Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions

The Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) talks were a series of negotiations held in Vienna between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries between 1973 and 1989.

The MBFR talks were first proposed at the SALT meeting between President Richard M. Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. The two leaders agreed that the political side of the talks would be held by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), while talks dealing with the military side would take place at MBFR.

The preliminary talks started in Vienna in January 1973. At the first meeting, the Russian side rejected the name "MBFR" on the grounds that the word "balanced" suggested that the Warsaw Pact forces – which had a numerical superiority in Europe – should be reduced more than NATO forces. Their proposed alternative was "Mutual Reductions of Forces and Armaments in Central Europe" (MRFACE), a title that was agreed upon but seldom used.

The aim of the negotiations was an agreement on disarmament and control of conventional arms and armed forces in the territories of Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg (from NATO) and East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland (from the Warsaw Pact). The talks were attended by representatives from these nations, as well as the United States, Britain, Canada and the Soviet Union.

The first meeting was held on 30 October 1973 in the Hofburg Palace, Vienna.John Thomson, leader of the British delegation, commented:

Our grey little talks are no match for the Congress of Vienna. The Viennese have greeted us in friendly fashion but have probably been disappointed with our lack of glamour and our general 'invisibility'. We have been assigned the Hofburg as the site of our formal meetings whenever they may begin. But we are not destined to use the main salons. We drab bureaucrats are to gather in the room usually reserved for waiting footmen and coachmen in Franz Josef's time. The modern Metternich is not among us. His shadow does indeed fall darkly over us while he flits from Washington to Peking to Tokyo – everywhere but Europe in this 'year of Europe'. Nor do I discern a Talleyrand or a Castlereagh at our amiable 'plenary cocktails'. Instead we have hard-working lawyers and diplomats whose first thought is to engage in drafting and whose second is to avoid publicity.

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