaty includes a standard prohibition against interference with national technical means of verification, such as photoreconnaissance satellites. It also establishes the Special Verification Commission both to resolve questions relating to compliance and to adopt measures to "improve the viability and effectiveness of this Treaty." Finally, an accompanying Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) provides a detailed list of the locations of all U.S. and Soviet missiles, launchers, and facilities subject to the agreement.


Political Impact of the Treaty

Although the INF agreement elicited widespread support from the European and U.S. publics, a number of disagreements among Reagan administration officials, NATO members, congressional representatives, and private analysts over the treaty's merits surfaced during the ratification debate. Despite the relatively modest scope of the agreement, affecting less than 5 percent of total U.S. nuclear forces, the agreement quickly became a lightning rod for critics of U.S.-Soviet rapprochement. For these conservative critics, the treaty's ratification spelled the end of the Reagan era.

Despite mixed reactions, NATO governments supported the treaty's provisions, in deference to U.S. pressure and European public opinion. Chancellor Kohl, for example, previously a conservative opponent of the zero option, endorsed the INF Treaty as sound policy. Prime Minister Thatcher told U.S. audiences that the agreement had Britain's full support; and French President François Mitterand, who had earlier also voiced misgivings, now said he "rejoiced" in the treaty's conclusion.

The United States forestalled allied actions that could have imposed delays on the treaty's conclusion, such as linking NATO acceptance of the missile ban to a declaration stating that no further nuclear reductions could occur without Soviet reductions in conventional forces. The administration claimed that quick resolution of INF issues would pave the way toward an agreement on strategic forces, which Reagan purportedly hoped to sign at the May 1988 summit, a promise which proved popular among European leaders.

The very nature of the zero option, however, which had never been accepted by officials or experts for its substantive merits, invited controversy. Critics raised doubts about the treaty's effect on NATO security: zero missiles meant that the United States and Europe were still "decoupled"; the elimination of U.S. missiles heightened the significance of East-West disparities in short-range (less than 500 km, or 312 mi.) nuclear and conventional forces; and SS-20s in Asia minus compensating U.S. systems could exacerbate the nuclear threat to Asian allies. These allies, according to this view, were being blackmailed into an agreement that would leave them even more vulnerable to superior Soviet conventional and shorter-range nuclear forces.

Domestically, the most vocal criticism of the INF Treaty came from the conservative wing of the Republican party. Former President Richard Nixon and his former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressed opposition. Several former Reagan advisers, including Perle, testified in Congress against the wisdom of the zero option. The American Security Council, a prodefense lobby, collected over 1,000 signatures from retired military personnel for a petition opposing INF, while the Conservative Caucus published full-page newspaper advertisements with a picture of Reagan and Gorbachev next to pictures of Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler.

Conservatives found a voice in the 1988 presidential campaign, in which all the Republican candidates, except for Vice President Bush, were initially vitriolic in their attacks on the treaty. Having to tread a fine line between loyalty to the president and his own political ambitions, Bush staked his future with Republican moderates who favored the agreement. Other candidates, including Congressman Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kans.), joined the conservative critique of the Reagan accord. A hard-line Republican administration having to defend itself against its own party created a dilemma for Reagan political strategists, who were anxious to contain the potential damage to Republicans in an election year.

President Reagan, ever conscious of the power of public opinion, took his case for INF directly to the American people. In a televised network interview in November 1987, Reagan excoriated right-wing critics of the pact. Accusing them of believing that "war is inevitable," Reagan said they were "ignorant of the advances that have been made in verification" (Congressional Quarterly, 5 December 1987, p. 2967). Although he continued to caution at other times that the Soviets were still "our adversaries," he had clearly parted company with many of his old supporters.

For most Americans, the sudden thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations in late 1987, epitomized by the appearance of Gorbachev on U.S. television in November shaking hands with Reagan, changed public opinion toward the Soviet Union and galvanized attention to and support for the INF Treaty. A CBS/New York Times poll just prior to the conclusion of the INF agreement reported that U.S. citizens favored Gorbachev by a margin of two to one, and that two-thirds supported the emerging treaty (Congressional Quarterly, 5 December 1987, p. 2987). By the time of the Senate ratification debate, the public seemed to be overwhelmingly lined up behind INF. According to a poll conducted by the Daniel Yankelovich Group in March 1988, 77 percent of Americans approved of the treaty (Americans Talk Security, March 1988, pp. 30-31).

The treaty also had the support of the military. In testimony on 4 February 1988 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Chairman Admiral William J. Crowe stated that "The JCS have unanimously concluded that, on balance, this treaty is militarily sufficient and effectively verifiable. In turn, they strongly recommend its ratification by the U.S. Senate" (Arms Control Today, April 1988, p. 6). Crowe emphasized the military risks of failing to ratify the agreement, including the proliferation of more advanced missiles in Europe.

In Congress, the Senate Armed Services, the Foreign Relations, and the Intelligence committees each approved the treaty by a majority vote, but each also issued detailed reports raising questions about certain elements of the agreement. A major controversy involved the administration's verification proposals. Having assumed that the Soviets would never agree to the stringent on-site verification measures it initially proposed, the administration had overlooked the domestic complexities associated with reciprocity; that is, allowing Soviet inspectors to have free access to Western military installations "anywhere, anytime." U.S. and Allied armed forces, intelligence agencies, defense industries, and even the communities that the Soviets could be expected to visit raised strident objections.

The revisions required in the verification proposals to make them domestically acceptable created the appearance of U.S. retreat, which INF critics duly exploited. The restriction of short-notice inspections to designated areas, critics charged, would allow the Soviets to cheat and was therefore useless. As Perle argued, "The last place the Soviets would choose to hide missiles is in the relatively few areas that we would be permitted to inspect.... Something like 99.999 percent of Soviet territory would be off limits to U.S. inspectors" (Congressional Quarterly, 5 December 1987, p. 2971).

Another major outstanding congressional issue concerned the Senate's authority for treaty ratification. A decision by the administration in 1985 to reinterpret unilaterally the meaning of the 1972 ABM Treaty, based on a reexamination of the negotiating record, had provoked a bitter feud between the administration and key Democrats, notably the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). Claiming that the review revealed fundamental errors of interpretation, the administration attempted to free itself of the legal obligation to abide by key ABM Treaty restraints. This decision was adopted without Senate consultation and was seen by many senators as negating their constitutional responsibilities regarding treaty making.

The ABM controversy practically guaranteed that the Senate's authority for treaties would emerge as an issue in the INF debate. After complicated parliamentary maneuvering, the Senate adopted an amendment to the INF-ratification resolution reaffirming that no president could repudiate or alter a treaty without Senate approval. Crafted by several members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led by Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the "Biden Condition" stipulated that the Constitution required that the interpretation of a treaty should be derived from the "shared understanding" between the executive branch and the Senate of the treaty's text at the time of ratification.

The campaign to defeat the treaty in the Senate was led by a minority of conservatives that included Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), Steve Symms (R-Idaho), Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Malcom Wallop (R-Wyo.), and Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), the only Democrat to vote against the pact. They fashioned numerous "killer amendments"--measures which, had they been approved, would have required returning to the negotiating table. These included a proposal to invalidate the treaty on the grounds that Gorbachev was not legally the head of the Soviet government, a provision which would allow either side to withdraw from the treaty within fifteen days of discovering a "material breach" of the treaty's terms, and countless maneuvers to link INF approval to the record of past Soviet misdeeds. All of the amendments were soundly defeated.

The protracted debate in the Senate threatened to leave Reagan at the Moscow summit of May 1988 without a ratified treaty. When the summit delegation left on 25 May, White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker stayed behind, in the hopes that he could rush to Moscow with a concluded treaty before the summit was over. On 26 May, with the summit in session, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) stopped the threatened filibuster, and Baker left for Moscow with the ratified treaty in hand. On 1 June 1988, the Soviet Union and the United States exchanged instruments of ratification and put the treaty into force.


Verification and Compliance

The exchange of ratification documents on 1 June 1988 included several items relating to verification. These included a Protocol on Inspections, specifying the types of monitoring arrangements that the two sides had agreed to use to verify compliance with the agreement; a Protocol on Elimination, which spelled out how and when prohibited missiles and support equipment would be destroyed; and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), providing data of each side's INF missiles, launchers, associated equipment, and facilities. All sites listed in the MOU, except production facilities, would be subject to inspections, which the United States insisted on excluding to protect technological and manufacturing secrets.

The INF-verification regime represented a major new departure in U.S.-Soviet arms control practices. For the first time ever, each side was to be allowed direct access to the other's operational nuclear-missile bases and support facilities. While national technical means (NTM) of verification remained a vital element of the provisions, it was the unprecedented scope of the on-site-inspection measures that posed the most significant challenges for implementation.

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had much operational experience with on-site verification prior to this agreement. It was clear from the outset that new bureaucratic resources would be required to implement these ambitious measures. After much interagency wrangling over who would be in charge, the White House decided to apportion key verification tasks among several government agencies in an effort to defuse potential political frictions posed by the multiple jurisdictions upon which INF verification potentially impinged.

The administration consolidated the authority for on-site inspections under a new umbrella organization, the On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA), created in January 1988. Since the OSIA was designated as a constituent agency of the Department of Defense, it was stipulated that the director be appointed by the secretary of defense, but a principal deputy director would also be appointed by the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Two deputy directors, in turn, were selected from the Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to oversee international negotiations and counterintelligence, respectively. In its first year, the OSIA employed about one hundred uniformed personnel, drawn from each of the armed services, and a small number of civilians from various other elements of the executive branch. Two hundred inspectors had to be retained and trained almost immediately, including Russian linguists, missile operations experts, and other kinds of technical experts needed to staff the inspection teams.

Five types of inspection were required, including baseline, to insure that the data contained in the MOU were complete and accurate; close-out, to confirm that treaty-limited items had actually been removed from a designated base; elimination inspections, to confirm that restricted equipment was destroyed according to treaty specifications; follow-up, or so-called quota inspections of such facilities, allowing further inspections of bases for thirteen years after the completion of the baseline inspections; and portal monitoring, allowing each party to monitor continuously one former INF base on the other's territory. The first three kinds of inspections were completed within the first three years after the INF Treaty entered into force, (June 1988-June 1991). The latter two can continue for an additional ten years, until 2001.

Beginning on 1 July 1988, and for sixty days thereafter, twenty teams of U.S. inspectors carried out 115 baseline inspections in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, while twenty Soviet teams conducted thirty-one inspections at the declared facilities in the United States, Belgium, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. The inspection teams had access to all sites listed in the MOU except missile-production facilities, accounting for almost 6,000 treaty-limited items on the Soviet side and 2,000 for the United States. Conducted successfully, these inspections helped to smooth out inspection procedures and to cement relations between the U.S. and Soviet inspection authorities.

By far, the most dramatic inspections were those conducted by inspectors who witnessed the destruction of the other side's INF inventory, including the disassembly, crushing, or launching of missiles, launchers, and support equipment. These first elimination inspections occurred at a Soviet facility in August 1988. In all such inspections, observers counted the equipment to be destroyed, witnessed its elimination, and inspected the items after their destruction was complete. At the close of the initial three-year period, the United States had conducted 130 elimination inspections, and the Soviets had conducted 94. The final phase occurred on 1 June 1991, when U.S. forces in southern Germany destroyed the last Pershing II missiles in Europe.

Short-notice "challenge" inspections to ensure continuing confidence in INF Treaty compliance are permitted until 2001. All sites listed in the MOU, except missile-production facilities, are subject to challenge inspections. As noted above, in the first three years of compliance, each side was allowed twenty challenge inspections per year, subsequently phasing down to fifteen inspections per year for the next five years, and to ten per year for the final five years.

The provision to allow continuous monitoring of the portals outside one missile-production plant on each side stemmed from a U.S. concern that the Soviet SS-20 INF missile had a second-stage that is difficult to distinguish from the first stage of the SS-25 ICBM, a system not covered by the INF Treaty. As a result, the United States insisted on monitoring the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, a facility where the banned SS-20s had been produced and which was continuing production of the SS-25. The Soviets, in turn, monitored the Hercules Plant Number 1 in Magna, Utah, which previously assembled the Pershing II missiles.

The ambitious scope of the INF on-site-verification regime had led many to doubt that it could be successfully implemented, certainly without major controversies. Anticipating chronic disputes over the many details of the regime, a Special Verification Commission (SVC) was established in 1988 to resolve any questions that might arise relating to treaty obligations and compliance. From June 1988 through June 1991, the SVC met ten times to discuss implementation and compliance issues. They ranged from who should bear the costs of different inspections to more significant compliance problems, such as allegations that the Soviets had deliberately concealed SS-25 missile canisters exiting Votkinsk to impede U.S. monitoring.

According to an OSIA official, the INF-verification regime has functioned "flawlessly." Compared to any preceding treaty, controversies about compliance certainly have been minimal. Of the few issues that have been raised, the United States charged in early 1990 and again in 1991 that seventyé-two Soviet SS-23 shorter-range INF missiles deployed in Eastern Europe should have been declared in the initial MOU. The Soviets claim that the missiles were transferred to their Eastern European clients before the INF Treaty was signed in December 1987. In a February 1990 report on Soviet compliance with arms control treaties, the Bush administration fell short of accusing the Soviets of a treaty violation but called this incident an act of bad faith. The United States also questioned whether the USSR had failed to declare the existence of SS-4 and SS-5 missile-transporter vehicles as items to be limited by the treaty. As in the case of the SS-23s, the United States raised questions about this equipment but declined to charge the Soviet Union with a violation formally.

The status of the SS-23s deployed in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria became a contentious issue in July 1991 as the U.S. Senate geared up for the ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Secretary of State James Baker, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked by Senator Helms whether these East European missiles were evidence of Soviet noncompliance. That same day, Baker sent a cable to Moscow asking for clarification about when the missiles were transferred and if they were nuclear-capable. Although Helms seemed convinced that a serious violation had occurred, the Bush administration tried to deflect the significance of this charge. As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe John Galvin stated, the presence of the SS-23s in Eastern Europe should not be seen as evidence of Soviet cheating: "I'm not saying there are no problems; I'm raying the problems can be resolved" ("NATO Commander Calls Concerns Resolvable," Washington Times, 26 July 1991).

The OSIA mandate would suggest it was established to oversee the INF Treaty regime, and thus could be subject to dismantlement after 2001. But the OSIA, far from disbanding, has used its successes in the INF process to press for a broader role in implementing future arms control regimes. Given the growing importance of on-site inspections for a number of impending initiatives, the chances are good that OSIA will continue to expand its size and jurisdiction in the coming years. As of August 1991, the agency had 475 employees and had received formal authority to monitor the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, both submitted for ratification in 1991. In addition, officials were optimistic that the agency would play key roles in the START Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the destruction of Iraqi nuclear, chemical, and missile sites as stipulated by United Nations Resolution 647.


Conclusion

The INF Treaty, perhaps more than any other single international agreement, owes its success to a powerful and extraordinarily popular U.S. president who staked his personal prestige on the accord's success. As the most conservative and anti-Soviet president since Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan's credibility as the champion of this agreement had an inestimable impact on the outcome of the treaty debate. The "zero option" was the product of Ronald Reagan's unique approach to arms control. Like his vision of the Strategic Defense Initiative, the zero option seemed simple, innovative, and bold. Reagan may have been the only official in his administration who believed that the zero option was a sincere and negotiable proposal, and, as it turns out, he is the only one to have been proven correct.

If any lessons are to be drawn from this experience for other treaties, however, one must consider the remarkable influence of the sweeping changes that were occurring in the Soviet Union. Minus the ascendance of Mikhail Gorbachev and his willingness to accede to even the most stringent U.S. demands, the INF Treaty might have still been languishing in the shadows of SALT and START. The peculiar convergence of events that account for the success of the INF Treaty would be difficult to replicate. Under different circumstances, it is difficult to imagine that the inherent liabilities of the zero option might not have resulted in the negotiations' failure.

The negotiation and ratification of the INF Treaty reveal how much the character of the arms control process changed in the 1980s. What had once been largely the domain of secret diplomacy between the two superpowers was transformed into an overt struggle for international public opinion. It was a new game, in which appeals for public support for proposals often preceded their introduction at the negotiating table. Neither U.S. nuclear objectives nor NATO'S security concerns were decisive in setting the terms of the INF accord. In fact, none of the issues that the original dual-track decision in 1979 had set out to solve was resolved, and the role of nuclear weapons in Europe, though vastly diminished as a result of the demise of the Warsaw Pact, remains open to controversy.

Nevertheless, the INF Treaty was the first arms control agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear-tipped weapons.


Bibliography


Primary Sources

The best primary sources on the INF Treaty are the congressional hearings held prior to ratification. See, for instance, U.S. Congress, Committee on Foreign Relations, The INF Treaty, Report and Hearings, 6 vols., 100th Congress, 2d session, (Washington, D.C., 1988); and U.S. Congress, Committee on Armed Services, NATO Defense and the INF Treaty, Report and Hearings, 4 vols. 100th Congress, 2d session (Washington, D.C., 1988).


General Sources

General reference sources about the treaty's provisions include Arms Control Association, "Summary and Text of the INF Treaty and Protocols," Arms Control Today, INF supp., 18 (January-February 1988); Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Understanding the INF Treaty (Washington, D.C., 1988).


Evolution of the Negotiations

The most authoritative and detailed account of the evolution of the INF negotiations can be found in Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits (New York, 1984). Other sources include Frederick Donovan and James Goodby, "Choosing Zero: Origins of the INF Treaty," Pew Program in Case Teaching and Writing in International Affairs, Case #319 (1988); Strobe Talbott, "The Road to Zero," Time (14 December 1987): 18-30; and Pat Towell, "Soviet Offer Breaks Logjam on Euromissiles," Congressional Quarterly (7 March 1987): 427-430, and "Conciliation Colors the Pre-Summit Picture," Congressional Quarterly (5 Dec. 1987): 2967-2971. On Soviet behavior and motives in INF, see Jonathan Dean, "Gorbachev's Arms Control Moves," Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 43 (June 1987): 34-40.

On the lessons of the INF Treaty for future arms limitations, see Joyce P. Kaufman, "U.S.-Soviet Arms Control and Politics," Arms Control 8 (December 1987): 278-294; William B. Vogele, "Tough Bargaining and Arms Control: Lessons from the INF Treaty," Journal of Strategic Studies 12 (September 1989): 257-272.


Security Aspects

On the security aspects of the INF accord, see Graham Aluson and Albert Carnesdale, "Can the West Accept Da for an Answer?" Daedalus 116 (Summer 1987): 69-93; Lynn Davis, "Lessons of the INF Treaty," Foreign Affairs 66 (Spring 1988): 720-734; Jonathan Dean, Watershed in Europe: Dismantling the East-West Military Confrontation (Lexington, Mass., 1987); Michael R. Gordon, "Dateline Washington: INF: A Hollow Victory?," Foreign Policy 68 (Fall 1987): 159-179; Richard Perle, "What's Wrong with tile INF Treaty?," U.S. News and World Report (21 March. 1988): 46; Jane M. O. Sharp, "Understanding the INF Debacle: Arms Control and Alliance Cohesion," Arms Control 5 (September 1984): 96-127; and James A. Thomson, "The LRTNF Decision: Evolution of U.S. Theatre Nuclear Policy, 1975-1979," International Affairs 60 (Autumn 1984): 601-614.


Ratification of the Treaty

The ratification of the INF Treaty is discussed in Joseph R. Biden, JR. and John B. Ritch, "The Treaty Power: Upholding a Constitutional Partnership," University of Pennsylvania Law Journal 137 (1989); Janne Nolan, "The INF Treaty Ratification Debate," in Michael Krepon, ed., Treaty Ratification (forthcoming); Susan F. Rasky, "Senate Rebuffs Foes of the Missile Treaty," New York Times (21 May 1988): A3; Janet Hook, Macon Morehouse, and Pat Towell, "Senate Votes 93-5 to Approve Ratification of INF Treaty," Congressional Quarterly (28 May 1988): 1431-1435.


Verification

The INF verification regime has been examined in detail in several works. See Owen Greene and Patricia Lewis, "Verifying the INF Treaty and START," in Frank Barnaby, ed, A Handbook of Verification Procedures (New York, 1990): 215-263; Edward J. Lacey, "On-Site Inspection: The INF Experience," and James R. Blackwell, "Contributions and Limitations of On-Site Inspection in INF and START," both in Lewis A. Dunn, ed., with Amy E. Gordon, Arms Control Verification and the New Role of On-Site Inspection (Lexington, Mass., 1990), pp. 3-14 and 95-119, respectively.


Official Sources

For official sources, see, for example, U.S. ACDA, Annual Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements (15 February 1991); testimony of OSIA Director Roland Lajoie before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security and Science, 2 March 1989, and his interview, "Insights of an On-Site Inspector," Arms Control Today 18 (November 1988): 3-10; and Amy F. Woolf, "On-Site Inspections in Arms Control: Verifying compliance with INF and START," Congressional Research Service, report 89-592 F, 1 November 1989. On the financial costs of verification regimes, see Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Costs of Verification and Compliance Under Pending Arms Treaties, September 1990.


-- Janne E. Nolan