May 24. President Richard M. Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev reached a compromise agreement to hold separate political and military negotiations. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) would deal with political issues, and Mutual Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) in Europe with actual force reductions. Dtente in Europe began.
November 22. The CSCE process formally began in Helsinki, Finland. These preliminary negotiations of the 35 CSCE member nations involved setting up a framework to negotiate confidence and security building measures.
July 3. CSCE negotiations began after six months of preparatory meetings. The 35 nations of the CSCE met to begin the process of negotiating confidence and security building measures in Europe.
October 30. Negotiations on MBFR began. The object of negotiations was to reduce conventional forces in the zone of Central Europe surrounding East and West Germany and to provide a stable military balance in Central Europe.
August 1. The CSCE resulted in 35 nations signing the concluding document. The Helsinki Final Act was primarily designed to build confidence within Europe. Confidence-building measures included notification of major military maneuvers involving more than 25,000 troops.
October 4. A first CSCE review conference on implementation of the Helsinki Final Act began in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
March 9. The Belgrade CSCE review conference closed, with no conclusions reached.
May 25. French President Valry Giscard d'Estaing proposed a two-stage security conference during a UN meeting.
December. Negotiations for MBFR stalled because of the NATO decision to deploy new intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe.
December. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
November 11. The second CSCE review conference began in Madrid, Spain. These negotiations would continue for almost three years, leading to the adoption of the Madrid Mandate.
September 6-9. The Madrid CSCE conference ended after almost three years of negotiations. The 35 CSCE states signed the Madrid Concluding Document, or Madrid Mandate, which established the Stockholm Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures. The mandate called for member nations to negotiate treaties reducing the size of their armed forces in Europe, in addition to continuing work to develop confidence and security building measures.
January 17. The CSCE Stockholm Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe (CDE) began.
March 10. Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
March 13. President Ronald Reagan reversed his position on holding high-level talks with leaders of the Soviet Union.
November 19-20. President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev held their first summit
April 18. General Secretary Gorbachev proposed in MBFR negotiations to reduce ground and air forces, and to include conventional and nuclear weapons from the Atlantic to the Urals. Gorbachev recognized the presence of significant asymmetries of conventional forces and proposed large-scale force reductions to be verified by on-site inspection.
June 11. Gorbachev's proposals were formalized during a Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) meeting in Budapest, with the proposals later known as the Budapest Appeal or Budapest Communiqué.
September 22. In Stockholm, 35 CSCE nations, meeting as the Conference on Confidence and Security Building and Disarmament in Europe, adopted an accord, the Stockholm Document, designed to increase transparency of military activities and to reduce the risk of war in Europe. The agreement required notification of military exercises of 13,000 troops or more, and allowed on-site inspections of field activities of more than 17,000 ground troops or 5,000 airborne troops.
October 11-12. A summit between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev was held at Reykjavik, Iceland. It created a positive context for further negotiations.
November 4. The third CSCE review conference began in Vienna.
December 12. NATO's North Atlantic Council of foreign ministers issued the Brussels Declaration on Conventional Arms Control. The declaration called for two distinct sets of negotiations: one to build on the CSBM results of the Stockholm Conference and the other to establish conventional stability in Europe through negotiations on conventional arms control from the Atlantic to the Urals (ATTU).
January 7. The Stockholm Document entered into force. The agreement for the first time provided for a negotiated right to conduct on-site inspections of military forces in the field.
February 17. Informal talks between the 16 NATO and the 7 Warsaw Pact nations began in Vienna on a mandate for conventional negotiations in Europe, which would set out treaty negotiating guidelines.
July 27. NATO presented a draft mandate during the 23-nation conference in Vienna. The mandate called for elimination of force disparities, capability for surprise attack, and large-scale offensive operations, and the establishment of an effective verification system.
December 8. The INF treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., between the United States and the Soviet Union.
January 26. The Secretary of Defense established the On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA) as a Department of Defense agency responsible for conducting on-site inspection, monitoring, and escort operations under the INF Treaty.
May 29-June 2. At the Moscow Summit, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev emphasized the importance of stability and security in Europe, specifically calling for data exchange, verification of these data, and then reductions.
December 7. General Secretary Gorbachev announced at the United Nations a unilateral withdrawal of 50,000 troops from Eastern Europe, and demobiliztion of 500,000 Soviet troops.
January 14. Twenty-three member nations of NATO and the Warsaw Pact produced the Mandate for the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. The mandate set out objectives for the CFE Treaty and established negotiating principles.
January 15. The Vienna CSCE review conference ended after more than two years, resulting in the Vienna Concluding Document, which set a mandate for CSBM talks, specifying that the talks would work toward "elaborating and adopting a new set of mutually complementary confidence and security building measures designed to reduce the risk of confrontation in Europe."
February 2. After 15 years of negotiations, the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions talks ended in Vienna.
March 9. The Vienna Confidence and Security Building Measures negotiations mandated by the Vienna Concluding Document began, with 35 states participating.
March 9. Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty negotiations commenced in Vienna with 23 members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
May 20-25. President George Bush and France's President Franois Mitterrand met at Kennebunkport, Maine. President Bush announced the acceptance of combat aircraft and helicopters in the reductions as proposed by the WTO. He also proposed a ceiling of 275,000 personnel stationed in Europe by the U.S. and Soviet Union.
May 29-30. During a NATO summit in Brussels, President Bush's proposal was adopted and subsequently presented in Vienna.
November 9. The Berlin Wall fell. Revolutions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria followed within four weeks.
December 2-3. Presidents Bush and Gorbachev met at sea off Malta and agreed to speed up arms control and economic negotiations.
January 15-February 22. Non-Soviet WTO states negotiated for deeper Soviet cuts and earlier withdrawals.
January 16-February 5. The 35 CSCE states held a seminar on military doctrine in Vienna.
January 31. In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed lower levels of Soviet and U.S. forces in Europe. The proposal called for 195,000 personnel for each nation and 30,000 for the U.S. in the periphery.
February 26. Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on withdrawal of Soviet forces. The agreement called for the withdrawal by July 1991 of all 73,500 Soviet troops, along with more than 1,200 tanks, 2,500 armored combat vehicles, 1,200 pieces of artillery, and 80 aircraft.
March 9. Hungary and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on withdrawal of Soviet forces. The Soviet Union agreed that by the end of June 1991, it would withdraw all its forces, consisting of 50,000 troops, 860 tanks, 1,500 armored combat vehicles, and other equipment from Hungary.
May 5. The first Two plus Four (foreign ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic plus France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union) Meeting on German Unification was held in Bonn.
May 29. President Bush signed National Security Directive 41, which made the Secretary of Defense responsible for CFE compliance and directed the On-Site Inspection Agency to prepare for CFE Treaty implementation. It also directed OSIA to prepare for inspection duties under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty.
June 26. The Hungarian National Assembly voted to begin negotiations to withdraw from the Warsaw Treaty Organization.
July 6. NATO announced the London Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance, which called for decreased size of NATO forces as the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Eastern Europe, among other measures to draw down from the confrontational attitudes of the Cold War.
July 16. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Soviet President Gorbachev agreed to a complete Soviet withdrawal from Germany by 1994
and a ceiling of 370,000 active German military personnel.
September 11. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker formally agreed to rescind their earlier agreement to limit their own personnel in the region, and to resolve the personnel issue during CFE 1A negotiations.
September 12. In Moscow, the Two plus Four countries signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. The World War II "Big Four" gave up their occupation rights in Germany on October 3, paving the way for German unification.
October 1. With German unification drawing near, the Soviet Union had 17 divisions stationed in East Germany, totaling more than 363,700 troops, which had to be withdrawn by 1994.
October 3. The German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, as Germany was unified.
October 3. President Bush requested that the U.S. and Soviet negotiators move from Vienna to New York to facilitate completion of the negotiations in time for the 19-21 November CSCE Paris Summit.
October-November. U.S. Secretary of State Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze resolved most major outstanding CFE issues. CFE negotiators in Vienna resolved most of the remaining smaller, technical disputes. Major disagreements over verification were resolved, and the "sufficiency rule" was established.
October 13. Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze sent a letter to Secretary of State Baker listing the CFE Treaty-limited equipment that the USSR had relocated to east of the Urals.
November 3. Warsaw Pact countries signed an agreement in Budapest that divided Warsaw Pact allocations of forces by country as allowed under the CFE Treaty.
November 14. Poland and Germany signed an agreement confirming the existing Polish-German border.
November 17. CSBM Vienna Document 1990 was completed and signed by the 34 members of the CSCE. (German unification had lowered the number of CSCE states by one, as the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist.) The Vienna Document 1990 expanded on the CSBM provisions of the 1986 Stockholm Document.
November 18. The Soviet Union submitted official treaty data. Data submitted were significantly out of line with data submitted two years earlier--as the Soviets' number of objects of verification was reduced from 1,500 to 1,000.
November 19. At the Paris Summit, the CFE Treaty was signed by leaders of 22 states.
November 21. The Charter of Paris for a New Europe was adopted by all 34 members of the CSCE. The charter's goal was to recognize the end of the Cold War and to reflect a new spirit of cooperation.
November 26. CFE 1A negotiations formally commenced in Vienna.
November 29. The first meeting of the Joint Consultative Group (JCG) convened in Vienna.
December 6. The United States dispatched a team of experts to Moscow in an effort to resolve discrepancies in Soviet treaty data.
February 4-14. The first U.S. CFE course was conducted at the Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C.
February 14. The Soviet Union submitted updated treaty data. The Soviets interpreted equipment transferred to coastal defense, naval infantry, Strategic Rocket Forces, and civil defense units as being not countable as treaty-limited equipment.
February 15. The United States and other NATO nations suspended treaty ratification because of the Soviet Union's unilateral reinterpretation of the treaty.
March 31. The Warsaw Treaty Organization's military organs and structures were dissolved.
May 14. The U.S. On-Site Inspection Agency conducted its first CFE mock inspection, working with France's verification agency, L'Unité Française de Vérification. OSIA's Team Gessert inspected the French 3rd Fighter Wing at Nancy-Ochey Airfield and, the next day, the French 3rd Tank Battalion.
June 1. Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh and U.S. Secretary of State Baker met in Lisbon to discuss the final details of the CFE Treaty statement concerning Soviet naval infantry and coastal defense units.
June 14. The Soviet government presented to other signatory states a "legally binding" statement on how it would comply with the terms of the CFE Treaty, covering issues such as reassignment of treaty-limited equipment (TLE) to coastal defense, naval infantry and Strategic Rocket Forces, and elimination of TLE east of the Urals.
June 14. The Secretary of Defense assigned the U.S. Commander in Chief Europe (USCINCEUR) as the executive agent for CFE, with responsibility for U.S. CFE compliance in Europe.
June 18. The Joint Consultative Group held its first Extraordinary Conference at the Hague. During the session, the Soviet statements on coastal defense and naval infantry and on reductions east of the Urals were read and accepted as treaty documents.
July 1. The Warsaw Treaty Organization was dissolved.
July 9. President Bush submitted the CFE Treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification.
August 19. An abortive military coup d'état was launched in the Soviet Union. After the coup, the Soviet government continued, but very weakly, while nationalism grew rapidly in the Soviet
October 18. At the second Extraordinary Conference of the JCG, held in Vienna, the Soviet Union issued a political declaration stating its intention to rapidly withdraw weapons based in the Baltics. The JCG no longer considered Baltic states to be within the CFE area of application.
December 8. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Within a week, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan also joined the CIS.
December 25. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 independent states, 8 of which had former Soviet forces stationed in their territories and fell within the CFE Treaty's area of application.
December 26. The United States ratified the CFE Treaty.
January 10. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC)--which consisted of the 16 NATO nations and the 15 newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, along with Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia--assembled a High Level Working Group in Brussels. Of the member states, only Kazakstan did not attend. The meeting agreed that CFE Treaty obligations assumed by the former USSR should be fully accepted by all newly created CIS states within the ATTU.
January 13. The Joint Consultative Group met to discuss how to incorporate CIS republics into the CFE Treaty.
January 30-31. CSCE foreign ministers in Prague admitted several new CIS states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
February 10-14. The On-Site Inspection Agency conducted its first CFE mock inspections inside the territory of the Eastern Group of States. The first inspection was held at Siverskiy Air Base and the second at Pushkin, both in Russia's Leningrad Military District.
February 21. The High Level Working Group meeting in Brussels agreed on methods for bringing the CFE Treaty into force.
March 4. CSCE participants adopted the Vienna Document 1992. The agreement subsumed and added to the Vienna Document 1990 and provided for expanded membership in the CSCE process and greater exchange of information in numerous areas of CSBM. With the admission of most of the former Soviet states, the CSCE included 48 member nations.
March 24. The CSCE nations signed the Vienna Document 1992.
April 3. The High Level Working Group of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council met to discuss division of the former Soviet Union's TLE among independent CIS states.
May 8. The High Level Working Group met again to discuss division of the former Soviet Union's TLE.
May 15. The CIS states met at Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and agreed on division of former Soviet forces among CIS states.
June 5. The JCG held its third Extraordinary Conference in Oslo, Norway. Twenty-nine countries signed the Final Document of the Extraordinary Conference of the States Parties to the CFE Treaty. The document removed all obstacles to ratification of the treaty and modified language of the treaty to include all CIS states which were in the ATTU, legalizing the entry of the new states into the treaty and their acceptance of the obligations of the USSR.
July 1. Ukraine ratified the CFE Treaty.
July 5. The United States completed its 44th and last CFE mock inspection mission before entry into force of the treaty. During these 44 missions, OSIA inspected 100 separate sites. About half--27 missions and 50 inspections--involved cooperative mock inspections with NATO partners. Six missions involved participation with Eastern bloc nations: Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. The remainder took place at U.S. sites in Europe, giving the host site personnel as well as OSIA teams training in the CFE inspection process.
July 8. Russia ratified the CFE Treaty.
July 10. By the time of the Helsinki CSCE Summit, three nations--Armenia, Belarus, and Kazakstan--had not yet ratified the CFE Treaty. At the fourth JCG Extraordinary Conference, held concurrently with the CSCE Summit, the CFE Treaty nations agreed on provisional entry into force of the treaty, which would allow implementation to begin while they waited for the remaining three countries to ratify the treaty.
July 10. CFE 1A was signed by 29 states during the Helsinki CSCE summit. The agreement limited personnel to specific national thresholds and put into place an extensive information exchange regime.
July 17. The CFE Treaty provisionally entered into force, limiting five major categories of weapons, with 29 signatory states. When the remaining countries deposited their instruments of ratification in October, it was agreed to make full entry into force retroactive to July 17.
July 17. The CFE baseline period began. Canada conducted the first NATO inspection in the former Soviet Union.
July 18-20. OSIA's Team White, led by Lt. Colonel Elmer G. "Guy" White, conducted the first U.S. CFE baseline inspection at Buy, Russia.
July 20. The first U.S. liaison officer (LNO) activity occurred in England during baseline.
August 6-8. OSIA conducted the first U.S. reduction inspection at the Capital Repair Plant at Woensdorf, Germany. Russian forces still in the former East Germany reduced the equipment.
August 13-15. In the first Eastern Group of States inspection, a Russian team inspected a Canadian site in Germany, followed by a sequential inspection of U.S. stationed forces at Geibelstadt, Germany, for the first U.S. CFE escort mission.
August 14. The first post-baseline information on national equipment holdings was exchanged.
September 4. U.S. inspection teams were denied access to Russian declared sites. A four-month dispute ensued.
September 22. Fifty-four member states of the CSCE follow-on conference created the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC) mandate for new security negotiations. CFE was replaced as the primary tool for conventional arms control confidence and security building measures. Unlike the CFE Treaty, all states would participate individually and not as alliances or military blocs.
October 12. Armenia deposited its CFE instruments of ratification in The Hague, leaving only two nations to ratify before the treaty could fully enter into force.
October 3-9. Following a German inspection of Naro-Fominsk, Russia, in late September, two U.S. teams and one French team conducted inspections in rapid succession at Naro-Fominsk to test Russian assurances that site diagrams would be corrected and that inspectors would have full access at declared objects of verification (OOVs).
October 30. The final two CFE ratification instruments, those of Belarus and Kazakstan, were deposited at The Hague.
November 9. The Joint Consultative Group formalized the CFE Treaty's entry into force with 29 states, and made entry into force retroactive to the July 17 date of provisional entry into force.
November 14. The CFE baseline period ended. During baseline the United States hosted nine inspection teams that inspected 23 U.S. declared sites, and conducted 33 missions into former WTO nations, inspecting 44 Eastern bloc sites. In addition to the baseline inspections, the United States also conducted five reduction inspections.
November 15. With the baseline period ended, the CFE treaty moved into a three-year reduction period.
January. NATO's Verification Coordinating Committee (VCC) invited the participation of former Warsaw Pact guest inspectors on its teams. Hosting guest inspectors from NATO nations had been a common practice since the beginning of baseline, but this marked the first time NATO had invited inspectors from former Eastern bloc nations onto their teams.
April 28. The United States hosted the first guest inspector from a former Warsaw Pact nation on one of its CFE inspection teams when a Czech inspector participated in a U.S inspection in Tazar, Hungary.
September. Russia's President Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom asking that they recognize the flanks as a serious problem.
November 17. The first CFE reduction year ended. All signatories met their 25 percent reduction liabilities for the first year, with the exceptions of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
March 21. Russia asked the JCG to consider modifying the CFE Treaty to increase the amount of TLE that could be taken out of storage and the length of time it could be out of storage.
March 23. Belarus threatened to cease its CFE reductions because of high costs, unless it received assistance from other nations.
March 31. The United States gave $10 million to be divided between Belarus and Ukraine to help finance their CFE reductions.
May 15. A U.S. guest inspector took part for the first time in an inspection conducted by a former Warsaw Pact nation. Major Mark Lieber, USMC, served on a Bulgarian inspection in Romania.
September 19. For the first time, a U.S. CFE inspection team included a Russian guest inspector. OSIA's Lt. Col. Fred E. Busing led this team on a declared site inspection in Oradea, Romania.
November 13. The CFE Treaty's second reduction year ended. All but two nations had met their 60 percent reduction goals.
December 4. At the CSCE Summit in Budapest, the 52 nations of the CSCE signed the Vienna Document 1994, which replaced the Vienna Document 1992 and expanded on its confidence and security building measures. At the same time, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe changed its name to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
January 10. The United States agreed that Russian forces in Chechnya did not constitute a CFE Treaty violation, since flank limits did not come into effect until the end of the reduction period in November. After that, they would still not be a violation, since the treaty allowed temporary deployments.
February 23. President Alexander Lukashenka announced that Belarus would suspend all CFE reduction activities because of the cost, which he called "economically unjust," since Belarus did not produce the weapons left behind when the Soviet Union dissolved but still had responsibility for destroying them. Belarus did state, however, that reductions could begin again if financing was made available.
May 10. At a Clinton/Yeltsin summit meeting in Moscow, the United States told Russia that it would not support modification to the CFE Treaty until the review conference in May 1996.
September 12. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakstan announced that they would not be able to meet their reduction liabilities by the end of the reduction period. Ukraine said it could meet its commitments with the exception of TLE assigned to the Black Sea Fleet, which it could not reduce until the equipment in the fleet was divided between Ukraine and Russia. The other three nations blamed economic difficulties.
October 15. Belarus resumed its reduction of treaty-limited equipment, but stated it would not be able to meet its remaining reduction liability by the end of the reduction period in November.
November 17. The CFE reduction period ended. The treaty nations issued a joint statement identifying the countries that were not in compliance with their treaty obligations: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Despite some countries' failing to fully meet their reduction liabilities, the amount of equipment reduced by the CFE Treaty constituted the largest negotiated arms reduction in history, with over 50,000 pieces of equipment destroyed. This equipment included 19,200 battle tanks, 18,600 armed combat vehicles, 9,800 pieces of artillery, 2,200 combat aircraft, and 370 attack helicopters.
November 17. The residual level validation period (RLVP) began. This 120-day "second baseline" confirmed the accuracy of national reductions, recategorizations, and relocations of equipment declared after the reduction period.
November 25. Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement on division of the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine would receive 150 naval installations of the fleet in the agreement.
November 28. The Joint Consultative Group gave Belarus an extension until April 26, 1996, to complete its reductions of treaty-limited equipment. The United States and Germany agreed to assist Belarus in its reduction effort.
December 31. Russia failed to meet its deadline for reducing TLE it had moved east of the Urals prior to treaty signature. Russia cited economic difficulties and requested that the JCG extend the deadline until 1998.
March 16. The residual level validation period ended. During the 120-day RLVP, NATO nations conducted 246 inspections of Eastern bloc nations. Of these, the United States led 38 inspections and provided guest inspectors to 56 teams led by other nations. The Eastern bloc nations inspected NATO nations 183 times, with U.S. sites in Europe receiving 11 inspections.
April 26. Belarus did not complete its reductions in time for the deadline proposed in its November 1995 plan.
May 15-31. The 30 treaty nations held the CFE Review Conference in Vienna. The Final Document of the conference included compromises on the flank issue, east of the Urals reductions, and other issues.