Is the Warsaw Pact
Finished?

Is the Warsaw Pact defunct? Have the revolutions of 1989 dealt the Soviet Union a cataclysmic military defeat? That's the view from Washington, and a lot of other places as well.

The Warsaw Pact was formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as a counterweight to NATO, an alliance formed by the United States and her allies after World War II. Soviet troops stationed in Eastern Europe are considered to be part of Warsaw Pact forces. For an organization supposedly on its last legs, the Pact shows remarkable signs of life. The Warsaw Pact conducted joint naval maneuvers in the Baltic sea in June 1990. <1>

The new Polish defense minister, who assumed office on July 7, 1990, under a Solidarity-led government, swore allegiance to the Warsaw Pact.<2> The Soviets have 99 divisions assigned to the Warsaw Pact. Despite reported withdrawals, they are planning to leave a large number of troops in Eastern Europe. And Soviet troops being removed from Poland and Czechoslovakia are being reassigned to East Germany. <3>

In addition, the Soviets have huge stockpiles of supplies in each Eastern European country. For example, in Poland, where the Soviets have two divisions, they have supplies for five more divisions. <4> These two Soviet divisions, which are expected to stay in Poland, have tactical nuclear weapons.<5>

Furthermore, intelligence experts say that the armies of the Eastern European nations are still under Soviet control. The methods of control are the same as before--the KGB, the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), and the allegiance of the officer corps to the Warsaw Pact and Moscow.

The alleged death of Soviet military power in Europe doesn't appear to have affected Soviet conduct at the negotiating table. The agreement reached between West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev, announced July 16, 1990, shows that the Soviets are negotiating from a position of strength, not weakness.

The agreement will allow the Soviet Union to keep about 400,000 Soviet soldiers and more than 3,000 nuclear warheads in eastern Germany for four years after Germany is reunited. And the West German government will pay the Soviet Union about $7.6 billion in hard currency over the four-year period. After Germany is reunited, the Soviet military will occupy some 8,000 square miles (or 20 percent) of eastern Germany--an area about the size of Massachusetts.

The accord was part of a broad range of agreements between West Germany and the Soviet Union that included a $2.98 billion loan from West Germany, the largest single credit ever granted to the Soviet Union. In return for all of this, Germany gets to stay in NATO. As Harold Rood observes, "That's the kind of deal you would cut with the Mafia if you didn't have any choice and you wanted to keep your laundry open." <6>

None of this makes it sound like the Warsaw Pact is dead or that the Soviets have left Eastern Europe with their tails between their legs. And even if the alliance does formally disband, it might just be a ruse. That's the opinion of Jan Sejna, a man who ought to know. Sejna was once a general major in the Czech army, chief of staff at the Ministry of Defense and secretary of the Czech Defense Council, the highest decision-making body in Czechoslovakia. He is also the highest-ranking military figure to defect from the Soviet bloc.

Sejna says that plans were made in the 1960s so that even if the Warsaw Pact alliance formally ceased to exist, the armies of the Pact nations would still cooperate and function as an alliance. "The Soviets knew that one day the Warsaw Pact would come to an end formally," he says. <7>

Does It Matter if the Warsaw Pact Disbands?

But suppose the Warsaw Pact is through. Suppose the plans Sejna is familiar with were scrapped. The question remains: Does it really matter? There is growing evidence that the Soviets do not regard the military changes in Eastern Europe as a great strategic loss, even in the worst-case scenario. When building their alliance, the Soviets had other things in mind than the offensive potential of the Eastern European armies.

Soviet specialist James Sherr says that the reason the Soviets established the Warsaw Pact was to prevent the Eastern European nations from hindering Soviet operations in, or passage through, their territories. The armies of the Eastern European nations were trained and structured so that it would be difficult for them to defend themselves against the Soviets. "The purpose of the Warsaw Pact all along," says Sherr, "has been to deny those countries military sovereignty." <8>

Sherr says that if the Soviets play their cards right, they could disband the Warsaw Pact and come out ahead. "The Soviets have realized for some time that it would be a greater advantage to them to actually destroy NATO than to strengthen their own alliance system," he explains. "Therefore, if they were to give up their own alliance system and the United States gave up its alliance system in exchange, they would be the beneficiaries." <9>

Since NATO is presently without a purpose, having extended the hand of friendship to its "former adversaries" in the Warsaw Pact, it could disband or become an empty shell in the foreseeable future, especially if the Warsaw Pact disintegrates.

And the demise of the Warsaw Pact would not necessarily limit the Soviets' ability to launch an offensive war in Europe. The Eastern European armies--those of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania--make up only 19 percent of the total Soviet and East European forces. The Soviet Union has about 200 divisions of its own, composing the most powerful and heavily armed ground forces in the world. And they don't have to cross the Atlantic to use that force in Europe as the United States would.

Sherr says that the Soviets could "withdraw most of their forces, remove any appearance of an offensive force structure, and still retain an offensive capability based mainly upon forces deployed in the western military districts in the USSR." <10>

The Train Jumps the Tracks

The real question of our time is not whether the Cold War is over but whether the Soviet Union will use its military to solve its problems.

Look at the facts. The Soviet Union is still increasing its military power. The Soviet Union apparently started the revolutions of Eastern Europe and still retains control of the instruments of coercive power: the secret police, the intelligence services, the military and the courts.

Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted a period of false liberalization in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe culminating with a Communist assault on the West. The evidence we have suggests that Golitsyn's theory (or a close variant) describes the operative Soviet strategy.

But everything did not go as planned. Mikhail Gorbachev unleashed a revolution of rising expectations throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe--and lost control. The train jumped the tracks. Not only did the revolutions in Eastern Europe get out of hand, the Soviet republics themselves began demanding independence. The crisis is exacerbated by the nonfunctioning Soviet consumer economy. Now the Soviets are faced with an unstable situation and are forced to improvise on a day-to-day basis.

Where will it all end up? That remains to be seen. But there are some likely options: civil war, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or a declaration of martial law and the reimposition of an imperialistic empire.

In any case, the Soviet government will almost certainly have to use force. It has no real diplomatic or economic leverage. Military might is the Soviet Union's only claim to superpower status and its one effective instrument of statecraft. Sooner or later it may have to use it. The alternative is death of the existing order, the largest empire in history. But empires do not willingly roll over and die. And totalitarian regimes, by definition, do not pass the torch of freedom.

And so my answer to the question "Haven't you heard the Cold War is over?" is "Yes, I've heard that it's over." I've heard it a thousand times. But the real question we should be addressing is: "Is the Hot War about to begin?"