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Document No. 61: Czechoslovak General Staff Study on the Warsaw Treaty, December 21, 1968 ——————————————————————————————————————————— The Czechoslovak General Staff prepared this study about the role of the country in the military organization of the Warsaw Pact four months after the Soviet intervention . As such it presents a somewhat different point of view from critiques prepared only months before during the height of the Prague Spring, although it also tries to preserve some of the ideas from that period (see Document Nos. 51 and 52). This study argues that Czechoslovakia has always played a major role in the Warsaw Pact, and should continue to do so. It emphasizes that the country has been second only to the USSR in promoting the strengthening of the Pact’s military organs, and it asserts the need to move toward greater institutionalization of the organization, as had taken place in NATO. ____________________ […] From the viewpoint of organization and lines of responsibility, the Warsaw Treaty has always been too loose a bond, failing to utilize all the potential to which it is entitled by certain provisions, and has not yet reached its desired condition in terms of the statutory and structural consolidation of its parts. In this sense, it cannot compare to the organizational refinement of NATO, in spite of the more forward-looking social order it is built upon. In [our] political circles, the fear is sometimes expressed that by striving to strengthen mainly the military bodies of the Warsaw Treaty we may leave an impression of insincerity about our efforts to achieve a European security system, as mentioned in Art. 11 of the Treaty. It needs to be stressed here that by strengthening these bodies, we would not even reach the organizational level of the NATO military bodies, and the aforementioned argument can thus be regarded as unsubstantiated. In fact, accomplishment of the measures in question would make possible the attainment of the objectives set by the Warsaw Treaty and increase the effectiveness of the Treaty itself. This path also appears to offer the best way to eliminate the drawbacks in the way the Treaty has operated in the past; it would fully meet the needs of strengthening cooperation among socialist countries, so urgently needed in the current state of international affairs. This applies especially to the military bodies of the Warsaw Treaty. […] It must be said that these questions have been addressed at conferences of the coalition’s defense ministers and chiefs of general staff, and at consultations of representatives of troops and services; largely, however, they had to do with the urgency of a particular problem, not an attempt to examine systematically certain statutory principles. At such occasions, the leading officials of the Czechoslovak People’s Army have always been among those who have taken the most initiative. […] They were regard317 ed as a pillar of the coalition and as a counterpoise to certain detrimental endeavors, which have been manifested since 1964 mainly by the Socialist Republic of Romania. Romania’s standpoint arose from a narrow perception of state sovereignty and a slightly different evaluation of the political situation, of the Federal Republic of Germany in particular. Besides that, Romania was interested in a relatively substantial adjustment in the power assigned to the supreme commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty. On the other hand, Romania’s attitude revealed a statutory lack in the military organization of the coalition, i.e. a vagueness concerning the rights and duties of both the supreme commander and the General Staff, as well as concerning the influence of coalition members on their activities. According to some coalition members, this factor leads on the one hand to excessively lax conduct by the coalition’s leading member-state, while on the other hand it fails to define precisely the rights and obligations of individual coalition members, which can in the worst scenario benefit even harmful endeavors. […] From a legal standpoint, proceeding from the principles of sovereignty, there is no doubt that whatever measure is to be adopted in the scope of a joint defense activity, it must be approved beforehand by the government of each nation in question . This principle, surely unambiguous from a legal point of view, collides, however , with certain difficulties of a pragmatic nature. There are measures, which cannot be discussed with individual governments due to time constraints or efficiency imperatives , but which must be effected immediately. This is so, e.g., in the case...

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