BY ERDAL SAFAK
SABAH- Europe just saw the clock moved back to the Cold War Era when Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended the European Conventional Forces Agreement, an ironic and strange development.
Before the 1990s, two political systems and military blocs were in conflict in Europe. With the fall of communism and the end of the Warsaw Pact, everything changed.
Six former Warsaw Pact countries (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria), the three Baltic countries which were under Soviet rule (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) and finally Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia then, are now all NATO members. Although it's of great concern to Turkey, Putin's decision threatening to reignite the arms race got little in media coverage here due to our looming elections. Turkey is also a NATO member, and one of the pivotal agreements in this process was signed in Istanbul in 1999.
Before addressing the question of whether NATO or Russia is in the right, we should look back at history a bit:
After the first summit of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was held in Helsinki in 1976 (with Turkey represented by then Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel), negotiations between NATO and Warsaw Pact for disarmament in Europe started. Although the talks stalled many times, in November 1990 the parties signed an agreement for mutual arms reduction in Paris, with Gorbachev in office in the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Sixteen members of NATO and six members of the Warsaw Pact signed this agreement, which limited the number of tanks, cannons, warplanes and helicopters the two parties could have. Thanks to this agreement, 125,000 heavy armaments were withdrawn from or destroyed in Europe.
But when the terms and conditions changed over time, updating the Paris agreement became inevitable. A new agreement was signed at the November 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul. The most important aspect of this agreement signed by Demirel, who was then president, was that the conventional arms quota of Europe was determined according to countries, not blocs. This was because the Warsaw Pact had dissolved and many of its members had entered NATO, as a result of which Russia was alone on behalf of the Eastern Bloc.
Russia ratified the Istanbul agreement in 2004 but so far NATO countries, including the US, have not. Their rationale they cite is Russia not closing its bases in Transnitri (Moldova) and South Ossetia (Georgia). But over the years NATO has expanded to include many former Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries, and also signed cooperation agreements with those it couldn't take in. The US has bases in Romania and Bulgaria, and stretches to the Caucasus and Middle East, formerly under Soviet Union influence or rule, and finally established missile shields just 30 kilometers from the Russian border in former Warsaw Pact territories in order to protect Europe from missile attacks from Iran and North Korea.
Now if you were in Putin's shoes, wouldn't you balk at this double standard?