Dianne Feinstein: “I rise today to address Senate consideration of the CFE Flank Agreement. The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty [CFE]…”

“I rise today to address Senate consideration of the CFE Flank Agreement. The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty [CFE] entered into in 1990 is an outstanding arms control achievement, requiring the destruction of over 50,000 items of heavy weaponry, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces, and attack helicopters. The CFE has helped to make the Europe of 1997 a far safer place than the Europe of even just a few years ago, and in doing so has served American national security interests well. The implementation of CFE helps guarantee that a destabilizing concentration of military equipment--or a massed military attack in central Europe of the kind that has dominated strategic thinking in Europe through two World Wars and a cold war--will now be next to impossible for any nation or group of nations to achieve. But, as the flank agreement underscores, the treaty negotiated between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1990 is not adequate to the realities of the new European security environment.”