Edward L. Rowny
When General Steinhoff came back at the end of August, I turned the Malta crisis
over to him. The next major event involving me directly was that General
Steinhoff appointed me to be the chairman of the mutual balanced force reductions
[MBFR] planning group. Steinhoff had two ideas in mind. First, he wanted to
involve NATO in conventional arms reductions. Second, he particularly wanted
the U.S. to become involved at a time when the U.S. did not want to get involved
in arms reductions.
The principal reason for this is that the U.S., at that time, felt it was more
important to further the CSCE [conference on security and cooperation in Europe]
process in Helsinki. To force the issue of getting the U.S. involved, Steinhoff
appointed me to be the chairman of the working group to get conventional arms
reductions started. My superiors had instructed me to follow orders from Steinhoff
even if they contradicted U.S. policies. Steinhoff tested the seriousness of the U.S.
commitment to NATO and won out. This job occupied at least 50 percent of my
time for the next year and a half. It resulted in getting the U.S. to accept MBFR.
Without U.S. participation the planning would have gotten nowhere. Steinhoff s
plan worked; we dragged the U.S., kicking and screaming, into the planning
process.
So, my job as chairman of the MBFR working group meant that I had to meet
several times a week with representatives from the NATO countries, all of whom
sent me people to work on the substantive and administrative details of getting
negotiations started on the reduction of conventional forces in Europe.
Q ..
Was this confined strictly to NATO?
A ..
Yes.
Q ..
Did this affect the Warsaw Pact? Were they the counterpart to NATO?
A ..
Eventually, we negotiated with the Warsaw Pact. But for the time being we had
to decide among ourselves what forces and equipment we wanted to see reduced.
And we also had to work out the modalities of the negotiations, for example:
Where should we meet? At what level would each country be represented? How
would we coordinate among ourselves? And there were many other details to be
worked out.
Q ..
Essentially then, you were getting MBFR started?
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