NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Intrabloc Conflicts (review)

This is a timely book that should inform the future definition of NATO. It contributes to the international history of the Cold War and fills a significant gap in a historiography that has emphasized outward representation over the inner workings of both alliances. Sixteen European and American scholars and policy-makers discuss tensions within each bloc throughout the Cold War. Their essays are based on papers from a 2004 conference hosted by Kent State’s Lemnitzer Center for NATO and European Union Studies and the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (now PHP on Cooperative Security).

NATO and the Warsaw Pact concludes that neither bloc operated as a monolithic unit. As S. Victor Papacosma states in the introduction, NATO “accommodate[d] diversity better than the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union did not have the perceived all-powerful capacity to impose total discipline on its lesser allies” (pp. xiv–xv). Lawrence S. Kaplan suggests the book’s broader application: NATO outlasted the Warsaw Pact but has since failed to redefine its mission. The essays under review illustrate how both alliances addressed significant internal problems in the past. Together, they raise fundamental questions that may serve as guidance for those who hope to lead NATO into the twenty-first century.

The book is organized in two parts, one for each alliance. Specialists will find that the historical introductions by Kaplan (on NATO) and Vojtech Mastny reprise arguments of their recent works, but for general readers they have much to offer and they greatly enhance the cohesion of the book. The essays cover a wide range of topics from the effects of decolonization on NATO (Mary Ann Heiss) to German Ostpolitik (Oliver Bange) and the ambiguity of French president François Mitterand toward German unification and NATO’s future course (Charles Cogan). Winfried Heinemann explains how crises in the mid-1950s forced NATO to develop structures for better political cooperation. Ina Megens reminds us of the failure to institute the Multilateral Force, speaking to grave difficulties with nuclear sharing. Even the challenge of Gaullism and France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military bodies could be overcome by the secretaries general who helped redefine the alliance as an instrument of collective security, as Anna Locher and Christian Nuenlist illustrate. Sheldon Anderson and Douglas Selvage examine the tense relationship of East Germany and Poland in two separate chapters. Jordan Baev analyzes how the Soviet Union lost its grip on Albania and Romania. But the Balkans offered crises to both alliances and were never afforded high priority, as John O. Iatrides shows in his chapter on the feud between Greece and Turkey. Bernd Schaefer considers the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on the Warsaw Pact and Csaba Békés examines Hungary’s balancing act of maintaining economic relations with the West while retaining its status as a trusted ally in Moscow during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Given NATO’s present entanglement, its leaders could do worse than study the Soviet experience and its effects on Warsaw Pact nations in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the book’s price is steep and general readers may want to rely on a library copy. Anyone interested in the history of the Warsaw Pact or the history and future of NATO should find this book indispensable.