he 

Warsaw Treaty Organization[3] (WTO), officially the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and

Mutual Assistance,[4] commonly known as the Warsaw Pact (WP),[5] was a collective defense treaty
signed in Warsaw, Poland between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist
republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was
the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional
economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was
created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO[6][7][8][9] in 1955 per the London and
Paris Conferences of 1954.[10][11][12][13][14]
The Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power[15] or counterweight[16] to NATO. There was
no direct military confrontation between them; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis
and in proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their
integration into the respective blocs.[16] Its largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion
of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (with the participation of all Pact nations
except Albania and Romania),[15] which, in part, resulted in Albania withdrawing from the pact less
than a month later. The Pact began to unravel in its entirety with the spread of the Revolutions of
1989 through the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland,[17] its electoral
success in June 1989 and the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989.[18]
East Germany withdrew from the Pact following German reunification in 1990. On 25 February 1991,
at a meeting in Hungary, the Pact was declared at an end by the defense and foreign ministers of
the six remaining member states. The USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991, although most
of the former Soviet republics formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization shortly thereafter.
In the following 20 years, the Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR each joined NATO (East
Germany through its reunification with West Germany; and the Czech Republic and Slovakia as
separate countries), as did the Baltic states which had been part of the Soviet Union.

Contents

 1Structure
 2Strategy
o 2.1Notable military exercises
 3History
o 3.1Beginnings
o 3.2Members
o 3.3Observers
o 3.4During Cold War
o 3.5End of the Cold War
 4NATO and Warsaw Pact: Forces Comparisons
o 4.1NATO and Warsaw Pact Forces in Europe
 5Central and Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty
 6See also
 7References
o 7.1Works cited
 8Further reading
o 8.1Other languages
o 8.2Memoirs
 9External links
Structure[edit]
The Warsaw Treaty's organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled
political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-
national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. The Supreme Commander of the Unified
Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, which commanded and controlled all the military
forces of the member countries, was also a First Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR, and
the Chief of Combined Staff of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was
also a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. Therefore, although
ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty
armed forces, analogous to the United States' domination of the NATO alliance.[19]

Strategy[edit]
The strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet
Union to prevent Central and Eastern Europe being used as a base for its enemies. Its policy was
also driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the
right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement. A
corollary to this was the necessity of intervention if a country appeared to be violating core socialist
ideas, explicitly stated in the Brezhnev Doctrine.[20]