Warsaw Pact

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Founding Conference of the Warsaw Pact in 1955

The Warsaw Pact (see Nomenclature) was an organization of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. It was established on May 14, 1955 in Warsaw, Poland. The treaty was signed in Warsaw on May 14, 1955 and official copies were made in Russian, Polish, Czech and German. The treaty was an initiative of the Soviet Union and was in direct response to West Germany joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (more commonly known by its English acronym NATO) in 1955. As such, the Warsaw Pact was the Soviet-sponsored military-treaty organization and the European Communist Bloc's counterpart to NATO; it was similar to NATO in that there was a political Consultative Committee, followed by a civilian secretary-general, while down the chain of command there was a military commander in chief and a combined staff, although the similarities between the two international organizations ended there. <ref>Arlene Idol Broadhurst. 1982. The Future of European Alliance Systems. Westview Press. Boulder, Colorado, p.137.</ref>

1 Nomenclature
2 Members
3 History
4 Post-Warsaw Pact
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

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Nomenclature

The treaty is officially known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. "Warsaw Pact" is the more common term in Western countries, where it is sometimes abbreviated WAPA or sometimes simply WP. In other languages, the official title is:

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Members

Founding members:

Template:Flagicon People's Republic of Albania (withdrew its support in 1961 as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, formally left in 1968)
Template:Flagicon People's Republic of Bulgaria
Template:Flagicon Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Template:Flagicon People's Republic of Hungary
Template:Flagicon People's Republic of Poland
Template:Flagicon Romanian People's Republic
Template:Flagicon Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Joined later:

Template:Flagicon German Democratic Republic (in 1956)

Image:Warsaw08186x.jpg

Presidential Palace in Warsaw, in 1955 known as Governor's Palace (Pałac Namiestnikowski), where the Warsaw Pact was signed.

Members of the Warsaw Pact pledged to defend each other if one or more of the members were attacked. The treaty also stated that relations among the signatories were based on mutual non-interference in internal affairs and respect for national sovereignty and independence.

In 1991, the Warsaw Pact broke up when most of the Communist governments fell, changing to a democratically elected form as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

==Structure

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History

Image:NATO vs Warsaw (1949-1990).png

Borders of NATO (blue) and Warsaw Pact (red) states during the Cold war era.

The pact was a Soviet initiative aimed at countering NATO. East Germany, Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and the Soviet Union were the founding members.

Image:Warsaw-stamp.jpg

1975 USSR stamp "On Guard for Peace and Socialism" commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries never engaged each other in armed conflict, but fought the Cold War for more than 35 years often through 'proxy wars'. By 1989, many Eastern European citizens were tired of communist rule. As a result of popular unrest Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria all overthrew their governments and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

There are many examples of soldiers of the Warsaw Pact serving alongside NATO soldiers on operational deployments under the auspices of the United Nations, for example Canadian and Polish soldiers both served on the UNEFME (United Nations Emergency Force, Middle East - also known as UNEF II) mission, and Polish and Canadian troops also served together in Vietnam on the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS).

After the Reunification of Germany, some hold that the new re-united Germany was for a while, in legal theory, in NATO and in the Warsaw Pact.

The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague on 1 July 1991. Vaclav Havel (the former President of Czechoslovakia) counts the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact as his greatest accomplishment, according to his 2007 memoir To The Castle and Back.

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Post-Warsaw Pact

On 12 March 1999, the former Warsaw Pact members and successor states Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004.

In November 2005 Poland decided to make its military archives regarding the Warsaw Pact publicly available through the Institute of National Remembrance. About 1,300 documents were declassified in January 2006 with the remaining approximately 100 documents being evaluated for future declassification by a historical commission. Finally, 30 were released, with 70 remaining classified as they involved issues with the current strategic situation of the Polish military. It was revealed in declassified documents that, until the 1980s, the Warsaw Pact's military plans in the case of war with the West (eg Seven Days to the River Rhine), consisted of a swift land offensive whose objective would have been to secure Western Europe quickly (using nuclear weapons if necessary). Poland itself was home to 178 nuclear missiles, growing to 250 in the late eighties. Warsaw Pact commanders made very few plans for the possibility of fighting a defensive war on their own territory. Template:Fact

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