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PRESS RELEASE: 30 May 2002
New Documents Overturn Simplistic
Myths of Cold War Alliances
Previously secret documents obtained by the
National Security Archive and its affiliated network, the
Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP),
shed new light on current issues of NATO enlargement and relations
with Russia.
Documents compiled by the Washington-based Archive
cover a long span of NATO history, from the early 1950s through the
late 1980s, and disclose significant detail on how the alliance and
its members looked at Soviet military capabilities and intentions,
how NATO sought to deter conflict with Moscow and the Warsaw
Pact, and how it intended to fight a war if deterrence failed. While
contemporary analysts often argue that security policy was simpler
during the bipolar Cold War, these documents suggest the opposite,
that differences in national interests, threat perceptions, and
resource availabilities made NATO policymaking an endlessly complex
process and even the Warsaw Pact process was less monolithic than
NATO presumed during the Cold War.
Findings include:
- U.S.-European conflicts over levels of national contribution
to NATO defenses are as old as the Cold War and the heavy U.S.
contribution in "advanced weapons systems" has always accounted
for the element of "unilateralism" in U.S. policy.
- During the early 1960s, NATO war plans involved "almost
simultaneous launch of large-scale nuclear air strikes and
missiles" and, according to Secretary of Defense McNamara,
paralleled concepts of "strategic nuclear war." This emphasis upon
the need for early use of nuclear weapons characterized NATO
planning from the 1950s onward.
- Differences between U.S. and West German intelligence during
the 1960s on whether Soviet divisions were fully manned and
equipped, how many were available, and whether divisions manned by
satellite nations were reliable, with the Germans seeing a more
powerful Warsaw Pact
threat than the Americans (thus
confirming a point made in Raymond Garthoff's memoirs that the
U.S.'s "NATO partners" contributed to exaggerated estimates of
Warsaw Pact capabilities).
- The US and NATO Europe came to agree that a Soviet surprise
attack was unlikely but disagreed on how to deter conflict, with
the U.S. emphasizing non-nuclear war-fighting options to halt a
Soviet attack in Europe, while the Europeans leaned toward the
threat of massive retaliation to deter a Soviet attack.
The collection of records prepared by the Zurich-based
PHP for the same website reveal greater policy input by Soviet
allies than Moscow's dominance of the Warsaw Pact previously
suggested.
Findings include:
- after the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis, the Soviet Union found it
in its interest to frequently consult with its allies about
foreign policy,
- the allies often used this opportunity to formulate their own
policies that would not conflict with Soviet priorities,
- détente and the "Helsinki process" provided the main impetus
to the formation of the Committee of Ministers of Foreign Affairs,
which evolved into the main forum of discussion and discord
leading to the Warsaw Pact's final breakup,
- the self-destruction of the Soviet system under Gorbachev
prevented the transformation of the alliance from a military tool
to a structure for political cooperation
The documents, introduced and annotated by Anna Locher of the
Center for Security Studies and Conflict research in Zurich,
originate from Czechoslovak and East German archives. The former
were selected from the archives of the Czech Foreign Ministry by
Petr Lunák, of the NATO Office of Information and Press. The latter,
located at the former East German communist party archives in
Berlin, appear courtesy of the Federal Archives of Germany, a member
of the PHP network.
Visit the PHP website at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php to read the
documents in the original with English summaries and to find out
more about the PHP's other activities. The website is part of the
International Relations and Security Network (ISN), operated by the
Swiss Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research at ETH
Zurich as a major Swiss contribution to NATO's Partnership for
Peace.
For further information, contact:
Tom Blanton, William Burr, or Robert Wampler, National Security
Archive
Anna
Locher, Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research
Vojtech Mastny, PHP
coordinator
PARALLEL HISTORY PROJECT ON NATO AND THE WARSAW
PACT (PHP)
Sponsored by the Center for
Security Studies and Conflict Research of the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology, Zurich,
the National Security Archive at
the George Washington University in Washington, DC,
and the
Institute of Military Studies in Vienna
In association with the
Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center,
Washington, DC, Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on
Totalitarianism, Dresden, Institute of Political Studies, Warsaw,
Cold War Research Group, Sofia, Institute of International
Relations, Prague, Cold War History Research Center,
Budapest,
Affiliated with the Partnership for Peace
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