Daniel N Nelson - Soviet Allies: The Warsaw Pact And The Issue Of Reliability

Soviet Allies

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Soviet Allies: The Warsaw Pact and the Issue of Reliability

edited by Daniel N. Nelson

Focusing on the degree to which Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) leaders can be assured of non-Soviet military support in hostile circumstances, this book provides empirical guidance for Western assessments of WTO "reliability" (i.e., Mobilization potential). The authors specify the variables thought to affect reliability and address the measurement of those variables, then analyze the changing Warsaw Pact alliance structure, the relationship of East European military establishments to the USSR, and the interplay of Soviet and East European security concerns. In case studies of six European countries, the authors assess domestic-level variables (e.g., party-military relations, general domestic political conditions, material and manpower resources, economic performance) and their relationship to the mobilization potential of Eastern Europe.

Daniel N. Nelson is an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky. He is author and editor of several books, including Romania in the 1980s (Westview, 1981).

edited by Daniel N. Nelson

First published 1984 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-50790

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28812-9 (hbk)

The Soviet Union's European allies, the six communist party states of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO or Warsaw Pact), have a combined population approaching 120 million and have an annual of approximately six hundred billion dollars. As this book was being assembled, the combined militaries of the same six states involved well over a million men and women. Were military and political leaders in the USSR assured beyond any doubt that such nations would commit to the Soviets their civilian and military resources without restraint in a European conflict against NATO forces, the balance of power in Central Europe would weigh heavily in Moscow's favor.

But for many years, Western military planners have thought it would be likely that serious constraints would lessen the effect of East European military performance. Most often, the "reliability" of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact forces was doubted because of, it was thought, morale problems or anti-Soviet sentiment. Western interest in the reliability question has become stronger as the East European forces were up-dated in the 1970s, training with Soviet units increased, and more stress was placed on multilateral actions within the alliance.

These changes, and the obvious need to know what consequences may result from, for example, a Pact offensive in Central Europe, require greater refinement of the concept of reliability. Such an effort necessitates, first, additional comparative studies in which specific observations in six East European cases are used to derive generalizations about the alliance, its cohesion, and likely performance. The same endeavor also demands careful scrutiny of each case and reflection on historical and cultural themes as well as empirical data.

Accordingly, this volume is divided into two sections, the first of which offers conceptual and systemic perspectives regarding Warsaw Pact reliability. In the first chapter in He suggests that reliability, in fact, connotes the degree to which available forces can be fully mobilized. The "mobilization potential" of a particular regime thus becomes the crux of any assessment of reliability.

Also in are articles by Robin Alison Remington and Christopher Jones. Robin Remington considers the systemic transformations of the Warsaw Pact over its thirty-year existence, with particular attention devoted to the impact of the Polish crisis on the alliance. Christopher Jones views the WTO in terms of its interwoven political administrations, underscoring the political element of the alliance's purpose.

Taken together, these three articles offer to the reader an overview of the complexities inherent in the issue of reliability. Measurement problems are raised by Nelson, longitudinal considerations stressed by Remington's analysis, and ideological and attitudinal aspects discussed by Jones. Put another way, assessments of the reliability of military forces in Eastern Europe are confounded by empirical limitations, changes within the Warsaw Pact over time, and the uncertainties of ideological indoctrination. These articles also point out tendencies not evident from country-specific analysis alone. Variations in the degree to which East European states are integrated into the WTO, or the extent to which their socioeconomic, political, and military conditions could support a regime's mobilization commands, are documented in the Nelson chapter. Remington portrays the WTO's transformation, due in part to crises such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, into a "multi-purpose alliance reflecting East European organizational maneuvering as well as Soviet preference." Jones, as well, focuses on conclusions that might not clearly be drawn from individual cases regarding the Soviet effort to "acculturate East European personnel as much as possible to the military ethos of Soviet personnel."