An agreement on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) may place numerical
and geographical limits on more than 140,000 treaty-limited items (TLIs)1 in 21
countries. Monitoring limits on such huge numbers of TLIs would be extremely
difficult, as well as expensive and intrusive, with human inspectors alone. This
chapter examines a promising way to effectively monitor limits while reducing cost
and intrusiveness: the tagging of TLIs. The use of tags transforms a numerical limit
into a ban on untagged items. The result is that many of the verification advantages
of a complete ban can be retained for a numerical limit.
Tagging works by certifying that every TLI observed is one of those permitted
under a numerical limit. A tagging system would involve the manufacture of a
number of tags equal to the number of TLI, which would then be affixed to an
essential part of each allowed TLI. If even one untagged TLI were ever seen—during
on-site inspections (OSI), by national technical means (NTM), or even by nationals
of the inspected party loyal to the treaty regime—then there would be prima facie
evidence of a treaty violation. If properly designed, tags could also identify a TLI as
belonging to a particular nation or as normally deployed in a particular region, which
would make it easier to verify CFE sub-limits on national and regional deployments
