The Warsaw Pact: Soviet Military Policy in Eastern Europe
Abstract
The USSR may wish to rely more in the 1980s on East European military forces to maintain or increase the present level of Soviet-controlled military power in Europe while minimizing the commitment of additional Soviet military resources to this region. Soviet military forces are subjected to increased competing demands while domestic Soviet economic tradeoffs between military and civilian production are posed more sharply. Yet in fact, the USSR will have to rely less, rather than more, on East European military forces. Operational, institutional, and socioeconomic factors that make a greater or even undiminished East European military contribution unlikely are discussed. The Polish crisis of 1980-1981 has dramatized the vulnerabilities inherent in the present level of Soviet reliance on East European military forces. Development of East European armies for "coalition warfare," emphasized by Khrushchev at the turn of the 1960s as a "quick fix," has reached the point of diminishing returns, irrespective of the outcome of the Polish crisis. The Soviet leadership must either dedicate relatively more of its own increasingly scarce military resources to Europe or permit a relative decline in Soviet-controlled military power in the region.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA511838
Entities
People
- A. R. Johnson
Organizations
- RAND Corporation