Nato And The Warsaw Pact

The looming threat of Communist expansion led the United States and eleven Western nations to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Responding to NATO, the Soviet Union and the Communist Eastern bloc formed the Warsaw Pact. European nations soon aligned with one of the opposing military forces. This book takes a closer look at how NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Iron Curtain played a role in the sharp political division between the West and East.

Drawing on recently declassified information, this is a study of the various intrabloc tensions that plagued both the NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War and how those tensions affected the working of the alliances.

Recent events in Afghanistan and Poland, as well as the Twenty-Sixth Party Congress, have raised questions about the future direction of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Similarly, pressing issues such as the placement of long-range theater nuclear forces, burden sharing, and threats to the security of Europe from peripheral areas (for instance, the Middle East) call attention to the urgent need for a re-examination of priorities and strategies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This book addresses these military considerations, as well as the political and social dimensions of European security. The distinguished authors discuss four major subjects--European security perspectives, NATO, the warsaw Pact, and resource allocations for defense--within the framework of comparative alliance approaches. Their detailed descriptions of current problems, diversities, and discussions within the two alliance systems offer insight into the differing ideas of what constitutes security.

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This is the first book to document, analyze, and interpret the history of the Warsaw Pact based on the archives of the alliance itself. As suggested by the title, the Soviet bloc military machine that held the West in awe for most of the Cold War does not appear from the inside as formidable as outsiders often believed, nor were its strengths and weaknesses the same at different times in its surprisingly long history, extending for almost half a century. The introductory study by Mastny assesses the controversial origins of the "superfluous" alliance, its subsequent search for a purpose, its crisis and consolidation despite congenital weaknesses, as well as its unexpected demise. Most of the 193 documents included in the book were top secret and have only recently been obtained from Eastern European archives by the PHP project. The majority of the documents were translated specifically for this volume and have never appeared in English before. The introductory remarks to individual documents by co-editor Byrne explain the particular significance of each item. A chronology of the main events in the history of the Warsaw Pact, a list of its leading officials, a selective multilingual bibliography, and an analytical index add to the importance of a publication that sets the new standard as a reference work on the subject and facilitate its use by both students and general readers.

The end of the Cold War has raised questions about the future of NATO. Now that the threat from the Warsaw Pact has disappeared, there seems little need for a Western military alliance of such magnitude. The contributions here offer various views on NATO's future.

An assessment of the prospects for building down the NATO/Warsaw Pact military confrontation in Europe by negotiated and unilateral measures. The book also gives a far-sighted view of an organization of defence in Europe that will be set up to replace the existing security organizations.