CIAO DATE: 02/02

Arms Control, Conflict and Peace Settlements

Fred Tanner
Deputy Director, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

1999 - 2000

The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP)

Introduction

The end of the Cold War enabled the UN and other international organisations to carry out arms control and disarmament activities inside war-torn states. This development contextualised arms control into a broader policy setting aimed at peace making, peace implementation and peace building. Until the end of the Cold War, arms control served as a policy instrument primarily to shape the East-West balance of power with a heavy emphasis on nuclear weapons. In this function it always remained confined to its sole objective of stabilising antagonistic inter-state relationships. In contrast to this conceptual singularity of the cold war days, arms control today can support efforts in building stability and in addressing the underlying causes of armed conflicts.

According to Nicole Ball, arms control-related activities in conflict resolution encompass CBMs, stability measures, disarmament, weapons management, post-conflict disengagement, demobilisation, reintegration programmes and security sector reforms. These activities can play an essential role in conflict management "by limiting the arms racing and conflict-inducing consequences of emergent security dilemmas between groups within states". Many of these arms control activities are mandated by peace agreements and comprehensive settlements terminating civil wars.

This version of arms control and disarmament can tackle any kind of armament that may be used in hot conflicts, ranging from heavy weapons to small arms and landmines. In 1992, the Agenda for Peace introduced the notion of "microdisarmament" as a concept dealing with armaments in post-conflict situations. In the meantime, the concept evolved, driven by experiences of the Dayton agreement and disarmament activities in peace missions, such as those carried out in Cambodia, Somalia and Angola. Today it encompasses extended scope, agenda and number of actors involved in arms control.

This development does not question the raison d'être of classic arms control in the post-Cold War world: there continues to be a demand for arms control which stabilises military relationships among rivals, based on deterrence. Hedley Bull's definition of arms control still holds today, where he describes arms control as 'those acts of military policy in which antagonistic states co-operate in the pursuit of common interests even while they are struggling in the pursuit of conflicting ones'.

But, classic arms control is not designed to address the causation of conflict and, therefore, its role in conflict management is limited. This leads to the question to what extent the conceptual underpinning of classical arms control - that is based on a process between states - can be applied to regulatory efforts of armament within states after war.

This paper will examine this question together with the utility and sustainability of arms control in conflict resolution. For this purpose it will look at two functions that are called for after conflict: (1) deterrence management and (2) peace implementation. In both cases, the question arises as to how such post-conflict measures can be sustained. The essential question of sustainability of post-conflict arms control will require an examination into the extent to which arms control activities that are peace settlement-driven can draw from the "classic" arms control process, and vice versa.

1. Arms Control after Conflict: Managing Stability and Change

Arms control can play a crucial role in the aftermath of conflict. It can help remove the warfighting capabilities of parties on the one hand and contribute to a stable post-conflict environment on the other. But, in light of recent experiences in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, for example, the actual implementation of such goals appears unlikely at best. This study argues that the utility of post-conflict arms control can only be credibly assessed in relation to conflict outcome and the political construct within which it is being consummated.

Conflict termination can take many forms, including battlefield victories and negotiated settlements. This paper limits itself to outcomes of conflicts with no clear victors and/or vanquished. In such stalemated situations, the belligerents who want to stop the war may concur to a peace arrangement, even though the underlying dispute has not been solved. Such conflict outcomes can take two forms, both of which will generate important, albeit different, conditions for arms control; partition or, alternatively, civic reintegration and power sharing. In case of partition or quasi-partition, the adversaries seem incapable to overcome their "incompatible forms of exclusivism". They may, however, agree to stabilise their post-conflict deterrence relationship with the help of structural arms control mechanisms. Here arms control will contribute to the stabilisation of the post-conflict military status quo. In the case of communal reintegration and power sharing among former belligerents, arms control can be enlisted to manage the implementation of peaceful change from war to peace. Here, arms control is to support and manage change, as prescribed by peace settlements.

In both cases - deterrence management and peace implementation - the long-term sustainability of arms control measures is questionable. In the case of deterrence management, sustainability is only possible if the peace settlement-driven arms measures can be integrated with pre-existing hard security arrangements. Peace implementation, in turn, is a finite process by definition and provides little opportunity for turning arms regulations into a self-sustaining process. This finite cycle of agreed control over weapons could lead to an increased and uncontrolled circulation of arms with detrimental results on national and international efforts to rebuild the war-torn society. The following sections will elaborate on both scenarios.

1.  Managing Deterrence after Conflict

Deterrence management is a function of arms control that is called for when the conflict outcome leads to separate units that are politically incompatible but who wish to formalise their emerging "rapport de force". The logic of deterrence, especially after fighting a hot war, is invoked as a primary mechanism of conflict prevention. The underlying assumption is that the cost-benefit ratio among rivals who are rational actors will prevent the return to the open use of force. In most of such post-conflict arrangements, external actors assume the role of compliance monitoring and, as in Bosnia, also of enforcer.

Such post-conflict arms control patterns have emerged both after civil wars and inter-state conflicts. This paper will briefly look at the Dayton arrangement and the Limited Forces Arrangements (LFA) in the Middle East, the first being a termination of a civil war, the second of inter-state wars. In both cases, arms control was needed to regulate and stabilise the deterrent relationship between the rivals. Under these conditions of balancing, arms control takes the function of promoting a status quo that was created by the war.

The Dayton agreement was successfully placed in the broader framework of CFE, a regional arms control process. The LFAs in the Middle East, in turn, have yielded, even after 15 years of existence, no spillover whatsoever into regional security co-operation.

1.1.1. The Dayton Framework Agreement and Post-conflict arms control

The Dayton agreement terminated the war in Bosnia between the Serbs and the Muslims. Despite war exhaustion and strong external pressure, the parties were not prepared to agree on a power sharing scheme and a reconciliation process within the same political unit. As a consequence and a second best solution to war continuation, the Dayton settlements created two para-states within a loose federal structure, which were allowed to retain their own armed forces. The Parties were forced to accept an arms control regime with the purpose of reducing the tensions and of creating a stable deterrence relationship: the Moslem-Croat Federation was to balance the Bosnian Serb forces within Bosnia and Herzegovina. This relationship was to be positioned in a framework of deterrence relationship with Croatia and the FRY.

The mandate to this managed deterrence derives from Article IV of Annex 1-B to the Dayton Agreement. The peace arrangement does not provide specific ceilings; instead it designated default ratios of the armaments that needed to be limited. The actual limits were to be negotiated with the help of the OSCE within the time limit of 180 days. The agreement that was finally reached (Florence agreement) became the basis of sub-regional arms control in the Balkans.

The regional arms control process as foreseen by Art. V of Annex 1-B widened the scope to include the whole area "in and around" the Former Yugoslavia, such as the CFE-States Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, but also non-CFE-States (Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia and Austria). As the mandate, which was finally achieved, did, however, foresee that limits already agreed upon either under the CFE-Treaty or the Art. IV/Florence Agreement should not be subject to any changes, the mentioned non-CFE-States only agreed to participate when there would be discussion on limits for them. Thus, the scope has now changed to "soft" (Confidence and Security Building Measures) rather than "hard" arms control (i.e. limits), thereby forestalling the chance of agreement on a regional arms balancing scheme. Such a balance should now be achieved in the framework of the adapted CFE-Treaty.

The Dayton post-conflict regime is very intrusive and affects all dimensions of regional security, including arms control. This includes the presence of NATO forces (IFOR/SFOR) as facilitator and enforcing agent of the agreements. The deterrence relationship was strengthened by the US-led "train and equip" programme that helped to redress the military balance in favour of the Moslem-Croat Federation. This arms build-up was legitimised under the entitlements of Article IV.

The sustainability of the arms control arrangement after the wars in the Balkans is due to a number of factors: First, the neighbourhood of the conflict area was subjected to an on-going arms control process that had created over the years clear norms, rules and practices under the CFE and the Vienna CSBM arrangements and processes. These regional security arrangements served as legitimate models for the Art II framework, as well as the sub-regional post-conflict arms control process under Art IV. Second, these agreements have a positive track record and were, therefore, suitable as models for the peace process. Third, the implementation of the arms control package under the Dayton Framework Agreement was handed to the OSCE, an organisation already in charge of regional security co-operation, CBMs and arms control.

The problem of the Dayton process is that it does not include weapons categories such as small arms or mines: as a "proxy" of the CFE process, it covers only 5 main weapons categories. The CFE categories seem sufficient for managing a deterrence relationship among states or quasi-states over time, but it would prove inadequate for specific security needs in other conflict areas. In Georgia, for instance, a paradox situation emerged in which heavy weapons were strictly controlled by the CFE Treaty regime in certain military areas, whereas small weapons, munitions and explosives in the same areas escaped control and continue to destabilise the region.

1.1.2. Limited Forces Agreements in the Middle East

Deterrence after wars in the Middle East has acted as a substitute for peace agreements; parties have agreed to elaborate post-conflict arms control arrangements with the purpose of stabilising the frontlines and the adjacent regions after the end of a conflict. Such regimes have been engineered between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Syria as a result of Kissinger shuttle diplomacy after the Yom Kippur War. Another status quo agreement with arms limitation mechanisms was mandated after the Iran-Iraq War of 1988, but it was never implemented.

As such co-operative agreements are usually along contested borders, they are expected to last until a political settlement can be found. But, even under a peace treaty, such arrangements do not necessarily disappear, as the Sinai regime has shown between Israel and Egypt. The main arms control mechanisms used in status quo arrangements are Limited Forces Agreements (LFA) that include buffer zones with a regime detailing the force and weapons entitlements, technical arrangements with no bearing on the national armament policies. Such a regime simply creates a military symmetry at the front-line with third party interposition, whereas the overall military balance between Israel and its neighbours is not subjected to any regulatory arms commitments.

The status-quo arrangements in the Middle East are generally considered to have a successful record. The Golan arrangement was never put into question or undercut, even when Israel and Syria and their proxies found themselves in several shooting wars in Southern Lebanon. The co-operative gain of such arrangements is limited, however, because the direct contact between the parties is reduced to meetings at Headquarters with the Commander of the Peace Force.

The sustainability of these LFA is validated by the fact that Israel and Egypt agreed to maintain this LFA even after the Camp David Peace Treaty was concluded. It failed, however, in the sense that these agreements remained purely bilateral and were not able to trigger regional CBMs or arms control process. Syria, for instance, although being party to a LFA arrangement with Israel, refused to participate in the region-wide ACRS process.

The main conditions for the sustainability of arms control (or the cascading of arms control norms to the regional level) require the recognition of borders, a military symmetry among the rivals and a certain commonality of interest. In the Middle East, all of these conditions are currently not met. Only peace between Israel and Syria will open the way for a genuine arms control process in the region.

In conclusion, post-conflict arms control regimes that manage a deterrence relationship have a chance to sustain in the long-term only if they are integrated into a regional setting of security co-operation and arms control.

1.2. Managing Change: Transitions towards National Reconciliation and Power Sharing

In conflict outcomes that will not result in a deterrence-based relationship among adversaries, the role of arms control is to support change. This is primarily the case after civil wars, when the parties agree to engage in a process of communal reintegration, reconciliation and power sharing.

The normative source of arms control and disarmament in peace implementation is usually the peace agreement that attempts to overcome the institutional anarchy resulting from the civil war. Under such conditions of conflict outcome, the political settlement tends to prescribe a transition process leading to the elimination of various power centres. Here, arms-related activities include disarmament, disengagement, demobilisation and the reintegration of demobilised combatants.

These activities are aimed to eventually leave only one government and one national force in charge. In such a scenario, arms control and disarmament can play a useful role as an instrument of conflict management. It can, for instance, help in the merging of armed factions into one single power centre, or provide normative assistance in the elimination of weapons held by of bandits and illegal militia forces. Finally, in a broader interpretation, arms control-related measures are used for the restructuring of the security sector and the defence establishment.

1.2.1. The Case of Mozambique

In Mozambique, arms control and disarmament acted as agents of change: several arms control-related mechanisms helped a highly armed society with two adversarial groups to engage in a transition towards the demilitarisation of society and the build up of a national army from the remnants of the armed factions. The outset of this transition was extremely difficult for cooperative control of armaments: during 16 years of civil war, about 100'000 civilians were killed and a gun culture emerged that fuelled the continuous demand for weapons. Renamo supplied Rhodesia and South Africa was fighting against Government troops. According to Alex Vines, some 1.5 million AK-47 were distributed to the civilian population during the war. Under the Rome peace agreement, brokered by the Comunità di Sant'Egidio, the warring parties agreed to a cooperative scheme leading to national reintegration. The transition process included the disarmament of the armed factions and the collection of arms from civilians and paramilitary groups. Arms were being dealt with under the "official" demobilisation phase and as well as during the post-demobilisation phase when the society was still awash with small weapons. In Mozambique, the illegal part of the armament in the country had to be addressed in the backdrop of a shattered post-war economy - more than 2 million returning refugees and approximately 95'000 ex-combatants, many of them unemployed and alienated from society.

The demobilisation and disarmament were hampered by many technical, organisational and logistical problems. The role of arms control in the case of Mozambique was difficult because the civic reintegration of the factions led to the creation of a new national armed force. This meant that the weapons in the hands of former belligerents were not necessarily illegitimate, as long as they were transferred to the new army. This posed control problems for the UN troops and the inspectors of the Cease-Fire Commission (CFF).

The UN (ONUMOZ) acted as a facilitator to this process, and the Cease-Fire Commission (CFF) carried out verification of disarmament. The verification worked very much according to the classic principles of arms control: after declaration of holdings, the CFF verified the compliance with the rate of arms reduction arrangement, and with the help of on-site visits of arms caches. However, no normative precedence existed and no effort was made to create general rules for demobilisation and disarmament until 1999, when, under UN auspices, an expert group prepared a report on principles and guidelines pertaining to "Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants in a peacekeeping environment."

Ad hoc measures following the prescription of the Rome agreement led eventually to demobilisation, clearing thereby the way for the elections held in October 1994. This, together with war fatigue and the presence of ONUMOZ, assured a more or less peaceful transition. But the demobilisation process did not result in a successful removal of surplus and illegal weapons. During the post-election period a number of gun collection programmes were launched to remove weapons still in the hands of groups outside the armed force. The build-up of a new army, made up of 50% of the troops from each of the former adversaries, has created a new power in the country that could, if necessary, legitimately remove illegal small arms still existing abundantly.

But, unfortunately, not all peace agreements are necessarily good agreements. They attempt to smooth over persistent differences between the rivals on the one hand and possibly competing views of external stakeholders on the other. The continued rivalry after war is one of the reasons why in many agreements the scope and language of military adjustments remain deliberately vague. Furthermore, post-conflict transitions are often characterised by a highly unstable environment. The record of past peace implementation cases has shown that post-civil war disarmament alone does not work, but that it needs to be a part of a broader political adjustment process, which is actively supported by external stakeholders. In fact, Berman argues that the success of the disarmament process and the peace implementation in Mozambique was due primarily to "a terrible drought, loss of interest by the protagonists main backers, and the West's decision to fund an extremely generous demobilisation package".

2. Sustaining Post-Conflict Arms Control beyond the Peace Process

The above sections have shown that the normative record in arms control is useful for those post-conflict arrangements that prescribe stability building. Dayton, for instance, heavily relied on the CFE for the formalisation of the deterrence relationship in Bosnia and the Former Yugoslavia and on the Vienna Documents of the OSCE for soft security co-operation after war. With regards to peace settlements promoting change, as it was the case in Mozambique, the normative utility of arms control is - for the time being - of limited nature.

The main problem with arms control and disarmament after conflicts is that there is often a continued struggle for the redistribution of political, economic and military payoffs. In this struggle, arms control has only limited constraining effects on the adversaries. The frequently easy availability of weapons, the bias towards self-help of vulnerable groups and the rapid reconstitution capability in civil war, leads to post-conflict volatility as long as the rivals perceive their differences in military terms. Small and light weapons may be available in caches and in dangerous neighbourhoods where they can flow easily across borders. The security dilemma among vulnerable groups reduces the incentives to give up arms and, in turn, to comply with any formal disarmament commitments. Finally, the reconstitution capability in a civil war context is very high: the factions may not need to rebuild sophisticated command and control structures, logistics and force postures to recover from the effects of military exhaustion.

2.1 Overcoming Normative Vacuums

The case of Mozambique showed that in the absence of generally agreed upon norms, the peace settlements act as normative roadmaps for the peace implementation process. Norms in the field of post-conflict arms control establish expectations about the future role of arms control in the peace implementation process. They are constitutive norms creating new categories of action that will allow adversaries and external parties to distinguish between compliant and non-compliant conduct in the peace implementation process.

The life cycle of such norms is, however, confined to the period of peace implementation. In some cases, the conflict termination agreement prescribes a very short period of military adjustments among rivals. They can range from some days (e.g. Mozambique) to years (e.g. Bosnia-Herzegovina).

The time-limited nature of a peace implementation process begs the question of how regulative and constitutive arms control norms deriving from peace settlements can be transformed into long-term commitments. The Dayton Agreement has shown that one answer lies in the creation of normative links to a "pre-existing" regional conventional arms regime. Unfortunately, Dayton seems more the exception than the rule, because most of today's violent conflicts occur in areas without any multilateral security framework, such as the OSCE or NATO. Post-war Mozambique, for example, has been unable to fall back into a regional multilateral framework to cope with small arms and reintegration of ex-combatants. Furthermore, to date there are very few "generic" agreements that could serve as normative umbrellas for peace implementation and peace building.

For instance, there are, to date, no coherent arms export codes of conduct for main exporting countries with regard to countries after conflict. The ban on exports guarantees to war-torn countries may clash with the principle of helping the weak and outgunned groups. Normatively, there could be a link to criterion 8 of the EU code of conduct on arms exports: "the proposed export would seriously hamper the sustainable development of the recipient country".

The policy recommendations paper for the British government on security sector reform suggests extending the adoption of the EU Code of Conduct to other regional and international security and exporting control forums. The recommendations argue that the EU Code could serve as a normative reference for other regional forums such as the OSCE, the Organisation of American States (OAS), and ASEAN, with the purpose of promoting "restraints in the export of light weapons to regions of conflict and tension".

There is, however, an emerging trend to overcome the absence of norms, such as supply-side constraints on small arms with regional agreements. In the domain of small arms, a future reference could be the ECOWAS Code of Conduct for the Implementation of the Moratorium on the Importation, Exportation and Manufacture of Light Weapons.

Finally, there are also national and bilateral agreements on arms control and security sector reform that contribute to norm cascading in peace implementation and normalisation processes. A reference for the defence reform could be the Guatemalan Blueprint for the role of the armed forces peacetime role that was codified by the Agreement on the Strengthening of Civilian Power and the Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society (19 September 1996).

In some cases, global regimes such as the NPT, the CWC, or the regional nuclear weapon free zones have been used as the normative reference for peace implementation after civil wars. The most explicit case is Iraq, who is obliged under the 1991 cease-fire agreement to comply with international arms control regulations such as the NPT and the CWC.

In regions without any effective regional security framework, peace agreements also tend to externalise their arms control and CBM norms to a regional level. The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Treaty stresses the role of CBMs as does the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles and the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Agreement of 1994. Among other commitments, the latter binds the two countries to "the creation, in the Middle East, [of] a CSME (Conference on Security and Co-operation in the Middle East)" and to the creation of a NWFZ. Other links were established in the Middle East, where the normative value and practical implementation of LFAs was promoted for the ACRS process: Egypt, for instance, presented the peace force, monitoring and observation regime in the Sinai (MFO) as an example for regional arms control co-operation. Finally, the Iraqi cease-fire Resolution 678 contains a commitment for Iraq to externalise its compliance with weapons of Mass Destruction in favour of a NWFZ.

2. 2. Cascading "generic best practises" and "lessons learned" in multilateral forums

While the period after conflict is normally governed by peace settlements, the transition to normalisation may lack normative prescription. This transition period may be long and non-linear. The problem with peace agreements is that most of these rules are tailor-made, i.e. specific to the conflict in case and without much chance for generalisation. This prevents the cascading of norms in this field and relies, instead, more on what Peggy Mason describes as "generic best practices".

This leads to the conclusion that instead of norm building, there is more ground to share a successful "Lessons Learned Process" for the making of peace arrangements after war. Lessons learned have been worked out on the implementation side of peace agreements. Numerous meetings among scholars and practitioners have taken place to advance these objectives. The problem rests on the fact that these efforts remain by and large confined to the peace implementation period and do not search for ways to integrate post-conflict arms control in a long-term process.

Demobilisation and arms control may come first in a peace process, but they cannot be sustained without the build-up of a functioning state with civilian security, effective police, and a commitment towards democratisation and organisational reconstruction. In this broad perspective of post-conflict arms control, there is the need to link post-conflict norm building, "best practices" and "lessons learned" to multilateral security forums that deal with pluralistic regional security co-operation: this programmatic involvement of former civil war adversaries in exogenous multilateral co-operative processes will help them to de-couple their functional security co-operation from post-conflict struggles over political payoffs. Furthermore, it will provide a long-term horizon to their military adjustments that may not be solved by a peace process alone.

The involvement of multilateral forums yields a number of advantages: first, efforts by former civil war parties to sustain their military reform process may be strengthened if there is a direct link to regional security co-operation. For instance, the security sector reform in Bosnia, only partially mandated by the Dayton Agreement, may be boosted through Bosnian participation in PfP programmes dealing with civil-military relations. Other institutional interface in the Balkans could be promoted through the Security Table of the Stability Pact that now also deals with questions related to Dayton and small arms. Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance, included in the "Sub-Table on Defence and Security Issue" - a programme to assist in the "reduction of the Federal Armed Forces by 15% through the provision of financial support for the re-integration of dismissed military personnel in the private sector."

Second, external arms control regimes, regional or global, can be solicited if the scope of the peace agreement does not cover certain areas of co-operation in the military and defence sectors. This may be the case particularly with weapons categories such as mines and small arms, as well as with activities such as stockpiling of surplus weapons, constraints on arms imports and security sector reform. In the Euro-Atlantic setting, for instance, the OSCE decided at its summit in Istanbul (November 1999) to deal with small arms and light weapons in the context of conflict prevention. The EAPC, in turn, organised seminars on "Export Control and Transfers" and "Stockpile Management and Security" of small weapons. The Stability Pact for the Balkans introduced programmes dealing with "Economics and Demilitarisation", "Arms Control and Non-Proliferation", "Small Arms" and "Humanitarian Demining".

The normative support of these processes may not be extensive, but they can support war-torn societies with "lessons learned" and "best practices" that will help in the demobilisation of soldiers, security sector reform, refugee resettlements and institution building. This is why countries involved in peace-building from the Caucasus and the Balkans are the primary targets of such activities.

Local belligerents may be reluctant to engage in such multilateral forums, because their peace commitments would be in one way or another multilateralised and therefore more difficult to renegotiate. However, there are numerous incentives for former belligerents to participate in a multilateral process, such as the Stability Pact and Partnership for Peace. Local parties have incentives to comply with the regulatory commitments they entered, because their political agendas may be geared towards future membership of sponsoring states (EU, NATO). Also, these multilateral forums may provide other support that would help to sustain the arms control and other military adjustments. Such support could be in the build-up of civilian security and local capacity building and in the demilitarisation of politics. In addition, the multilateral forums provide for resources and in some respect could act as substitutes to transitional authority. Finally, it is most likely that members of implementing operations in war-torn states may be key players of the multilateral process.

Conclusion

This paper examines the thesis claiming that arms control measures can play an essential role in conflict resolution. It suggests that any investigation about the utility of post-conflict arms control needs to be based on the understanding that conflict outcomes matter.

Conflicts ending through partition or separation will create a genuine demand for structural arms control. Dayton and the Limited Forces Agreements in the Middle East helped to exemplify that structural arms measures can be instrumental in stabilising an antagonistic relationship, regardless of whether the conflict was of an inter-or sub-state nature.

Conflict endings which lead to national reconciliation, in turn, encounter the lack of conceptual and normative precedence for arms control activities. The case of Mozambique showed that a peace settlement-driven mandate to promote political change is only partially compatible with the classic understanding of arms control. The management of weapons in war-torn Mozambique was governed by ad hoc measures lacking any kind of coherent and long-term policy. The normative vacuum of arms control in peace implementation is partially due to the slow regional and international progress in codifying norms in the field of small arms.

The last part of the paper deals with a problem deriving from the normative vacuum and the finite life cycles of peace implementation: the question of sustainability of post-conflict arms control arrangements. The study argues that sustainability of such arrangements varies depending on whether they can be linked or merged with pre-existing regional arms control regimes. But, hard arms control agreements, such as the CFE, are limited to major weapon systems and are thus unable to address questions pertaining to small arms, force restructuring and civil-military relations - all issues that are essential in rebuilding a functioning and legitimate security structure after war.

This paper showed that there exists an emerging trend today to promote and support such issues in regional frameworks such as the Southeast European Stability Pact, PfP, and the OSCE. For instance, the PfP and the round tables of the Stability Pact offer former belligerents from the Balkans, the Caucasus and other countries in transition exogenous forums to deal with questions related to small arms, force restructuring and security sector reform. As the case of Mozambique showed, the continued absence of effectively working cooperative security organisations outside the Euro-Atlantic area deprives many war-shattered countries from this promising interface between internal military adjustments after war and multilateral politico-military cooperation.