No Fair-Weather Instrument: The Need to Rethink Military Confidence Building in Europe

Abstract

The current crisis of confidence in Europe has clearly had an impact on defence and security relations between Russia and the West. Against this backdrop, the relatively constructive and well-functioning working relations that currently hold among arms control units clearly stand out, calling for a critical rethinking of how confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) contribute to increasing levels of trust among OSCE participating States. This paper outlines a new analytical framework that allows us to better understand how CSBMs contribute to increased levels of trust between arms control units, offering us interesting new perspectives on how to enhance their positive effects on defence and security relations in times of increased political tension and distrust. The main takeaway of this new perspective is that CSBMs are not essentially dysfunctional but that many of their trust-building effects target the wrong actors and levels in defence and security politics. Amid the current crisis in European security, governments ought to focus on multilateral forms of verification, strengthen military-to-military contacts, find ways to extend the effects of CSBMs beyond the relatively small arms control community, and invest in more targeted confidence building at a higher political and military level.