Warsaw Pact

Beginnings in Warsaw, Poland, where the Warsaw Pact was established and signed on 14 May 1955. Before the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Czechoslovak leadership, fearful of a re-militarized West Germany, sought to create a security pact with East Germany and Poland. The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. Soviet leaders, like many European leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being once again a military power and a direct threat. The consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets and Eastern Europeans. As the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states by 1955, the pact has been long considered "superfluous", and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it a "cardboard castle". , an enclave aligned with West Germany. Albania withheld its support to the Warsaw Pact in 1961 due to the Soviet–Albanian split and formally withdrew in 1968. The USSR, fearing the restoration of German militarism in West Germany, had suggested in 1954 that it join NATO, but this was rejected by the US. According to John Gaddis, "there was little inclination in Western capitals to explore this offer" from the USSR, while historian Rolf Steininger asserts that Adenauer's conviction that "neutralization means sovietization", referring to the Soviet Union's policies towards Finland known as finlandization, was the main factor in the rejection of the Soviet proposals. Adenauer also feared that German unification might have resulted in the end of the CDU's leading political role in the West German Bundestag. Consequently, Molotov, fearing that the EDC would be directed in the future against the USSR and "seeking to prevent the formation of groups of European States directed against the other European States", saying that "the Soviet request to join NATO is like an unrepentant burglar requesting to join the police force". In November 1954, the USSR requested a new European Security Treaty, in order to make a final attempt to not have a remilitarized West Germany potentially opposed to the Soviet Union, with no success. On 14 May 1955, the USSR and seven other Eastern European countries "reaffirming their desire for the establishment of a system of European collective security based on the participation of all European states irrespective of their social and political systems" The USSR concentrated on its own recovery, seizing and transferring most of Germany's industrial plants, and it exacted war reparations from East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It also instituted trading arrangements deliberately designed to favour the country. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin. Historian Mark Kramer concludes: "The net outflow of resources from eastern Europe to the Soviet Union was approximately $15 billion to $20 billion in the first decade after World War II, an amount roughly equal to the total aid provided by the United States to western Europe under the Marshall Plan." In November 1956, Soviet forces invaded Hungary, a Warsaw Pact member state, and violently put down the Hungarian Revolution. After that, the USSR made bilateral 20-year-treaties with Poland (17 December 1956), the GDR (12 March 1957), Romania (15 April 1957; Soviet forces were later removed as part of Romania's de-satellization), and Hungary (27 May 1957), ensuring that Soviet troops were deployed in these countries. Members in May 1987. From left to right: Gustáv Husák (Czechoslovakia), Todor Zhivkov (Bulgaria), Erich Honecker (East Germany), Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Union), Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania), Wojciech Jaruzelski (Poland), and János Kádár (Hungary) The founding signatories of the Pact consisted of the following communist governments: • People's Republic of Albania (withheld support in 1961 because of the Albanian–Soviet split, but formally withdrew on 13 September 1968) • People's Republic of Bulgaria • Hungarian People's Republic (temporarily withdrew from 1–4 November 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution) The Soviet government agreed to station troops in Mongolia in 1966. At first, China, North Korea, and North Vietnam had observer status, but China withdrew in 1961 as a consequence of the Albanian-Soviet split, in which China backed Albania against the USSR as part of the larger Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s. During the Cold War during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of each other in Europe, while working and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage. These included the Korean War, Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs invasion, Dirty War, Cambodian–Vietnamese War, and others. The Soviet Ground Forces created and directed the Eastern European armies in its image during the Cold War, shaping them for a potential confrontation with NATO. After 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Party, reduced the Ground Forces to build up the Strategic Rocket Forces, emphasizing the armed forces' nuclear capabilities. He removed Marshal Georgy Zhukov from the Politburo in 1957 for opposing these reductions in the Ground Forces. Soviet and WarPac forces repeatedly rehearsed the large-scale use of nuclear weapons in invasion exercises, such as 1964 Czech planning, which would have seen Lyon seized by the ninth day of the advance, and the Polish Seven Days to the River Rhine (1979). Nonetheless, Soviet forces possessed too few theater-level nuclear weapons to fulfill war-plan requirements until the mid-1980s. The General Staff maintained plans to invade Western Europe whose massive scale was only made publicly available after researchers gained access to Eastern Bloc files following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, 1981 In 1956, following the declaration of the Imre Nagy government of the withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet troops entered the country and removed the government. Soviet forces crushed the nationwide revolt, leading to the death of an estimated 2,500 Hungarian citizens. The multi-national Communist armed forces' sole joint action was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, a Warsaw Pact member state, in August 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania, participated in the invasion. End of the Cold War took place on the Hungarian-Austrian border in 1989. In 1989, popular civil and political public discontent toppled the Communist governments of the Warsaw Treaty countries. The beginning of the end of the Warsaw Pact, regardless of military power, was the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989. The event, which goes back to an idea by Otto von Habsburg, caused the mass exodus of GDR citizens and the media-informed population of Eastern Europe felt the loss of power of their rulers and the Iron Curtain broke down completely. Though Poland's new Solidarity government under Lech Wałęsa initially assured the Soviets that it would remain in the Pact, this broke the brackets of Eastern Europe, which could no longer be held together militarily by the Warsaw Pact. Independent national politics made feasible with the perestroika and liberal glasnost policies revealed shortcomings and failures (i.e. of the soviet-type economic planning model) and induced institutional collapse of the Communist government in the USSR in 1991. From 1989 to 1991, Communist governments were overthrown in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union. As the last acts of the Cold War were playing out, several Warsaw Pact states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary) participated in the US-led coalition effort to liberate Kuwait in the Gulf War. On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defence and foreign ministers from remaining Pact countries meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. The USSR disestablished itself in December 1991. ==Structure==

The Warsaw Treaty's organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Although an apparently similar collective security alliance, the Warsaw Pact differed substantially from NATO. De jure, the eight-member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defence of any member who would be attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence. However, de facto, the Pact was a direct reflection of the USSR's authoritarianism and undisputed domination over the Eastern Bloc, in the context of the so-called Soviet Empire, which was not comparable to that of the United States over the Western Bloc. Romania and Albania Romania and (until 1968) Albania were exceptions. Together with Yugoslavia, which broke with the Soviet Union before the Warsaw Pact was created, these three countries completely rejected the Soviet doctrine formulated for the Pact. Albania officially left the organization in 1968, in protest of its invasion of Czechoslovakia. Romania had its own reasons for remaining a formal member of the Warsaw Pact, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu's interest of preserving the threat of a Pact invasion so he could sell himself as a nationalist, as well as privileged access to NATO counterparts and a seat at various European forums which otherwise he would not have had (for instance, Romania and the Soviet-led remainder of the Warsaw Pact formed two distinct groups in the elaboration of the Helsinki Final Act). When Andrei Grechko assumed command of the Warsaw Pact, both Romania and Albania had for all practical purposes defected from the Pact. In the early 1960s, Grechko initiated programs meant to preempt Romanian doctrinal heresies from spreading to other Pact members. Romania's doctrine of territorial defense threatened the Pact's unity and cohesion. No other country succeeded in escaping from the Warsaw Pact like Romania and Albania did. For example, the mainstays of Romania's tank forces were locally developed models. Soviet troops were deployed to Romania for the last time in 1963, as part of a Warsaw Pact exercise. After 1964, the Soviet Army was barred from returning to Romania, as the country refused to take part in joint Pact exercises. tank in December 1989 (Romania's TR-85 and TR-580 tanks were the only non-Soviet tanks in the Warsaw Pact on which restrictions were placed under the 1990 CFE Treaty) Even before the advent of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania was in fact an independent country, as opposed to the rest of the Warsaw Pact. To some extent, it was even more independent than Cuba (a communist Soviet-aligned state that was not a member of the Warsaw Pact). At the start of 1990, the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, implicitly confirmed the lack of Soviet influence over Ceaușescu's Romania. When asked whether it made sense for him to visit Romania less than two weeks after its revolution, Shevardnadze insisted that only by going in person to Romania could he figure out how to "restore Soviet influence". Romania requested and obtained the complete withdrawal of the Soviet Army from its territory in 1958. The Romanian campaign for independence culminated on 22 April 1964 when the Romanian Communist Party issued a declaration proclaiming that: "Every Marxist–Leninist Party has a sovereign right...to elaborate, choose or change the forms and methods of socialist construction." and "There exists no "parent" party and "offspring" party, no "superior" and "subordinated" parties, but only the large family of communist and workers' parties having equal rights." and also "there are not and there can be no unique patterns and recipes". This amounted to a declaration of political and ideological independence from Moscow. was not the only combat jet designed and built by a non-Soviet member of the Warsaw Pact. See also Czechoslovak jet Aero L-39 Albatros. Following Albania's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, Romania remained the only Pact member with an independent military doctrine which denied the Soviet Union use of its armed forces and avoided absolute dependence on Soviet sources of military equipment. Romania was the only non-Soviet Warsaw Pact member which was not obliged to militarily defend the Soviet Union in case of an armed attack. Bulgaria and Romania were the only Warsaw Pact members that did not have Soviet troops stationed on their soil. In December 1964, Romania became the only Warsaw Pact member (save Albania, which would leave the Pact altogether within 4 years) from which all Soviet advisors were withdrawn, including those in the intelligence and security services. Not only did Romania not participate in joint operations with the KGB, but it also set up "departments specialized in anti-KGB counterespionage". Romania was neutral in the Sino-Soviet split. Its neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute along with being the small Communist country with the most influence in global affairs enabled Romania to be recognized by the world as the "third force" of the Communist world. Romania's independence – achieved in the early 1960s through its freeing from its Soviet satellite status – was tolerated by Moscow because Romania was not bordering the Iron Curtain – being surrounded by socialist states – and because its ruling party was not going to abandon communism. Although certain historians such as Robert R. King and Dennis Deletant argue against the usage of the term "independent" to describe Romania's relations with the Soviet Union, favoring "autonomy" instead on account of the country's continued membership within both the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact along with its commitment to socialism, this approach fails to explain why in July 1963 Romania blocked Mongolia's accession to the Warsaw Pact, why in November 1963 Romania voted in favor of a UN resolution to establish a nuclear-free zone in Latin America when the other Soviet-aligned countries abstained, or why in 1964 Romania opposed the Soviet-proposed "strong collective riposte" against China (and these are examples solely from the 1963–1964 period). Soviet disinformation tried to convince the West that Ceaușescu's empowerment was a dissimulation in connivance with Moscow. To an extent this worked, as some historians came to see the hand of Moscow behind every Romanian initiative. For instance, when Romania became the only Eastern European country to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, some historians have speculated that this was at Moscow's whim. However, this theory fails upon closer inspection. Even during the Cold War, some thought that Romanian actions were done at the behest of the Soviets, but Soviet anger at said actions was "persuasively genuine". In truth, the Soviets were not beyond publicly aligning themselves with the West against the Romanians at times. == Strategy ==

The strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet Union to prevent Central and Eastern Europe being used as a base for its enemies. Its policy was also driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement. A corollary to this was the necessity of military intervention if a country appeared to be "violating" core socialist ideas, i.e. breaking away from the Soviet sphere of influence, explicitly stated in the Brezhnev Doctrine. Notable military exercises • "Szczecin" (Poland, 1962) • "Vltava" (Czechoslovakia, 1966) • Operation "Rhodope" (Bulgaria, 1967) • "Oder-Neisse" (East Germany, 1969) • Shield 72 (Czechoslovakia, 1972) • Shield 82 (Bulgaria, 1982) • "Seven Days to the River Rhine," 1979 - command post exercise without field activity • Przyjaźń 84 (Poland, 1984) • Shield 84 (Czechoslovakia, 1984) ==NATO and Warsaw Pact: comparison of the two forces==

NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe ==Post–Warsaw Pact==

before and after the collapse of communism throughout Central and Eastern Europe On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia joined in March 2004; Croatia and Albania joined on 1 April 2009. The USSR's successor Russia and some other post-Soviet states joined the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in 1992, and the Shanghai Five in 1996, which was renamed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) after Uzbekistan's addition in 2001. In November 2005, the Polish government opened its Warsaw Treaty archives to the Institute of National Remembrance, which published some 1,300 declassified documents in January 2006, yet the Polish government reserved publication of 100 documents, pending their military declassification. Eventually, 30 of the reserved 100 documents were published; 70 remained secret and unpublished. Among the documents published was the Warsaw Treaty's nuclear war plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine – a short, swift invasion and capture of Austria, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands east of the Rhine, using nuclear weapons after a supposed NATO first strike. ==See also==