Is security still the chiefest enemy? The challenges and contradictions in European confidence- and security-building in the Cold War

The regime of Confidence- (and Security-) Building Measures (C(S)BMs) represented an effort to re-imagine Arms Control in Europe and reduce the possibility of unwanted escalation due to misunderstanding or misperception. The regime was first developed during the Cold War due to concerns about large-scale military exercises, and its ongoing importance has come into sharp relief given that NATO and Russia have increasingly engaged in similar manoeuvres. However, despite the C(S)BMs, military exercises represented a point of conflict between NATO and the Soviet Union, and there is little indication that the regime led to the development of confidence in the benign intent of other participants. What prevented this from occurring? This paper compares the theory and logic of confidence-building with the negotiations around the CSBMs, highlighting three primary points of discontinuity that undermined the ability of the regime to fully deliver on its potential. The competitive nature of negotiation about its terms resulted in incomplete transparency, the conflation of the concepts of ‘confidence’ and ‘security’ shifted the focus towards assessing an adversary’s military capability rather than intent, and the regime’s inflexibility meant that it did not account for technological changes that otherwise altered understanding of proximate threat.