DEFENSE AND THE WARSAW PACT

...When it comes to an external offensive, the utility of the Warsaw Pact armies is even more dubious...

...To quote the authors, "There are rumors, for example, that the Polish army took defensive measures to assure the 'neutrality' of the Red Army at the time of the Gdansk riots in 1970, and most Western observers agree that the Soviet military intervention last summer would have been opposed by the Polish army...

...The Yugoslavs, while not a Warsaw Pact ally at all, .are generally conceded by all observers to be willing and capable of giving bitter resistance...

...The debate is beclouded by dubious use of statistics and by a firm refusal to treat the reality which lies behind these figures...

...The same year in East Berlin, the East German military units refused to leave their barraoks and march on the demonstrators...

...When discussing the reliability of troops, it is useful to ask--reliable for what...

...Herspring and Volgyes argue that while those armies are unreliable in most cases, in internal situations they would probably be quite willing, and therefore reliable, 18 August 1978:518 in ddending the national interests against the traditional enemies, with the exception of Czechoslovakia whose troops are probably unreliable in every case~internal, external, offensive, or defensive...

...In Pilsen in 1953, the Czech troops refused to put down the riots...

...and Western military strength focuses, as often as not, on the disparity between the ground forces available to NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively...

...In Prague during the Spring Days, the army supported the reform regime, was unusable for putting down anti-Soviet riots and racked by massive resignations of officers after the consolidation of the new regime...

...I borrow here from excellent research by Dale R. Herspring and Ivan Volgyes...

...commander would consider as fit for anything but target practice...

...A more serious question is not are the East European armies reliable as a part of the Warsa~v Pact contingents in a hypothetical limited assault on the West, ,but rather are not those armies increasingly a factor providing for greater autonomy for the individual nation-states...

...In Gdansk in 1970, the army proved unwilling to put down the riots, while in the Lodz and Warsaw strikes of 1976 the army not only refused to be used but a defense minister is reported to have stated that "Polish soldiers will not fire on Polish workers...

...In Poland and Hungary that means masses of Catholic conscripts...

...One is to reject the notion that the relative strengths of NATO and the Warsaw Pact are to be determined by simple headcounts...

...It is, therefore, a matter of no minor significance how reliable those divisions are in various potenr conflict situations, and that question is rarely addressed by the alarmed hawks in Washington...

...The willingness of the Hungarians, Poles, or Rumanians to participate in an invasion is probably close to nil, and the Czechs, while theoretically probably willing, would probably ,be more of a problem for the side on which they fought than anything else...

...This is hardly a record that would suggest that those armies are reli'able defenders of the regimes when threatened with mass popular disturbances...

...Commonweal: 519...

...While that is a separate issue, it might be worth keeping in mind the fact that the Russians apparently hate to ~hrow anything away and their vast arsenal of .tanks, artillery pieces and rockets include substantive proportions of dated, elderly tools _9 vhich no NATO or U.S...

...What I am arguing is that as the regimes in Eastern Europe become more national in form, the Communism of those regimes becomes more specifically national in character...

...Clearly, there are three different types of reliability one can have in mind...

...In Posdan in 1956, regular army troops not only refused to disperse the rioters but in some cases joined them, while in Budapest in 1956, the army joined the revolt, resisted the Soviets, and showed itself as "reliable" only as an enemy...

...More interestingly it suggests that the other alternative, the calling in of the Soviet troops, has become more complicated because of the strong possibility, if not probability, of dashes with the local armies who, unreliable as they might be in putting down riots, might prove all too reliable in resisting the Soviets...

...There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the armies are, after all, manned by conscripts whose morale and attitudes are crucial under pressure...

...For at least some of the East European states the traditional enemy, the popular enemy, is the Russians or the immediately adjacent East European neighbors, rather than the West and the U.S...

...The Soviets here dearly are in a dilemma...

...At least the Polish and Rumanian armies might be, from the Soviet point of view, all too ready to defend the nation from an abrupt attempt to assert direct Soviet hegemony...

...The troops are a more interesting question, and one which can be used to illustrate the political shallowness of the current debate...

...An army will fight ultimately if it feels it has something to fight for as well as something to fight against...

...BOGDAH DENITCH (Bogdan Deniich is chairman of the sociology department at the Graduate School o~ the City University ot New York...

...What we are leh with is the possibility that the Bulgarians might be of some use and that only if the assault is launched against traditional enemies, i.e., the Yugoslavs, Greeks, or Turks...

...For example, in assessing the ground strength of the Warsa~v Pact troops in Europe, the 55 East European divisions are counted in with the Soviet totals...

...The fact that the bulk of the officer cadre is Communist, can hardly be reassuring to the Soviets since they have historic experiences with loyal Communist military cadres in Yugoslavia and China for starters...

...Are the troops reliable for maintaining internal order, are they reliable for defense from an external attacks, and finally, are they reliable and to what extent for an external offensive...

...In addition to the divisions, gross figures are given for Soviet and East European military hardware without much of a breakdown as to the quality and distribution of the war materiel...

...The second is that since most Western armies are also conscript armies, the morale and willingness of those troops to defend their societies is more critical ,than sheer military hardware and technology...

...To take ,the first dimension--reliability in internal disputes--in this case we have a record ranging from the early '50s to recent years in Poland, and the record is, on the face of it, utterly dismal from the point of viow of the regimes involved...

...The arming of those forces, on the other hand, makes increasingly difficult the naked assertion of Soviet military power within the East European states...

...A refusal to arm the Warsaw Pact East European armies and equip them with modern hardware presents political problems and will probably exacerbate the potential nationalism of those forces, a nationalism which in any case finds a natural home in the military...

...For the West, there are at least several implications that can be dra~n...

...Just how reliable East German troops would be in fighting their West German brothers is a question on which no responsible military establishment would bet much...

...And that, therefore, for the West, if it is serious about defense, more attention needs to be paid to the social issues and demands which are articulated by the mass left parties than to the insatiable needs of the military for larger budgets...

...The 55 divisions seem to melt into near nothingness when their specific content and abih'ties are examined...

...And that while there may be good economic and political reasons for maintaining links with the Soviet Union for the East European political elites and regimes, that loyalty is no longer unlimited and must not be tested too strongly...