Shaping Europe's Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty

Abstract

"Richard Falkenrath has written a magisterial exegesis -- an essential item in the library of anyone seriously interested in security in the post-Cold War world."
--Survival

The legal foundation of the contemporary European security order is the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Negotiated by NATO and the Warsaw Pact states as the Cold War was ending and implemented as the new Europe took shape, the CFE Treaty imposes strict limits on the armed forces of all the major European states.

This book takes a detailed look at the origins and evolution of the CFE negotiations and the impact of the CFE Treaty on European Security. It draws extensively on interviews with participants in the CFE negotiations and offers a careful reconstruction of a process that contributed to the transformation of Cold War Europe, a critical assessment of the treaty's contribution to security in post-Cold War Europe, and an evaluation of the lessons of CFE for future conventional arms control initiatives.

Richard A. Falkenrath is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He served as Executive Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) and, before that, as a Research Fellow. He is the author and co-author of Shaping Europe's Military Order (1995), Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy (1996), America's Achilles' Heel:Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (1998), and numerous journal articles and chapters of edited volumes. Falkenrath has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the German Society of Foreign Affairs (DGAP) in Bonn. He holds a PhD from the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, where he was a British Marshall Scholar, and is a summa cum laude graduate of Occidental College, Los Angeles, with degrees in economics and international relations. He is currently serving as Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Senior Director for Policy and Plans, Office of Homeland Security.